Another one straight out of the ballpark, my dear brother Tom!
Biased as I inevitably am in favour of my home country THE GREAT DOMINION and of my ecclesial Mother Lutheran Church—Canada, I find it hard to believe that seminary presidents of our fellowship routinely preach in this way.
Sermon: St Joseph, Guardian of Jesus
The following sermon was preached by Dr Thomas Winger in the seminary’s Martin Luther Chapel for the divine service on the festival of St Joseph, Guardian of Jesus, 19 March 2026.
Matt. 2:13–23
Dear brothers and sisters of our Lord Jesus Christ:
To become a father is an extraordinary thing. My wife used to say she had carried our baby for nine months and now it was my turn—I think she figured nine years might make up for it! The tiniest and most fragile form of humanity is placed into a father’s arms and given into his protection. A little boy is born at scarcely a twentieth of the weight he’ll eventually bear. His skull is thin and fragile; to drop him could be fatal. So we enwrap him with our strong arms and draw him in close to give him confidence and warmth he can feel. It calms his fears and worries. Although he can breathe for himself, he has no ability to find food; he cries from hunger and we return him to his mother’s arms for milk. As the boy grows, he asserts his independence, but still depends completely on his father to give him the life-saving protection of a home, to hold him back from onrushing traffic, to defend him from bullies and thugs until he’s old enough to fend for himself. Though man is created as the king of creation (“You have given him dominion over the works of Your hands”, Ps. 8:6), no creature spends more years in such vulnerable childhood. It’s as if God our heavenly Father wants to teach us our need to depend on Him, for, of course, our earthly fathers are merely His deputies.
So is it entirely understandable or completely baffling that God would place His Son into the care of human guardian called Joseph? After all, this Jesus wasn’t just, like Adam, placed at the head of creation as a mark of honour; He was creation’s very author. He was the Word through which the Father called all things into being. By nature He was all-powerful, eternal, beyond all need for protection. He is our rock, our fortress, our shield, our champion in battle. On earth is not His equal. And yet He didn’t descend fully-formed with the strength of a Samson or St Michael, but came as a tiny infant and took on the form of a slave.
He whom the sea And wind obey
Doth come to serve the sinner in great meekness.
Thou, God’s own Son, With us art one,
Dost join us and our children in our weakness. (LSB 372:2)
To Joseph was given the awesome responsibility of guarding the very Son of God. Israel’s Messiah was in his arms, weak and vulnerable. The forces of evil were massing against Him. Herod the Great in his jealous anger was willing to slaughter dozens of young boys to get at Him. This Child was so important to God’s plan, but what strength did Joseph have to protect Him? So much depended on him. Couldn’t God have made a better choice?
“Do not fear, Joseph” (as the angel once said to him, Matt. 1:20). “Although this Child is in your hands, you are in your Father’s hands.” St Matthew leaves us in no doubt of that. It’s not a story of Joseph’s strength or cleverness, no cunning plans conceived to thwart the overwhelming forces arrayed against him. It’s rather a tale of quiet submission to God’s Word and direction. At each dramatic crisis God leads Joseph through an angelic message or prophetic Word into a place of refuge long prepared for him, together with the wife and Child he guarded. First to Egypt—perhaps the last place an Israelite would seek shelter, but made safe and secure by God’s holy Word. And then to Nazareth—though chosen by Joseph from fear of Archelaus, God worked through his fear to bring Jesus to the place He was meant by prophecy to be. All was in God’s hands.
This isn’t the way you or I would have chosen to do it. Like the Jews of the day, we’d have wanted a Son of David to operate in open warfare against the devil. “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands” (1 Sam. 18:7)—how much more would His great descendent do? But God chose another path, the way of weakness. An infant carried in the hands of a carpenter. And so we end up with a Christ who is like us, who has gone through what we’re going through, to whom we can pray with the knowledge that He understands.
15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Heb. 4:14–15)
And in His vulnerable childhood, already seemingly at the mercy of violent enemies, Jesus also laid down the pattern of our redemption. He would save not through power and might, but through a childlike weakness. Prophetically seeing His messianic Son, David sang: “Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of Your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger” (Ps. 8:1). Not through a sword swung skilfully in His right hand would He strike the Enemy, but by stretching out His hands in submission to death, in order that life might be received from His Father as a gift. “For He was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God” (2 Cor. 13:4a). And in this way we can participate in His victory, so that it’s not just for us but with us. “For we are weak in Him, but in dealing with you we shall live with Him by the power of God” (2 Cor. 13:4). We join Him in our weakness and vulnerability so that we may join Him also in receiving God’s strength. As the Lord comforted Paul, so He speaks to us: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:7).
Christ is now risen from the dead, He lives and rules eternally, He stands as the Lamb who was slain surrounded by throngs of heavenly victors waving palm branches in glorious praise. And yet He still comes among us in weakness. As He was once placed into the guardianship of a simple man called Joseph, so He submits Himself to be carried in the arms of fathers like you and me, when we teach the faith to our children. And He entrusts His saving message to spiritual fathers, men who are no mighty Samsons or St Michaels, but little more than carpenters, labouring to build God’s spiritual house. It seems an awesome task not only to carry Jesus to the people placed into our care, but also to carry these children of God in our arms. What if we drop them? What if our strength fails? What if we’re not up to the task? What a risk God is taking by placing His children into our arms! Yet it isn’t a strategic gamble, but the very nature of His plan. He comes still in weakness. St Paul wrote to the Corinthians, who were so infatuated with men who pompously paraded in wisdom and strength: “3 I was with you in weakness and in much fear and trembling; 4 and my speech and my message were not in manipulative words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (1 Cor. 2:3–5). This is God’s plan, that as with Joseph’s guardianship of Jesus, so in His family, the Church, the strength would not be found in men but in Him. By water, bread and wine, mere breathly words, mere mortal men, His Spirit works with heavenly power to guard us from all evil and deliver us into everlasting life. Amen.