Joseph
We read about him in Matthew’s Gospel.
That’s where this Gospel begins – with Joseph.
First the genealogy,
and because genealogy and patriarchy are so prominent in Judaism
the gospel starts there establishing the connection with the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
and Jacob’s son Judah, the father of the tribe of Judah,
and on down through the generations in the tribe of Judah to David, King David.
Mary on the other hand was from the tribe of Levi, the priestly tribe,
but that didn’t count, because it was the father who mattered.
And so we encounter a strange irony as we come to the end of that genealogy:
Eleazar begat Matthan,
Matthan begat Jacob,
and Jacob begat Joseph (oh! just like the patriarch Jacob
whose 11th son was Joseph, Joseph the dreamer)
Jacob begat Joseph,
and Joseph … was the husband of Mary … of whom was born Jesus
the one called the Christ.
A particularly honorable lineage back through kings to the patriarch,
and as it turns out, Joseph is just providing a family name
to a child with no patriarchal connection to a tribal heritage.
Joseph of the Holy Family
For many of our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters
Joseph is one of their best loved saints.
Joseph is held up as the saint that epitomizes families,
and the image of this threesome as the quintessential nuclear family
father, mother and child
finds much focus of devotion.
Joseph – a symbol of domestic rightness, a model of fatherhood,
providing a role model as carpenter, an essential and honorable trade,
supporting his family by honest labor,
protecting his family
a symbol of domestic stability and strength.
Joseph – fatherhood yes, but in a new mode.
A man is preparing for marriage.
The bride is a young woman with an air of goodness about her.
She brings a youthful freshness, openness to life and energy with her.
What was Joseph expecting?
A life companion?
Someone to appreciate and share what he could produce with his hands?
A wife who would create in their home
a center of peace and refuge from the world?
A mother to his sons, his heirs?
A person who would love him and share all the joys and sorrows of life?
What dream did he have about the life he expected them to live out
in that town of Nazareth?
Was there joy and satisfaction and anticipation in him
as he waited for the day when they would be married?
But life is full of the unexpected.
How many of us really get all that we expect?
Did you ever on December 26 think about what you DIDN’T get for Christmas?
Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise:
When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph,
before they came together,
she was found to be with child … of the Holy Spirit.
What in the world is this?
It would have seemed impossible for this young woman
to be dishonest or misleading about her virtue.
But how can such a thing be?
No one else could believe such a thing.
Even if Joseph were to accept this claim about the pregnancy,
no one else was likely to swallow this story.
He would be the laughing stock of the town.
How would he ever be able to be taken seriously?
How would he ever be able to carry out his trade there
with whispering behind his back?
But what about this young woman?
What might become of her?
her reputation damaged, her family disgraced.
Things could go pretty hard for her.
Now Joseph being a just man,
and not willing to make her a public example,
was minded to secretly dismiss her,
quietly, out of the public eye.
Perhaps she could go live with that cousin (Elizabeth?) near Jerusalem.
It would be best for both of them and her family.
Yes, a just, yet kind plan
to put to an end a dream before it had even begun.
Was it a huge disappointment, Joseph?
Did it break your heart?
Was that moment in your life a black hole of loss and grief?
Or a perplexity? a conundrum that couldn’t be untangled in the mind?
How could this all have happened?
But while he thought on these things,
behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him
in a dream,
in a dream.
Dropping into bed – late – exhausted from trying to think things out,
lying there with all those thoughts still very unsettled
and bleak in all their implications,
finally drifting off into a disturbed sleep,
moving from waking consciousness
to a different plane of consciousness in sleep,
in the world of dreaming,
freed from the limitations of the literal, physical, material world
now in the realm of greater possibilities,
of shifting images,
of metaphors of our own lives in symbolic form,
of inner wisdom cryptically pointing us to deep truths.
It is then that the angel appears,
not in the temple during liturgy as with Zechariah,
not face to face as with Mary in her pure innocence and openness,
but in a dream,
like the other Joseph of old,
whose dreams had given him prophetic foresight.
Joseph, the dreamer.
Behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying,
Joseph, thou son of David,
- you of the royal lineage -
fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife:
for that which is conceived in her –
really IS of the Holy Spirit.
And she shall bring forth a son,
and you will call his name JESUS:
for he shall save his people – that is what his name means, salvation –
save his people from their sins,
save them not from the hand of their oppressors
but from their own sins,
their own ways in which they oppress themselves.
Revelation – God reveals to this man Joseph
something new, something great, something hoped for
yet not in the way expected,
and not exactly the salvation hoped for,
because this salvation was so much more comprehensive and thorough,
way beyond mere political liberation.
Yes, Joseph, the revelation of the very plan of God for delivering all humankind
out of sin-sickness into the restoration of wholeness in the image of God.
You get to see this happening in this young woman
you were about to put out of your life.
Pay attention to your dreams.
They are angel messengers bringing revelations of divine proportions
pushing the boundaries of our limited perceptions of reality
into all new possibility, insight, healing, and reconciliation,
even reconciliation within yourself.
Then Joseph being raised from sleep
did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him,
and took unto him his wife:
And he knew her not, he respected her virginity, her impossible virginity
burgeoning in her body before his eyes
with this stupendous intervention of God
that would be the salvation of us all.
And she bore a son and called his Name Jesus.
Joseph paid attention to his dreams,
to this inner resource, this spiritual resource
that was playing such a crucial roll in the success or failure
of this whole extraordinary enterprise.
Each dream, four of them in all, required of him movement,
getting up and leaving behind all you know,
going to another place.
Joseph takes the pregnant Mary away from Nazareth to Bethlehem,
away from the home town shadow of whispering and finger pointing.
It would be several years before they would return.
And then in Bethlehem the visit of the Magi, these splendid, wealthy travelers,
of esoteric wisdom.
They didn’t come to see him, Joseph, the descendant of kings,
but the child with Mary his mother.
And their gifts, their gifts,
how fortuitous these would turn out to be,
expensive items that could buy them passage
and sustain them in exile.
For you can’t have such extraordinary visitors
without rousing attention.
And such attention could be dangerous.
And so the second dream, and the warning to flee, a nightmare
that would drive this second Joseph again into Egypt,
Egypt that would be for a space of time protection and cover
from the monstrous, devouring paranoia of a megalomaniac of a king.
A dark, horrific episode, a terrifying trauma appended to the Christmas story,
the deliberate murder of small children, toddlers, infants
like so many lambs with their throats slit
in sacrifice at the Temple for Passover.
And it was Joseph’s obedience to the message of his dream
that delivered the child and his mother from death.
Did Joseph know that in the actions he took,
he was actually fulfilling prophecies of old?
Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled
which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying,
“Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son,
and they shall call his name Emmanuel,
which being interpreted is, God with us.”
And Joseph arose, and took the young child and his mother by night,
and departed into Egypt:
And was there until the death of Herod:
that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying,
“Out of Egypt have I called my son.”
Again a dream and a return to Judea,
but again another dream warning of a continuing latent danger
from Herod’s progeny,
Joseph finds himself returning to the Galilee area,
back finally to the old home town.
And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth
that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets,
“He shall be called a Nazarene.”
What a turn of events – not the family he might have expected,
Joseph sneaking across national borders with his family,
no passport, no work visas,
keeping a low profile with the authorities
so as not to get extradited,
illegal aliens.
All for a child that was not his,
yet he was willing and faithful in accepting and receiving
both Mary and the boy
and giving him his family name and lineage
and protecting them and providing for them.
And then what a child to have to raise.
Of course that goes for any of us who have raised or are raising children.
You really don’t know what you are getting into depending on the child.
Each newborn baby is a mystery that unfolds,
each personality unique despite all the ways we try to get them
to fit into our expectations
and the way this family thinks and feels and lives.
You really don’t know what you are getting yourself into with each child.
You may have a “special needs” child…
Jesus was a “special needs” child.
First there was the special need for safety
because of the very real threat on his life.
Then there are the special needs of the parents in figuring out what to do
with a precocious child.
Twelve years old, and the kid stays behind in Jerusalem
when the family caravan heads north after the holidays.
The thought of a lost child makes the blood run cold for any parent –
the fear, the worst case scenarios running constantly through the mind,
- accident, mishap, abduction, murder -
the frantic searching,
and then -- there he is
perfectly safe, sitting there in a perfectly safe place, the Temple,
surrounded by perfectly safe and responsible adults, clergy,
who were totally engrossed in what this mere boy was saying.
You want to take the kid and give him a shake
for scaring the life out of you like that.
The height of exasperation coupled with the height of relief.
And then he has the cheek to say to his mother’s face
when she tells him how worried they were,
“How come you were looking for me?
Did you not know that I needed to be about my father’s business?”
That must have come like a slap in the face.
It was not the carpentry business that the kid was being about.
And he was not acknowledging Joseph as his father.
No, God was his father – “Our Father, who art in heaven…”
Joseph, this was not what was expected.
Joseph, you are a character in someone else’s play,
your part is but a supporting role.
That role you may have thought was that of the male protector,
the hero of the family,
but no, not that myth.
Rather the role you played for our benefit, Joseph,
is that of obedience,
obedience in heeding the dreams and what they revealed,
obedience as faith, trusting the inner voice, the dreams,
and acting intuitively on what they reveal,
obedience in order to fulfill prophecy.
And then your job is done, you will have been useful,
but you are not going to be around when this boy grows up
and saves the world.
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