Some of us have read the recent bestseller, The Kite Runner, by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini, and others of us will see the movie version that opens in another week or so. The book is worth reading, and I hope the movie is worth seeing.

The Kite Runner tells the story of two boys, 11 and 12 years old, in pre-Soviet invasion Afghanistan. Amir is the son of Baba, a wealthy merchant, and Hassan is the son of the household servant Ali. The boys are inseparable companions though their lives are forever separated by social class and sectarian differences. At times Amir is self-conscious about his friendship with his social inferior and can be mean to Hassan, but Hassan accepts the cruelty and is ever faithful to Amir.

As the story unfolds Hassan is harassed and then unspeakable harm is done to him by an older neighborhood bully. Amir comes upon the scene, but does nothing to defend his faithful friend. He finds the barriers of class and sect to be too high to get over, and so he does nothing. But then guilt begins to haunt him and his happy childhood comes to an abrupt and permanent end. The very presence of Hassan doing his household chores reminds Amir of his weakness and faithlessness and so he plots to have Ali and Hassan cast from his father’s house. He sneaks into the servants’ quarters and plants his just-received birthday present watch and a handful of Afghani currency under Hassan’s mattress and then tells Baba that he suspects Hassan of stealing them. Baba goes and finds the watch and money just where his son had placed them and calls Ali and Hassan along with Amir to his study where the issue will be settled.

Khaled Hosseini in The Kite Runner:

…Hassan and Ali joined us. They’d both been crying; I could tell from their red, puffed-up eyes. They stood before Baba, hand in hand, and I wondered how and when I had become capable of causing this kind of pain.

Baba came right our and asked. “Did you steal that money? Did you steal Amir’s watch, Hassan?”

Hassan’s reply was a single word, delivered in a thin, raspy voice: “Yes.”

I flinched, like I’d been slapped. My heart sank and I almost blurted out the truth. Then I understood: This was Hassan’s final sacrifice for me. If he’d said no, Baba would have believed him because we all knew Hassan never lied. And if Baba believed him, then I’d be the accused; I would have to explain and I would be revealed for what I really was. Baba would never, ever forgive me. And that led to another understanding: Hassan knew. He knew I’d seen everything in that alley, that I’d stood there and done nothing. He knew I betrayed him and yet he was rescuing me once again, maybe for the last time. I loved him in that moment, loved him more than I’d ever loved anyone, and I wanted to tell them all that I was the snake in the grass, the monster in the lake. I wasn’t worthy of his sacrifice; I was a liar, a cheat, and a thief. And I would have told, except part of me was glad. Glad that this would all be over with soon. Baba would dismiss them, there would be some pain, but life would move on. I wanted that, to move on, to forget, to start with a clean slate. I wanted to be able to breathe again.

Except Baba stunned me by saying, “I forgive you.”

The Kite Runner, a New York Times bestseller. Khaled Hosseni, a gifted writer and a faithful Moslem. Amazing where God plants signposts that point to the Gospel. Redeeming love. The innocent suffering in the place of the guilty. Buy the book or see the movie.

Even before the baby is born in Bethlehem, the gospel is telling stories that are like signposts pointing to the story at the center of time. Matthew introduces Joseph to us as a righteous man, just, honest, good. He’s the kind of person for whom doing the right things seems to be second nature. I have met such righteous people at Park Church over the past nine years.

Scholars think there may be been around 500 people in Nazareth during the time of the Roman occupation. One of the young women of Nazareth was pledged to be married to Joseph. Everyone in Nazareth would have known both Mary and Joseph, though Mary and Joseph would not have known each other well; unmarried men and women, even those who were betrothed, did not socialize and were not to be alone together – though, obviously, it sometimes happened.

We don’t know if Mary tells Joseph the news of her pregnancy personally or whether a message is conveyed through a trusted male relative. What we know is that when Joseph hears the news, he reacts as would the kind of person for whom doing the right things seems to be second nature. He will divorce Mary, that is, end the betrothal, and since the betrothal was a matter of public record, so would be the divorce. It was the right thing to do. In fact, the law required it of him. His honor, his family’s honor, indeed, the moral well-being of the village depended on it.

But Joseph also resolves to make the divorce a quiet thing. He would speak to the village and the synagogue elders, as was required, but he would file no charges against Mary or her father, as was his right. Yes, Mary would bear the child as an unwed mother and her chances of another marriage were nil. She would bear the shame for the rest of her life, as would her father and her brothers, and as would the baby. But it was the right thing to do, the best thing to do, and no one would say otherwise. The gossips would gossip, they always do, but most people would, in the end, admire Joseph all the more for having done the right thing.

Enter a calling God. Enter the God who stakes his claim in and on our lives. Enter the God who will, in his time, call the baby to be born of Mary to carry the shame of the whole world to the Roman executioner’s cross.

“Do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife,” an angel of the calling God tells Joseph in a dream. “The child she is carrying is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

Joseph understands that there is a righteousness that is deeper and better than the good righteousness that comes from obeying the law and doing what seems to be right. He obeys the call of God and does what seems to be so foolish. As a valiant knight protects his lady by putting his own body, his own life, in the way of the sword’s deadly cut, Joseph places his life, his righteous reputation, between Mary and the deadly cuts of the town gossips. He will quietly bear the shame and the scandal with Mary.

Joseph’s story points us in two directions. The first is to the cross his son, Mary’s child, will bear in God’s time. But unlike Joseph who bears shame for innocent and gentle Mary, Jesus bears our deserved shame, the guilt of the whole world which each one of us has helped to earn. He places his body, his blood, his life, free from sin’s stain, between us and the punishment due our rebellious race and due each of us because of the treachery of our lives.

We Christians love our crosses, polished brass in a church chancel or diamond studded around our necks. But do you know that each time we haul this cross into our midst we have placed the sign of shame and guilt among us? When this empty cross comes down the aisle, casting its shadow on each of us, we are reminded, yes, of Jesus’ victory over death and sin, but we are also to be reminded ‘tis I deserve thy place. We are its intended victims.

Joseph’s story points in a second direction, as well. Joseph is not alone in the call to bear shame and scandal for the sake of another, for the sake of God’s work in our world. We, too, are called to shame-bearing. This is hard stuff. Here is a test: what are the town gossips, the church gossips, the family gossips saying about you? They are gossiping about you, you know. They always do. Gossips are a nasty breed. They’re kind of like cockroaches; they survive everything. They are everywhere. The Langhorne gossips are already gossiping about me, and I haven’t even moved into my new office.

I would guess that most of the gossip I’ve generated here at Park and in Beaver during the past nine plus years is well-deserved. Doing what is right is not second nature to me. So, the best thing I can do when I get a printout of the current gossip, and I always do, is to ask tough questions about its truth – is there even a shred of truth in what’s being whispered about in the parking lot or on the phone? I don’t like cockroaches, but if their presence reminds me that I need to clean out the kitchen cupboards, they’ve done me some good.

But, listen, not all shame is well-deserved. Some gossip has no truth in it at all. Not a shred. It is all bad. God sometimes call us to bear that sharp cut of the gossip’s tongue willingly and without complaint, Joseph-like.

David was a good friend in seminary, young and idealistic, and after we graduated together, he was called by the God who sometimes calls us to bear shame and scandal willingly, Joseph-like, to a small church on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. It’s one of the oldest Presbyterian churches in North America, one of those old churches that still has a slave gallery in the back. Close by is a branch of the University of Maryland and enrolled there were a number of students from Ghana. Many Christians in Ghana are Presbyterians, thanks to the great missionary movements of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. And so these Ghanaian students and their families found the local Presbyterian Church, one of the oldest in North America, and asked if they could worship there during the time they were studying at the university. David, the young idealist who loves Jesus very much, said that of course they could and he welcomed them to the little congregation. That’s when the cockroaches came out from under the floorboards and from behind the walls of the old church.

When one of the Ghanaian students' wives had a baby, the couple asked David if they might bring the baby to the waters of baptism. They loved God very much and desired that their baby bear the mark of his covenant love. The elders of the church, and there may have been some cockroaches among them, agreed reluctantly. That was the end of David’s time on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Oh, the baby was baptized with the sign of the cross, the sign of Christ’s shame for our sake, marked on the forehead, but the gossips had already formed their battle groups. Never in all its history had a baby of African descent been baptized in their church. Ugly racial slurs were slung at the Ghanaians and David was accused of being a n___ lover. In a way, of course, the cockroaches were right. David, the young idealist who loves the God who so loved the whole world that he sent his son to bear our shame and die for our sin, loved his Ghanaian parishioners very much. But he also loved the gossips who drove him from his pulpit and off the Eastern Shore. God sometimes calls us to bear undeserved shame and scandal, Joseph-like.

Joseph doesn’t get carols written about him and always gets second billing in Christmas pageants and stained glass windows. But his story points us what God soon would do in having his Son bear our shame on the cross, and what each of us is still called to do, shame-bearing for the sake of the Kingdom, the foolish thing that is the deeply right thing to do.