“Gym Culture, the Manosphere, and St. Joseph”
I have a new man in my life! He’s my first ever personal trainer and he’s kind and knowledgeable and he listens. I’ve enlisted him because I want to go on a walking pilgrimage and because I’m besotted with these grandchildren who continue to get heavier and more and more active and I want to keep up with them – as much as I can.
At our first session he asked me what I do. While he knows a lot about getting strong, the Bible is new territory for him so each week, he asks me what I’m preaching on the coming Sunday.
This past week, when he asked me, I said I was going to preach about Joseph, and the Christmas story more from the man’s perspective. So how’s that, he wanted to know.
Turns out that the whole Christmas story was sketchy for him, so I outlined the basics, Mary, Joseph, the manger in the inn, the shepherds, the angels. I thought he’d probably seen A Charlie Brown’s Christmas movie so I reminded him how Linus read from the Gospel of Luke, which is what all Christmas pageants begin with, “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered… and while they were there, the time came for her to deliver her first born child. And she gave birth to her firstborn and wrapped in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.” That rang a bell.
But, I said, there’s another gospel, and in that gospel, Matthew’s gospel, the whole story is much shorter and it features Joseph and his dilemma about what to do when Mary turns up pregnant, and he knows he is not the father. That baby is not his.
My trainer thought that maybe that her nose got cut off. I said no. But stoning was one approved option for adultery. However, Joseph was a kind man and decided that he would take the option of quietly divorcing her.
But then he had a dream where an angel spoke to him and told him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife because the child she was carrying was holy. My trainer got excited. It was the Son of God! he almost shouted.
Yes! So Joseph, going against custom and expectation, married Mary and provided her child, Jesus with legitimacy, with a name, with a lineage. Joseph adopted Jesus and they became a family.
My trainer was into this story. What would he do, he wondered, if his wife got pregnant outside their marriage. What would he do? The answer was not immediately clear that he would forgive her and take the child on as his own.
And then he went in a direction I would never have thought of on my own – and I knew immediately that he was providing me with the seed for this sermon.
He began talking about what he called gym culture and the current climate of misogyny, although he did not use that word. He was quite animated about the immersion of men, young men, in a culture that defined masculinity in terms of muscles pumped up by steroids and supplements, and dominance over others.
His younger brother has fallen into the conspiracies associated with steroid supplements, raw milk, no vaccines, and completely outdated and unrealistic ideas about women. The result is that his brother, like many young men now, has trouble getting dates or keeping relationships going. And as his loneliness becomes more entrenched, he falls further into the “manosphere” – these online influencers, who are themselves, not in relationships, and financially benefitting from the sale of products designed to enhance these warped ideas about manliness.
We talked about how painful it is to witness this organized resistance against gender equality that plays out in real time violence against women and I pushed a heavy tractor faster and farther on the gym floor than I have before. One good outcome.
So this year, on this last Sunday before Christmas, we hear from the Gospel of Matthew, about Saint Joseph, who models a manliness that is needed more than ever.
He gets short shrift in Christmas pageants, where he is most often portrayed by an embarrassed young boy who doesn’t really have a role except to stand awkwardly at the manger while the spotlight is on Mary, as it should be.
He is mentioned in only one relatively unknown Christmas carol in our hymnal, in the 1st half of the 3rd stanza of hymn 110. “Saint Joseph, too, was by to tend the child, to guard him and protect his mother mild. Venite adoremus Dominum. Venite adoremus Dominum.”
But unsung as he is, he follows in a long line of biblical men for whom power was meant to be exercised on behalf of others, for others, with others. Kings who understood themselves to be shepherds of their people, who protected the poor and the needy. Prophets who gave up their rights and privileges in order to carry God’s word of hope and direction to those in need of encouragement and guidance.
Joseph was a visionary man who listened to angels in dreams;
He was a brave man who did the right thing even when it went against culture and expectations;
He was a leader who fled to a foreign country to protect his family from a tyrant king bent on revenge;
He was an honorable man who supported his family through his labor and his craft.
Under his tutelage, Jesus would grow into a man who told stories about merciful fathers who welcomed home their prodigal sons with open arms, a man offered peace to his enemies and forgiveness to those who betrayed him, who taught that his Abba Father in Heaven was not exclusively his, but belonged to all of us, who made the sun to shine and the rain to fall for everyone, good and bad.
So this morning, the 4th Sunday of Advent, just three days before Christmas Eve, our attention is turned in gratitude towards this beautiful man who listened, who protected, who provided, who honored the woman he married and who loved and mentored the Prince of Peace, Son of God. Thanks be to God for St. Joseph.
And I encourage you this week to thank the good men in your lives with warmth and affection. To pray for boys who fall prey to militaristic caricatures of manhood and who are deeply and profoundly lonely as a result.
May your Christmas celebrations be joyful, and full of light and hope because unto us, friends, unto us, a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
