The materials for A Sanctified Art* for the 4th Sunday of Advent invite those of us with relatively more to step up and step in to solidarity with those with relatively less, for the strong to help the weak.
But what if the "weak" are not innocent? What if they are difficult to love or socially "toxic"? I challenge us to consider the conditions we place on our help and to stretch ourselves outside the comfort zones of "deserving" charity to love those who carry a social disgrace.
The Perfect Mother and the Scandal of the Incarnation
Matthew is the only Gospel account of how Joseph came to be Jesus's adoptive father. And in Matthew 1:18-25, we see Joseph's dilemma:
Now the birth of Jesus Christ happened this way. While his mother Mary was engaged to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. Because Joseph, her husband to be, was a righteous man, and because he did not want to disgrace her, he intended to divorce her privately. When he had contemplated this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife because the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son and you will name him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins." This all happened so that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet would be fulfilled: "Look! The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will name him Emmanuel," which means "God with us." When Joseph awoke from sleep he did what the angel of the Lord told him. He took his wife, but did not have marital relations with her until she gave birth to a son, whom he named Jesus.
We often sanitize this story, but theologians have long called it the "Scandal of the Incarnation". The traditional teaching on the scandal goes like this:
The penalty for adultery by a woman was death by stoning. Joseph had every legal right to press charges and demand her execution.
Because Joseph was righteous and compassionate, he refused to do so. Instead, he planned on divorcing her privately.
As a righteous man, he slowed down and prayed, taking time to discern the right course of action. In this context, he received the dream with an angel of the Lord.
He humbly obeyed God, setting aside his concerns for his own reputation and the fact that he was being asked to raise a child that was not biologically his own.
Some teachings go even further, asserting that Joseph was sufficiently empowered with supernatural knowledge that he immediately believed Mary, and only initially planned on divorcing her because he felt himself not worthy to be involved with something so holy as the birth of the Messiah.
It's difficult for us, in the USA in 2025, to appreciate the weight of the scandal that Joseph was stepping into. Even if Mary and Joseph both knew that the child was of the Holy Spirit, their families, neighbors, and community did not. We don't know what Mary's own parents thought. Did she have siblings? Joseph was likely in his 30s: did he have family members of his own weighing in and pressuring him? We can assume the neighbors and surrounding community were likely cruel. In adopting Jesus, Joseph became the father of a "bastard" in the eyes of the law.
There is more to the scandal than merely being the subject of gossip and ridicule. It's possible that community members refused to transact business with the new family. Was Joseph turned away from potential work or jobs as a result of this? This was a time without strong central rule of law with civil rights and things like protections for public accommodations. (Given the pettiness and cruelty we are all prone to, this is an argument for strong non-discrimination laws in public accommodations.)
The materials by A Sanctified Art call us to solidarity. Here, solidarity includes adopting shame and ostracism being experienced by someone else. It is much more than a feel-good Hallmark card. No matter how you slice it, it is an impossibly tall order, eased only a little bit by being self-assured in one's righteousness.
The traditional teaching stops here: when faced with righteousness, we have to put our skin in the game and be willing to face outsized consequences for standing with holiness.
But I want to go further. What if one weren't righteous? Or at least, one wasn't convinced of one's own righteousness?
The "Welfare Queen" and "Nazi Baby"
Christianity is, of course, centered on Mary and Jesus being the perfect mother and child. It is nigh heretical to consider otherwise. The premise that Christianity is the fulfillment of Judaism demands it.
I'm not here to suggest anything different. Instead, I want to raise the moral question of what we should do, today, in the position of someone like Joseph, if a miracle were not involved? What would love and justice demand?
Put yourself in the shoes of a man who is married to a woman with whom you haven't consummated the marriage. She turns out to be pregnant. What do you do?
What if the pregnancy were the result of sexual assault? Your wife didn't consent to be assaulted, of course. But she chooses to keep the baby. What do you do?
Or what if the pregnancy were the result of an affair? Your wife did consent, but she ultimately wants to stay with you. She also wants to keep the baby. What do you do?
Finally, what if you lived in a place like Roman-occupied Judea? For a more recent example, imagine being in any country occupied by the Third Reich during World War II. And your wife had an affair with a soldier of the occupation. In our example, this would be a Nazi soldier. She wants to stay with you. And again, she wants to keep the baby. What do you do?
It's very easy if the people who need help and support, like Mary and Jesus, are perfect and innocent. But what if they weren't? Again, what do love and justice demand?
In these hypothetical cases, with varying degrees of blame, the people who need support are not perfect. Some would even blame the wife for being sexually assaulted. And some would dispute the innocence of the child: "genes of a rapist", or "blood of a Nazi".
In the title to this section, I use the terms "welfare queen" and "Nazi baby" to point out how many of us absolve ourselves of the need to help by dehumanizing others. Again, in these hypothetical cases, many people, including many conservative Christians, would advise the husband to run, to save himself. Anything else would be foolish. "Don't be trapped."
I do not believe that this is what God would have us do. I do know that the impulse to run and save ourselves, which is based on sympathetic nervous system (SNS) activation which I shared about on the 2nd Sunday of Advent, is reason enough to question. I know that God does not want us acting from that place, not where actual imminent physical danger doesn't exist.
I honestly don't know what I would do in the position of the husband. In the case of actual infidelity, as opposed to sexual assault, I would probably seek divorce. I would hope that I wouldn't hold anything against the child. But loving them as my own? That would be a mighty, God-sized, stretch.
And so this Sunday, like last week (Gaudete Sunday), is another wrestle with God.
We want to help the "deserving" poor. We want to support the "innocent" victim. But Joseph was asked to support a situation that, to all appearances, looked like a betrayal of everything that he, his culture, and his society, held holy. How much more difficult would it have been if the reality of the situation weren't so clear cut?
Can we help all of the poor, not just the "deserving"? What about the victims that we think were "asking for it" or "brought this on themselves"?
On the 2nd Sunday of Advent, I shared about patience (a capital virtue) as a way out of bad decisions based on flight and fight. Last week, on Gaudete Sunday, the 3rd Sunday of Advent, I shared extensively about tools that I have attempted to bring to bear in the struggle to act morally and virtuously in the world. This week, on the 4th Sunday of Advent, I want to close out this series with a more comprehensive look on Christian framing of virtue. How does virtue help us achieve true solidarity with each other in the face of oppression?
The Virtues and Gifts of Holy Spirit
I love the Roman Catholic framing of virtue. It speaks to me infinitely more than other frameworks of virtue I have encountered, such as in Buddhism, monistic Hinduism, or Sikhism. It is structured like this:
7 Heavenly virtues
3 Theological virtues (faith, hope, and charity)
4 Cardinal virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance)
7 Capital virtues (humility, kindness, patience, diligence, charity, temperance, and chastity)
The cardinal virtues are particularly interesting, because they are decidedly Greco-Roman, being originally from Plato and Aristotle. The word cardinal comes from the Latin word cardo, which means hinge; these are the 4 virtues that all other virtues hinge upon.
In Platonic and Aristotelian thought, prudence is the most important virtue. Prudence is the ability to discern the appropriate course of action to be taken in a given situation at the appropriate time, with consideration of potential consequences.
Prudence vs. Caution
Most of us today reduce the word prudence to mere caution. By that definition, again, most of us would say that the prudent thing for the husband to do would be to leave, except maybe in the case of sexual assault, where many would want to pressure the wife to terminate the pregnancy.
Just as I do not believe that this is what God would have us do, I do not believe that this is true prudence. True prudence is the culmination of discernment—using all of our faculties to weigh every available option against our highest moral compass to figure out what to do and not to do.
Joseph's dream was his patient pause that moved him from mere caution (quiet divorce) to true prudence (public adoption and all of its consequences).
I can't and don't want to prescribe any course of action for our hypothetical husband. But I would invite them (and you) to really slow down and wrestle with God, to use every possible faculty to come into alignment with their highest values. In past weeks, we have talked about the blind spots that result from activation of the SNS, and the need for patience to slow down. We have talked about dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) and Wise Mind, the result of using all of our faculties. Theologically speaking, prudence ties all of these together.
It is work. And it is wrestling. What would be the result of such a wrestle? The answer may be surprising.
Piety and God's Family
In addition to the Roman Catholic framing of virtue, I love the Roman Catholic framing of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. There are 7: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. These are supernatural gifts from God to perfect us in virtue, ultimately in the most important virtue: charity (love or caritas).
Today, I want to zero in on piety. In a series of talks on the gifts of the Holy Spirit, Pope Francis said that piety is a recognition of "our belonging to God, our deep bond with him, a relationship that gives meaning to our whole life and keeps us resolute, in communion with him, even during the most difficult and troubled moments". He continues: "Piety is not mere outward religiosity; it is that genuine religious spirit which makes us turn to the Father as his children and to grow in our love for others, seeing them as our brothers and sisters."
If we embrace piety, we would take in all of our neighbors as our siblings. And in the case of our hypothetical husband, the course of action would be clear. Difficult. But clear. If we embrace piety, then there is no such thing as an "Nazi baby" or "welfare queen". There is no "demographic undesirable" or "consequence of sin": there is only a sibling.
In Joseph's case, solidarity meant adopting the shame and ostracism experienced by Mary and her future child. Are we willing to adopt the shame of the so-called "welfare queens" in our lives?
Closing: Adopting the Scandal
As we reach the end of Advent, we find ourselves at the manger. But before the hay and the stars, there was a man who had to decide if he was willing to be "the guy who married that woman."
Solidarity is the act of publicly marrying the struggle of the marginalized. It means taking on the "disgrace" of the undocumented, the "shame" of the incarcerated, and the "messiness" of the difficult-to-love, and claiming them as family.
Joseph didn’t just welcome a baby; he welcomed a scandal. This Christmas, may we have the prudence to stay in the scandal and the piety to recognize that every "undeserving" person is actually a sibling waiting for us to share the weight of their disgrace.
Discussion Prompt
I offer these prompts for your reflection as you move into the discussion or activity portion of this evening. Take time to sit with these questions, allowing them to move past your intellectual mind and into your body.
The "Deserving" Filter: When you think about "stepping up" for others, what are the unspoken "purity tests" you run in your head? (e.g., "I'll help them if they are sober," or "I'll help them if they agree with my politics.")
Adopting the Shame: Joseph had to take on Mary’s social stigma as his own. Is there a person or a group in your life whose "disgrace" you are afraid to be associated with? What would it look like to "quietly divorce" that fear and "publicly marry" that struggle?
The Somatics of Prudence: Think of a difficult person you are called to love. When you consider their "imperfections," where do you feel the urge to "save yourself" or "run" in your body? What would it feel like to pause and look for the piety beneath that urge?
Jenny Kwan is a member of Haven Berkeley. She is a queer, first-generation Chinese-American trans woman who is passionate about building true solidarity through mutual aid. Her work focuses on the intersection of ancient Christian spiritual disciplines (like contemplative prayer and virtue ethics) with contemporary somatic and psychological healing practices. She believes that the inner work of trauma recovery is the essential foundation for effective social justice and genuine community.
* In Advent 2025 Haven is sharing a devotional called “What do you fear?” by the folks at A Sanctified Art. You can receive access to these materials by contacting Leah, or by attending a Haven service in Advent 2025.