Library
Sunday, December 09, 2007
Joseph and Other Background Support People
By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz
18 Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. 19 Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. 20 But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins." 22 All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet: 23 "Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel," which means, "God is with us." 24 When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, 25 but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.
I always take a book with me when I go to the gym and work out for 20 minutes or so on the exercise bike—it makes the time go by faster and keeps my reading current. Last week I had brought with me Garrison Keilor’s new novel, and by page 20 I had already laughed out loud three times. Keillor, I believe, is the Mark Twain of our time in American humor, and his take on religion as well as on small town America is just perfect.
What was important for today in his new novel is the dedication on page one. His weekly NPR radio show, Prairie Home Companion, was the reason for the dedication. He dedicates the book to all the people back stage, his friends in the support crew, in the shadows, without whom the show could not occur—the stage manager, truck driver, guard at the door, the old stagehands, all the guys who do the lights and sound—the people in the shadows. He wants to recognize them and remember them and thank them.
The Bible stories have folks in the background, in the shadows—the support people also—and we are looking at one of those quiet disciples this morning—Joseph, husband of Mary and father of Jesus.
In the artistic portrayals of the holy family or of the manger scene, Joseph is often in the background or in the shadows. We have some of those paintings for you so you can see for yourself.
Joseph is mentioned only a few times in the birth stories of Jesus—particularly in Matthew’s gospel where the story is told from his point of view—and we hear only a tiny bit more about him later and then we hear nothing at all. The last time Joseph is mentioned is in the gospel of Luke when Jesus is twelve and he and his family have gone to Jerusalem for the Passover festival and Jesus stays behind asking pointed questions of the elders in the temple until his parents located him three days later!
Scholars assume that Joseph died sometime between Jesus teenage years and the time when Jesus began his public ministry at the age of thirty. We don’t know much about him, but what we do know is pretty significant and he may be more influential than we thought. We find most of the story of Joseph in Matthew’s gospel where Matthew is taking pains to show to his fellow Jews that this Jesus is the true messiah God has been promising.
That leads to the first thing we can know about Joseph—that King David, the most revered king ever of Israel, was an ancestor of David. Joseph was a descendant of David and that was SO important because the promised Messiah was to be in David’s lineage. Joseph is described as a son of David and so is Jesus described as a son of David. This leads, of course, to one of the conundrums in the Bible: there are two differing stories about the lineage of Jesus—that he was a descendant of David traced through the blood line of his father Joseph, and that he was conceived miraculously in a virginal conception!
I think those can’t be matched up together—at least in my mind. If your mind is like my mind, then here are some clues for you. The earliest gospel, Mark never mentions a virginal conception. Neither does the gospel of John and neither does the earliest person who writes in the New Testament, the apostle Paul. In fact in Paul’s writing, the closest in time to Jesus life, Paul says in Romans that Jesus was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God by resurrection from the dead. We don’t have time to explore all of that sentence in Paul, but it is significant for many reasons.
One more fact as you put these stories of Jesus birth side by side in your mind: the claim to be born of a virginal conception was not unusual in ancient times. Other people claimed that. Do you know who they were? They were the Roman emperors—they claimed to be born of virgin mothers so they could claim to be divine and have their citizens revere and worship them.
Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus was Jesus’ link to King David 1000 years earlier, and that is the first significance of Joseph.
What else do we know about this background person Joseph? He was a builder or a carpenter. He was in the construction trades. That meant he was not wealthy. He was working class. He and Mary brought to the temple the offering of poor people when they dedicated Jesus—we will read the story next week—they brought two small doves. Joseph has been talked about as a carpenter—the Greek word is tekton and it is used in the Bible only for Joseph and for Jesus—but it also might have a broader meaning of being a builder, a builder not only with wood but also with stone. Their hometown of Nazareth was not a large place at all—a village of only a few families—so the place where they could have more work was the Galilean town of Sepphoris a three or four mile walk down the road.
Sepphoris was a bustling town of hundreds of people—it was a cosmopolitan crossroads where several languages were spoken and where there was a theater and there was new construction going on. It is a place where Jesus and Joseph could have traveled back and forth from each day to ply their trade and if they were not only carpenters but also builders, it was a place they could have been very busy with much new construction. And they would have had ample time walking each day to talk together. Keep that image in your mind for a moment as we learn more about Joseph and his fathering role.
The third thing we learn about Joseph in the Bible is that he was good and upright. He was a decent and righteous man. He was faithful to God. He was consistent in honoring God. That means he attended synagogue on a regular basis and would have been a good role model for his children—more about that in a moment. He followed the commandments. He knew the behavior expected of him as a faithful Jew; he lived his faith and lived by the law of God.
But that is not all. He not only practiced justice, he also practiced compassion. The gospel writer says that when Joseph and Mary were engaged and he learned that she was pregnant—not by him—he planned to divorce/dismiss her quietly! There is more there than we thought. He could have had her publicly punished—this was still a patriarchal culture—but he exercised compassion and mercy. He did not live by the letter of the law but by the spirit of the law. The words from the prophet Micah on our cornerstone must have been written in his heart-What does God require of us but this: to act justly, to practice kindness, and to walk humbly with God. Acting with justice and ALSO practicing kindness must be balanced always. Joseph wanted to do both and so must we always as well.
Joseph as just and upright AND he also practiced kindness and mercy. Can we see yet how those qualities got passed on to Jesus from his father?? Can we see how important this father was in the formation of this son and his other sons and daughters?
Next, Joseph as the father, was the primary teacher for his sons in the knowledge and practice of Judaism. Jesus knew Hebrew scriptures very well. How did he learn them? From being in synagogue on a regular basis and from being with his father who would have been one of his teachers. Jesus quotes most from several Old Testament books: Isaiah, Deuteronomy and Psalms. He would have learned them like you and I do –from being in worship and from his family.
We read later on in the gospels that when Jesus the adult was in his hometown of Nazareth after he began his itinerant ministry, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath “as was his custom”. He had a habit, a pattern, of being in worship when the community gathered each week for worship. Where did he learn that custom, that habit, the importance of worship? From his family—and most probably from his father. Are we fathers filling that role today? Some studies show that one’s father is the most important single influence in whether a young person grows up with a healthy spiritual life.
The next two things we learn about Joseph might be a surprise for some people. Joseph was probably not an old man. He was a physically active man as a builder. He was probably not much older than Mary, though he has often been portrayed in some legends as being very, very old. It is not so likely and it is connected with the next possible surprise:
Joseph and Mary had several other children. Jesus had several brothers and sisters. In the 13th chapter of Matthew Jesus has gone back to his hometown to teach and preach. The people there are not impressed. What do they say? We know this fellow. He grew up here. Where did he get all this wisdom? Isn’t his father the builder, the carpenter? Don’t we know his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? Aren’t all his sisters still here?
And he did not do many deeds of power there, the gospel says. Most of you know that Jesus had brothers and sisters. Mary was not just the mother of Jesus, she was the mother of other children—it is in the Bible in several places—except there are parts of the Christian church that are embarrassed by that and they say that these were not Jesus brothers and sisters, they were his cousins. I guess they are embarrassed because that means that Mary would have had to have sex; she would have been a sexual being, and some church leaders believed that would have made her less holy somehow. They believed that being a non-sexual being, a perpetual virgin, would have made her holier.
It is a very unbiblical idea since in the first chapter of the Bible God creates man and woman to be sexual beings and looks back on the sixth day of creation when God creates humans and tell them to be fruitful and multiply and says, “This is very good”. Genesis says that human sexuality is a good gift from God and the best thinking of church leaders has said that sexual expression within a covenant of commitment and trust and mutual vulnerability is a part of God’s very good creation.
The gospels tell us that Jesus has brothers and sisters. Think about that. Jesus knows all the joys and hurts and quarrels and challenges and happiness of living in a family. We need to remember Jesus’ humanity because we lose it so easily.
I want to say two other things about Joseph. He was accustomed to being in the background. He must have been one of those quiet, solid, reliable people who do what they do faithfully and consistently and joyfully without looking for recognition, who get their fulfillment out of seeing other people grow and blossom and thrive. I talked with a father like that in our congregation this week who told me how he sees himself in that role with his kids frequently—providing the support they need, doing the chauffeuring and the enablement they need to thrive and succeed and standing, like Joseph, off to the side and watching them flourish and grow. I think that is a frequent feeling among fathers and mothers and it certainly must have been a feeling that Joseph, the support person in the Christmas stories knew well.
It is a role of being a servant leader—one who does what needs to be done not out of seeking glory or recognition but for other reasons. It is a supportive role and one that all of us fills at various times—being the support person or of playing second fiddle or third fiddle or whatever fiddle or broom handle people need us to fill.
I felt that feeling in recent years when our family would go to the national convention for persons with Down syndrome and I would mostly be the support person, the person on the sideline. For several years Judy was the convention organizer and now is a national officer for the organization. So when I am at those gatherings I am not known in the role I am known to most of you—I am known as Judy’s husband. Or I am known as Todd’s father.
It is the same when I go to New York and get a chance to meet our daughter Meredith’s work colleagues—oh, you’re Meredith’s dad.
All of us have that role of being support people, background people, standing in the wings and helping others succeed and thrive. It is a servant leadership role and it is very, very necessary. And when we are in that role of serving quietly and supporting others and not seeking or needing recognition, we are in the good company of that quiet disciple, that servant leaders Joseph, the father of Jesus Christ.