Expecting Vulnerability

A sermon on Matthew 1:18-25.

[for an audio recording on this sermon, click here. Photo by M.T ElGassier on Unsplash.]

As some of you probably know, because I talk about it a fair amount, I am fascinated by the Enneagram.

The Enneagram is a personality typing system that actually dates all the way back to the 4^th and 5^th Century desert fathers and mothers in the mystical-ascetic branch of Christianity.

Unlike more modern typing systems, it focuses not so much on a person’s patterns of behavior, but rather on why they behave the way they do.

What core emotions motivate them? And how does that shape the decisions they make (whether consciously or – more interestingly – unconsciously)?

To explain what that means, let me explain a little about my own experience:

Until I discovered the Enneagram, I had always thought of myself as a perfectionist, because I have always put a lot of pressure on myself to do everything well.

But the Enneagram parses the motivations for our behaviors.

A perfectionist (type 1 in the Enneagram) needs everything done the right way.

They have a strong sense of right and wrong that is not just about morality, but more generally about the importance of rules and the belief that there is one right way to approach most tasks.

For perfectionists, it can trigger intense frustration, or even anger, if things are not done the way they should be done.

Now, I can understand that perspective once it is explained to me, but that was never my issue.

As an Achiever (Enneagram 3) my activating emotion is not anger, it’s shame. I am motivated to avoid the shame I feel if I don’t do my best.

I am not trying to match some established standard of the “right” way to do something. I just need to avoid the disgrace of personally failing.

Now, interesting as this may be, I wouldn’t normally bring so much self-analysis into a sermon, except I had bit of an epiphany this week in considering Joseph’s story from today’s gospel.

I realized that I have always ascribed my core motivation to Joseph’s plan to divorce Mary quietly when he found out about her pregnancy.

And, to be fair, it is there in the text. Matthew tells us that Joseph wanted to “avoid public disgrace.”

Whether it was his desire to shield Mary from the shame of a socially prohibited pregnancy, or his desire to shield himself from the shame of people knowing he wasn’t the father, the potential disgrace of the situation seems to be a driving factor in his decision.

But what I have previously glossed over is that the story also offers a few other potential motivations for Joseph’s decision.

Matthew’s description of Joseph is that he is a righteous man. It’s a common biblical description, but it also evokes the inflexible perfectionist rules for right and wrong.

Righteous means you do what is right.

And if we think about it, Joseph could have avoided shame in the whole surprise pregnancy situation by just pretending he was indeed the father.

Move the wedding forward a bit and who would ever know the difference?

Except, Joseph would know. And that’s a non-starter for someone for whom things absolutely must be done the right way.

Or, yet again, consider the opening announcement of the angel who appears to Joseph in the dream.

We are used to angels in scripture saying, “do not be afraid,” to those they visit, but this command is much more specific than the general pacifying command.

The angel tells Joseph not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, implicitly suggesting that it is fear that has motivated Joseph’s plan.

As it happens, fear is the third core emotion in the Enneagram system.

Fear motivates vigilance and planning to prevent potential negative developments before they have a chance to manifest.

And it is possible that Joseph is actually acting out of fear when he plans to quietly break off his relationship with Mary, a girl he thought he knew but who is now claiming that she is pregnant by the Holy Spirit….

That could raise a lot of questions about what a life with her might mean.

I’m sure it feels a lot safer just to shut that door.

Shame. Anger. Fear.

The enneagram focuses on these three core emotions because they can wield such a powerful influence on our decision-making, often without our conscious awareness.

And until we understand that influence, we are controlled by it.

Which is ironic, because control is what each of these motivations has in common.

While acted out in different ways, and for different reasons, they all push us into behaviors and patterns so that we will feel like we are in control whenever our lives or the world around us seem to be slipping out of our control.

Which makes Joseph’s story a powerful source of insight for all of us, whatever our particular personality type.

Because the reality is that we cannot actually know the nuances of Joseph’s motivations in wanting to quietly move Mary and her baby out of his life, but we can recognize the buttons that the situation would push for ourselves.  

Whether we would cringe away from the potential shame…

or feel angry at the affront to our righteousness…

or shrink in fear at the imagined consequences for our lives…

Whatever our particular flavor of discomfort we can each recognize that instinct to try to assert control when it gets activated by our intrinsic motivations.

But this is the point in the story where today’s holy expectation comes into play: the expectation to be called into vulnerability.

In the end it doesn’t matter that much why Joseph wanted to call off the marriage, because God does not let him go through with his plan.

And I think this divine intervention is about more that just moving the plan for the incarnation along… or else why tell the story of Joseph’s hesitancy at all? He doesn’t separate from Mary in the end, so why does his initial plan matter?

I think it matters because it draws our attention to two things:

First, it pulls on the emotions that can most easily hook each of us.

If we really take in his story, if we let ourselves look behind the facts of Joseph’s decision and empathize with his potential why’s, the story of what he planned to do helps us to experience how inevitable and unavoidable that decision must have felt to him…

And once we feel that, then we can know what it means for God to say, “no.”

It is a direct, divine command to accept our vulnerability.

To feel our deepest instincts pulling us to act, to protect ourselves, to respond to our most powerful emotional triggers…

And to know that God is telling us to do the opposite.

Our calling is not to be in control, not to make ourselves feel safe, but instead to accept that we cannot script the way that our life plays out.

Whether we like it or not, we are not in control and that makes us feel vulnerable.

And I think that we need to feel the weight of that vulnerability in order to understand the power of the second message of this story: Jesus is sent “to save his people from their sins.”

It’s such a familiar formula to us in the church that it might not feel particularly powerful.

Especially because most days we aren’t really conscious of the need to be saved.

But once we can feel the tension between our emotional triggers that try to ensure our control and the truth of our vulnerability… that’s when we can know the relief embodied in the promise of a Savior.

The language of sin might not grab us, but shame, anger, fear… the emotional hooks that turn us in on ourselves and make us scramble for control… we know those are real.

We know how impossible it feels to ignore their demands.

We know how helpless they make us feel.

We know that they make us desperate to deny our vulnerability.

But the promise that Jesus comes to save us transforms our vulnerability.

In fact, it makes it a holy expectation.

Because if we expect that our efforts at control will be faulty, and that our instincts will pull us into unconscious decisions and patterns that we should not just follow blindly, then maybe we won’t cling to them so tightly.

Maybe we will instead seek God’s help and guidance before God has to send an angel to pull us back from taking the wrong path.

It’s not the most comfortable realization, perhaps, but it is absolutely good news.

Because we are vulnerable people in a world in need of saving. There is nothing we can do to change that.

But if we expect that vulnerability, it opens our hearts to expect our Savior too.

Thanks be to God.