A Father's Love
Today we have a special treat. It’s the Sunday before
Christmas and our Gospel reading this morning focuses on perhaps the most overlooked
character of the entire Christmas story, Joseph. So many times when we tell
this greatest of tales, Joseph is relegated to being an afterthought, a
background character. But we must realize that when the Almighty and Everlasting
God, Font of all being and Creator of all things, chose to enter His creation, He
chose to have a father. Joseph is the man whom God chose to raise Him, to
protect Him, to guard Him and teach Him and hold Him in His arms as a Child.
That’s astounding. If we are to take the Christmas story seriously then we must
realize that God chose Joseph to become the
father of his own Creator—the father of the One Who created us all.
Now I’m going to be rather shameless this morning and I’m
going to tell you the story of St. Joseph as the early Church told it. Much of
this is not found explicitly in the Bible, but comes from Christian tradition and
the writings of the Church Fathers. Some details derive from archaeology and
Jewish tradition as well. Keep in mind that this is the man who, by the grace
and power of God, made Christmas possible.
The first thing that should be said about Joseph is that he
was of royal blood, a descendant of the great kings David and Solomon from a
thousand years before. Throughout the tumultuous history of Israel, God’s
people were first split in twain, then scattered into foreign lands. Royal
succession was lost. But in Exile the people’s hopes were buoyed by the
prophets, through whom God promised to bring His people home and to restore the
royal line—not as before, with an earthly king, but with a cosmic Messiah, an
Anointed One, a Christ. By the time of Joseph, the people of God had returned
home, in fulfillment of prophecy, and now they looked with eagerness to the
arrival of the promised Christ. And everyone knew that when He arrived, the Christ
would come from David’s clan.
No one knew this better than David’s own family. During the
Exile, with the Jewish peoples scattered to the wind, the clan of David had won
renown for themselves as horse soldiers in the Persian capital of Ecbatana. They
returned to Israel much later than most, settling in the northern region of
Galilee. They were poor and often looked down upon by wealthier and worldlier
folk in the south, but they held with pride to God’s promise that their royal
line would rise again. In fact, they called themselves “Natzoreans,” which
meant “root,” referring to the ancient prophecy that a new branch would arise
from the root of David’s father Jesse. Hence the name of the town in which
Joseph settled: Nazareth.
Joseph was not himself a warrior, despite the fighting
traditions of his clan. We call him a carpenter, but really he was more of a
mason, working on doorways, windows, and general construction involving wood,
stone, brick, or what-have-you. The Talmud, a compilation of Jewish tradition
and oral law, has something quite interesting to say about this profession. If
you have a religious question, the Talmud states, and you cannot find a rabbi,
ask the local carpenter. We’re not sure why, but for some reason carpenters
such as Joseph possessed a certain religious authority.
Archaeological excavations of the traditional site of Joseph’s
workshop in Nazareth have revealed a mikveh, or ritual bath, such as were
popular amongst the Essenes. The Essenes were an influential monastic movement
amongst the Jewish people at the time of Christ. They pledged themselves to
unmarried chastity and engaged in daily baptisms. This evidence that Joseph
had, at the very least, monastic leanings proves all the more fascinating when
we read about the similarities between the Essenes and the teachings of Jesus,
John the Baptist, and the early Church.
That’s all history. Here’s where the pious legend comes in.
We have a tradition, backed up by several bits of evidence, that the holy
Temple in Jerusalem—the center of the world for the people of God—had a small
population of widows and virgins dedicated to God who assisted the priests and
Levites in their religious duties. Monks and nuns are not something new to
Christianity. Judaism sported them as well. Anyway, when these young virgins
entered puberty they had to leave Temple service and be married off for their
own good. There weren’t many ways for a young girl to support herself in those
days. Those who had been dedicated to God, however, were committed to perpetual
virginity, and so they were espoused to older men or to monks who would respect
those vows. One of the young women of the Temple whose time had come to leave, and
who had no parents left to care for her, was none other than the Virgin Mary.
The story goes that God guided the High Priest so summon all
the unmarried bachelors of David’s clan, each to lay a branch upon the Temple
altar. When Joseph stepped up to lay down his branch, it miraculously blossomed—just
like the staff of Aaron the High Priest in the Old Testament. Thus was Joseph the
monk espoused to Mary the nun. Both were descendants of David through different
royal lines, and Mary had in addition some priestly blood in her pedigree. He
was in his early thirties, she in her early teens. So the story goes.
The rest you know from here. It was in the house to which he
took her, a lovely little stone structure in Nazareth, that the angel Gabriel
appeared to Mary and there announced that she had been chosen to be the mother
of Immanuel, God-With-Us. While all good Jewish folk awaited the coming of the
Christ, it was the Essenes in particular who predicted that He would be God in
the flesh come to earth. Here it seems that they were right. Thankfully for all
of us, Mary said yes to all this.
Modern Bible translations often state that this happened
while Joseph and Mary were engaged, but that’s not quite true. A more accurate
translation would be that they were espoused or betrothed. In ancient Jewish
marriage customs, betrothal was a period up to one year during which the
husband and wife were legally espoused—that is, really and truly married—yet the
bride had not yet entered the husband’s household. Betrothal could only be
broken by death or divorce. And the idea that a wife could find herself with
child during the betrothal would be no scandal. She was, after all, a married woman.
Joseph knows, however, that Mary’s child can’t be his son because that simply
isn’t the nature of their arrangement.
Maybe he thinks that she’s broken her vows. Maybe he
believes her story and finds it too much for him. Or maybe he doesn’t know what
to think. No matter what the case may be, he seeks to divorce her quietly, so
as not to expose her to vulnerability. In other words, even when he thinks that
divorce is the right thing to do, Joseph still seeks to guard and provide for
Mary. Little wonder the Bible calls him righteous.
But this Joseph is a lot like his ancient ancestor, the
Joseph of the Old Testament, to whom God spoke through dreams. And a vision
comes to Joseph in the night. “Mary’s Child is of the Holy Spirit,” speaks the
angel in Joseph’s dream. “He is the Christ for Whom you have waited, the God to
Whom you ever have prayed. You, Joseph, have been chosen for His father in this
world. You will protect Him. You will raise Him. And you will give to Him the
Name that shall be held above all other Names, for you will name Him Jesus,”
which means “Yahweh saves.” Without hesitation, Joseph awoke from his dream and
did exactly as the angel had said.
What that life must have been like I cannot imagine. Think
of it—to hold God in your arms as a baby; to defend the Almighty from cold,
from hunger, from violence; to kiss the holy head Whose mind birthed the very
cosmos. When danger threatened, Joseph, like his ancestor of the same name,
saved his family by fleeing to Egypt. He gave the Christ that holy Name at
which every knee shall bend. Joseph led the God-Child in prayer. The Almighty
obeyed Joseph with filial love and respect. God tasked a carpenter with raising
God in the flesh. Imagine being the man who taught the Bible to Jesus Christ!
For thousands of years the Church has marveled at the
witness of St. Joseph. This blue-collar worker, with his deep religious faith,
has become the model of fatherhood for us all. He is called Guardian of Our
Lord, Worker, Terror of Demons, Most Loving of Fathers, and Patron of a Good
Death—because when the time came, Joseph passed away in the loving arms of
Jesus and Mary, the sort of beautiful death for which we all hope and pray.
Indeed it seems that Jesus did not begin His ministry until after His father
had died. And when Christ rose from the dead some three years later, the first
to rise with Him was His dad.
But of all the Church’s legends regarding St. Joseph, the
one I like most is the story that Jesus looked
like Joseph—not because of blood, not because of genetics, but purely due
to the power of that love shared between a father and his Son.
Let us remember this Christmas that the Father’s love bore
Christ in our world. And it was a father’s love that raised Him.
In Jesus’ Name. AMEN.
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