1:18-25 Pre-Gospel: Story of Immanuel; Joseph adopts Jesus as his son (How of Jesus’ identity as accepted by Joseph as Son of David)
Matthew 1:18-25 (Year A Fourth Sunday of Advent) is the story of Immanuel, as Joseph adopts Jesus as his son.[1] It is an “enlarged footnote to the crucial point in the genealogy.”[2] The question dealt with is the “how” of the identity of Jesus, in that Joseph, a descendent of David, will accept him. Matthew has conditioned this entire passage by his sense that Isaiah 7:14 finds its fulfillment here.[3] This is consistent with Hellenistic Judaism interpretation of the text.[4] His references to the fulfillment of prophecy are not so much apologetic passages as they are didactic, informing his Christian readers and giving support to their faith. Throughout the first two chapters (2:12, 13, 19, 22) he will attach intricate details of the life of Jesus to scripture, as if to emphasize that every detail of the life of Jesus was part of the foreordained plan of God.[5]
Joseph followed the general pattern of contemporary Jewish piety. He is a man open to direction from God, as God directs him through dreams, a common feature in both testaments.
There are some interesting materials from sources close to the time Matthew is writing that are worth considering. In this case, the Spirit is the creative power of God fashioning the life of this unique child, pointing to the unique way in which the divine gives birth in the human sphere, for Spirit is the essence of the divine.[6] In Gn 1:2, the Spirit hovered over formless matter when the miracle of creation took place, so there is a new creative act of God when Jesus is born.[7]
Herodotus (III.28) shows acquaintance with the Egyptian tradition according to which the holy bull of Apis was born of a virgin cow, which was fructified by a beam of light from heaven.[8]
Josephus records a man with a pregnant wife offering prayer for mercy, and God standing by him in his sleep and granting his request.
A man whose name was Amram, one of the nobler sort of the Hebrews, was afraid for his whole nation, lest it should fail, by the want of young men to be brought up hereafter, and was very uneasy at it, his wife being then with child, and he knew not what to do. Hereupon he betook himself to prayer to God; and entreated him to have compassion on those men who had nowise transgressed the laws of his worship, and to afford them deliverance from the miseries they at that time endured, and to render abortive their enemies' hopes of the destruction of their nation. Accordingly God had mercy on him, and was moved by his supplication. He stood by him in his sleep, and exhorted him not to despair of his future favors. He said further, that he did not forget their piety towards him, and would always reward them for it, as he had formerly granted his favor to their forefathers, and made them increase from a few to so great a multitude. (Josephus, Ant. ii. 212, 16)
Pseudophilo records that God came to Miriam in a dream the kind of child she would have, and she was to tell her parents. They did not believe her.
And the spirit of God came upon Miriam one night, and she saw a dream and told it to her parents in the morning, saying I have seen this night, and behold a man in a linen garment stood and said to me, Go and say to your parents; Behold he who will be born from you will be cast forth into the water, likewise through him the water will be dried up. And I will work signs through him and save my people, and he will exercise leadership always. And when Miriam told of her dream, her parents did not believe her. (Pseudophilo, Ant. ix. 10.)
Such sources suggest to some scholars that there is a pre-Matthew source for his story of the birth of Jesus. The pre-Matthew content might read like this:
His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, … an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife ... 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." … When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.[9]
Matthew has just established Jesus’ messianic eligibility as a Jewish descendant of David, but he has still to explain the last step in the family tree — the legitimacy of the birth of Jesus Christ (χριστοῦ). The purpose of Matthew is to show that Jesus is the promised Jewish Messiah. Matthew makes a direct link to the previous genealogical table. It is important to Matthew that Jesus is a descendent of David, which became reality through the legal parentage of Joseph. That is more important than the virgin birth. Jesus, legal son of Joseph, is now in the Davidic lineage even though not a direct descendant of Joseph. This double claim did not trouble Matthew's theology: Jesus, Son of Abraham, Son of David; and Jesus, Son of God. The Spirit is the creative, life-giving force of this birth. The Holy Spirit is the creative movement of God toward creation.
Jewish betrothal was such that people already called the fiancé “husband.” A betrothal, while less than a full marriage, was certainly more than any modern notion of an "engagement." Out-of-wedlock pregnancies were a far graver issue than in our culture, and the formal nature of Joseph and Mary's betrothal raised the event of this untimely pregnancy to a new degree of seriousness. While a legal marriage did not exist until the husband had taken his wife into his home and consummated their union, a betrothed couple was, nevertheless, a legal entity and already bound by the strict Hebraic codes of conduct. Just as Jewish practice considered a woman whose betrothed husband died a widow, it also considered a betrothed woman who had sexual relations with another man an adulterer. When Mary became pregnant, she faced the full measure of the adultery laws found in Deut 22:23-24. The effect of the conception is embarrassment to Joseph. Maybe because Joseph is upright he does not want to give his name to a child whose father is unknown. Throughout the Gospel of Matthew, we learn that the followers of Jesus are to have a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees. Joseph is the first example of such righteousness. The righteous man is the merciful man, the loving man. In the eyes of Matthew, he was righteous precisely because he refused to hold up Mary to public ridicule and to the legal punishment for adultery.[10] The divorce would happen secretly, before chosen witnesses, to avoid public scandal. Joseph did this out of obedience to the law. He must put the evil away, so he divorces the adulterer. In this case, "secretly" refers to not making public charges that could have led to Mary's death. In Matthew's account, there is a moment when God's plan rested in the simple hands of the man, Joseph. If he had followed through on his plan to dismiss her, Jesus would have been without the validity of a Davidic heritage. He is righteous as well as compassionate. In verses 20-21, 24-25, we find the first of three divinely inspired dreams Joseph will have. The angelic messenger's formal address to Joseph emphasizes the important reason for Joseph to marry Mary legally and thus claim her child as his own. This dream tells Joseph to take a quite different course of action than the one he had been considering. The angel addresses Joseph as son of David, the only time that title is used in the New Testament of anyone other than Jesus. if there was a Semitic original behind this Hellenistic account of the birth of Jesus, here is evidence of it, the original story simply had the angel promising Joseph that his son would be the Messiah.[11] The angel informs Joseph that the conception is through the agency of the Holy Spirit is also the becoming of the Son of God.[12] Matthew stresses again that the Spirit is the life-giving origin of this birth. Matthew seems to think here of a supernatural procreation.[13] The angel tells Joseph to go ahead with the marriage because the adultery accusation is not true. He should not make Mary subject to the law because her pregnancy came about through the activity of the Holy Spirit - divine activity conceived the child she bears, not human disobedience. The angelic announcement follows a tradition of birth announcements of Ishmael in Genesis 16:7-12 and Isaac in Genesis 17:1-19. John the Baptist also receives this angelic announcement in Luke 1:11-20. The focus of attention is verses 18 and 20, both of which state that the child is “from the Holy Spirit.” We need to grasp the theological significance of such an affirmation. To fail to do so is to obscure the basic connection between Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Jesus is not a man whom God subsequently gifted and impelled by the Spirit like others, like prophets, apostles, or even us. Jesus has the Spirit at first hand and from the very first.[14] The relationship of this man to the Holy Spirit is so close and special that he owes his existence to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is this creative movement of God toward creation.[15] The virgin birth story and the baptism story are parallel, for both suggest that the man Jesus of Nazareth becomes the Son of God by the descent of the Spirit. In specific reference to this passage, the Incarnation of the Word of God from Mary cannot consist in the fact that here and now the Son of God comes into being for the first time. It consists in the fact that here and now the Son of God takes to Himself that other which already exists in Mary, namely, flesh, humanity, human nature, being as a person. This flesh can live in unity with God through the Holy Spirit.[16] Here is the way the way in which the Son became a human being. God stands at the beginning of this man, Jesus. God gives to Mary the capacity to be the mother of this Son. God makes the divine Son the Son of Mary. God gives to her what she could not procure for herself.[17] Matthew defends the idea of divine Sonship and the activity of the Spirit of God against obvious objections by reporting a special revelation to Joseph about the origin of the pregnancy of Mary. Thus, Matthew refutes the suspicion of the opponents by refuting the suspicion of Joseph. Further, the primary interest of Matthew is in the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy in Jesus.[18]
Such views of out of wedlock births are still present in some cultures. Carlo Carretto (Blessed are you who Believed) tells of visiting a village among the Arab people. It was not long until he became acquainted with the Tuaregs, who lived in tents along a rocky basin where water surfaced. A girl in the camp where he stayed was betrothed to a boy in another camp. She had not gone to live with him because he was too young. Joseph, he remembered, was betrothed to Mary, but they were not living together. Two years later he came back to the camp. During conversation around the campfire, he asked if the marriage had taken place yet. There was awkward silence. He did not pursue the subject. Later, he asked a friend from the camp what the silence meant. He looked cautiously around. Because he trusted Carlo Carretto as a man of God, he made a sign, passing his hand under his chin. It meant that she had her throat cut. The reason? Before, the wedding it was discovered that the girl was pregnant. In what sociologists call an honor and shame culture, she betrayed her family. It required her sacrifice. For Carlo Carretto, a shiver went through him as he thought of a girl being killed because she had not been faithful to her future husband.
In verses 21-23, Matthew highlights two names for Jesus. In the naming of the child, Joseph takes full responsibility for him. The first name is that of Jesus, a name commanded by the angel. Although a common Jewish name, the name has more stress than the birth itself. What was unique was the emphasis on salvation from sin. On the negative side, salvation means deliverance from the sin that holds us in bondage. We then have an account of the second name. That name for the child is the real puzzler in this story. Having recounted the angel’s words to Joseph, the evangelist asserts the fulfillment of Isa 7:14 that the παρθένος (LXX), the virgin, shall bear a son named Immanuel. As early as the second century, we have documented evidence of non-Christians questioning the legitimacy of Jesus’ lineage. Several sources report that opponents of Christianity slandered as “Jesus son of Pantera,” which was a pun on the Greek word for virgin. In addition, Pantera was a plausible name for a Roman man and was popular among soldiers. It is possible that rumors like this were circulating already at the time of Matthew’s composition, especially given the low profile given to Joseph in New Testament texts. Furthermore, Matthew has demonstrated elsewhere that he is sensitive to rumors and wants to quell them with his gospel (see Matthew 28:11-15). Thus, he may have had some familiarity with Jewish insinuations about Mary. This child’s birth was the “sign,” the proof, that God was with Joseph and the readers amid the crises they each faced. On the positive side, salvation is not only from sin, but also consists of God being with us. God intends salvation for the people of God. God never abandons humanity. The birth and naming of Jesus is like the events in the days of King Ahaz in that once again we have come to a change in the relationship between God and the people of God. For Matthew, what took place before this was a prelude. The Immanuel sign has it in common with the name of Jesus that the latter, too, although this time in the reverse direction, is a sign of both judgment and blessing. Yes, “God is with us,” but also, “God helps (saves).[19] The problem of naming all but disappears if we consider what it could mean “to fulfill” a prophetic declaration in some approaches to interpreting Scripture in the first century. The prophet’s words later provided insight for God’s people into their circumstances, just as they had for the prophet’s own contemporaries. The decisive factor comes from noticing that the evangelist ends the gospel sounding the same note with which he began, when Jesus speaks its very final words: “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (28:20b). The gospel proclaims a hopeful vision for humanity even as it realistically recognizes the sin that strips us of our genuine humanity. In the birth of the child Jesus, we encounter not only the one who will save us from our sins but the fulfillment of the promise, “God is with us.”
In verses 24-25, Joseph's obedience to the angelic messenger's command is complete. Without hesitation, he takes Mary for his wife. As further evidence of his righteousness, he refrains from having sexual relations with her. She remains the embodiment of the virgin Israel.
The account by Matthew contains much simplicity and restraint. Matthew's description of Jesus' conception and birth focuses on Joseph. It is concerned with technicalities and issues of precise legality. Joseph's name and reputation are on the line here. God gives Joseph explicit foreknowledge that the child Mary bears is none other than the Messiah, the one who will bring about the reality of God's saving forgiveness for all Israel. The story of the virgin birth means God gave this Jewish man, Jesus of Nazareth, who is also the Son of God, to the world.
All of this leaves open the question of the virgin birth itself. It is quite unbelievable, of course. In our experience, births simply do not happen this way. for those of us who want to affirm the priority of scripture in the shaping of our beliefs, but do so in a way that correlates with our reason and experience, the story presents difficulties. The creed affirms Jesus was born of the virgin Mary. We have already explored the theological significance of Mary being the one who was open to the Father sending the Spirit to bring forth the Son. We can see the way the Triune God stands at the beginning of the life of Jesus. I am suggesting that affirming this theology does not necessitate believing in the biology of the virgin birth. The reason is that Matthew was not thinking this way. He used the vehicle of virgin birth stories in Hellenistic culture to express to his readers the significance of Jesus. To advance such a belief will require some prayerful reflection.
I invite you step back from the specific texts and consider the rest of the New Testament.
Some scholars will read other parts of the New Testament as having no knowledge of the story of the virgin birth, or at least de-emphasizing its importance. Mark 3:21 gives no hint of Mary having had a previous angelic announcement, for when his family heard of what Jesus said, they restrained him, for people were saying he is going out of his mind. John 6:42 simply refers to Jesus as the son of Joseph, whose mother and father they know, so how can Jesus say he has come from heaven? Paul gives no awareness of the uniqueness of the birth of Jesus when he says when he said God sent the Son, born of a woman and under the law (Galatians 4:4). Even Matthew will not come back to it.
Virgin birth stories were not part of the Jewish tradition. Rather, they were part of Greek history and religion. This means the entire legend of the virgin birth arose in the Hellenistic community.[20] Thus, Plutarch thought that Alexander the Great descended from Hercules but that his father Philip through miraculous intervention did not have intercourse with Olympias.
From Plutarch, Alexander, 2.1-3.5 (75 AD)
It is agreed on by all hands, that on the father's side, Alexander descended from Hercules by Caranus, and from Aeacus by Neoptolemus on the mother's side. His father Philip, being in Samothrace, when he was quite young, fell in love there with Olympias, in company with whom he was initiated in the religious ceremonies of the country, and her father and mother being both dead, soon after, with the consent of her brother, Arymbas, he married her. The night before the consummation of their marriage, she dreamed that a thunderbolt fell upon her body, which kindled a great fire, whose divided flames dispersed themselves all about, and then were extinguished. And Philip, some time after he was married, dreamt that he sealed up his wife's body with a seal, whose impression, as be fancied, was the figure of a lion. Some of the diviners interpreted this as a warning to Philip to look narrowly to his wife; but Aristander of Telmessus, considering how unusual it was to seal up anything that was empty, assured him the meaning of his dream was that the queen was with child of a boy, who would one day prove as stout and courageous as a lion. Once, moreover, a serpent was found lying by Olympias as she slept, which more than anything else, it is said, abated Philip's passion for her; and whether he feared her as an enchantress, or thought she had commerce with some god, and so looked on himself as excluded, he was ever after less fond of her conversation. Others say, that the women of this country having always been extremely addicted to the enthusiastic Orphic rites, and the wild worship of Bacchus (upon which account they were called Clodones, and Mimallones), imitated in many things the practices of the Edonian and Thracian women about Mount Haemus, from whom the word threskeuein seems to have been derived, as a special term for superfluous and over-curious forms of adoration; and that Olympias, zealously, affecting these fanatical and enthusiastic inspirations, to perform them with more barbaric dread, was wont in the dances proper to these ceremonies to have great tame serpents about her, which sometimes creeping out of the ivy in the mystic fans, sometimes winding themselves about the sacred spears, and the women's chaplets, made a spectacle which men could not look upon without terror.
Philip, after this vision, sent Chaeron of Megalopolis to consult the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, by which he was commanded to perform sacrifice, and henceforth pay particular honour, above all other gods, to Ammon; and was told he should one day lose that eye with which he presumed to peep through that chink of the door, when he saw the god, under the form of a serpent, in the company of his wife. Eratosthenes says that Olympias, when she attended Alexander on his way to the army in his first expedition, told him the secret of his birth, and bade him behave himself with courage suitable to his divine extraction. Others again affirm that she wholly disclaimed any pretensions of the kind, and was wont to say, "When will Alexander leave off slandering me to Juno?"
Alexander was born the sixth of Hecatombaeon, which month the Macedonians call Lous, the same day that the temple of Diana at Ephesus was burnt; which Hegesias of Magnesia makes the occasion of a conceit, frigid enough to have stopped the conflagration. The temple, he says, took fire and was burnt while its mistress was absent, assisting at the birth of Alexander. And all the Eastern soothsayers who happened to be then at Ephesus, looking upon the ruin of this temple to be the forerunner of some other calamity, ran about the town, beating their faces, and crying that this day had brought forth something that would prove fatal and destructive to all Asia.
Just after Philip had taken Potidaea, he received these three messages at one time, that Parmenio had overthrown the Illyrians in a great battle, that his race-horse had won the course at the Olympic games, and that his wife had given birth to Alexander; with which being naturally well pleased, as an addition to his satisfaction, he was assured by the diviners that a son, whose birth was accompanied with three such successes, could not fail of being invincible.
Philostratus says the mother of miracle worker Apollonius had an apparition of the great poet Proteus declaring that it was the father of the child within her.
From Philostratus(170-247 AD), Life of Apollonius of Tyana, 1st Century miracleworker.
[§4] Apollonius' home, then, was Tyana, a Greek city amidst a population of Cappadocians. His father was of the same name [i.e., Apollonius], and the family descended from the first settlers. It excelled in wealth the surrounding families, though the district is a rich one.
To his mother, just before he was born, there came an apparition of Proteus, who changes his form so much in Homer,[4] in the guise of an Egyptian demon. She was in no way frightened, but asked him what sort of child she would bear. And he answered: "Myself."
"And who are you?" she asked.
"Proteus," answered he, "the god of Egypt."
Well, I need hardly explain to readers of the poets the quality of Proteus and his reputation as regards wisdom; how versatile he was, and for ever changing his form, and defying capture, and how he had a reputation of knowing both past and future. And we must bear Proteus in mind all the more, when my advancing story shows its hero to have been more of a prophet than Proteus, and to have triumphed over many difficulties and dangers in the moment when they beset him most closely.
[§5] Now he is said to have been born in a meadow, hard by which there has been now erected a sumptuous temple to him; and let us not pass by the manner of his birth. For just as the hour of his birth was approaching, his mother was warned in a dream to walk out into the meadow and pluck the flowers; and in due course she came there and her maids attended to the flowers, scattering themselves over the meadow, while she fell asleep lying on the grass.
Thereupon the swans who fed in the meadow set up a dance around her as she slept, and lifting their wings, as they are wont to do, cried out aloud all at once, for there was somewhat of a breeze blowing in the meadow. She then leaped up at the sound of their song and bore her child, for any sudden fright is apt to bring on a premature delivery.
But the people of the country say that just at the moment of the birth, a thunderbolt seemed about to fall to earth and then rose up into the air and disappeared aloft; and the gods thereby indicated, I think, the great distinction to which the sage was to attain, and hinted in advance how he should transcend all things upon earth and approach the gods, and signified all the things that he would achieve.
[§6] Now there is near Tyana a well sacred to Zeus, the god of paths, so they say, and they call it the well of Asbama. Here a spring rises cold, but bubbles up like a boiling cauldron. This water is favorable and sweet to those who keep their paths, but to perjurers it brings hot-footed justice; for it attacks their eyes and hands and feet, and they fall the prey of dropsy and wasting disease; and they are not even able to go away, but are held on the spot and bemoan themselves at the edge of the spring, acknowledging their perjuries.
The people of the country, then, say that Apollonius was the son of this Zeus, but the sage called himself the son of Apollonius.
Diogenes Laertius, after detailing the lineage of Plato, says a vision from Apollo kept the husband of his mother from his mother.
From Diogenes Laertius (200-250 AD), Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 3.1-3, 30
I. PLATO was the son of Ariston and Perictione or Petone, and a citizen of Athens; and his mother traced her family back to Solon; for Solon had a brother named Diopidas, who had a son named Critias, who was the father of Calloeschrus, who was the father of that Critias who was one of the thirty tyrants, and also of Glaucon, who was the father of Charmides and Perictione. And she became the mother of Plato by her husband Ariston, Plato being the sixth in descent from Solon. And Solon traced his pedigree up to Neleus and Neptune. They say too that on the father's side, he was descended from Codrus, the son of Melanthus, and they too are said by Thrasylus to derive their origin from Neptune. And Speusippus, in his book which is entitled the Funeral Banquet of Plato, and Clearchus in his Panegyric on Plato, and Anaxilides in the second book of his History of Philosophers, say that the report at Athens was that Perictione was very beautiful, and that Ariston endeavoured to violate her and did not succeed; and that he, after he had desisted from his violence saw a vision of Apollo in a dream, in consequence of which he abstained from approaching his wife till after her confinement.
II. And Plato was born, as Apollodorus says in his Chronicles, in the eighty-eighth Olympiad, on the seventh day of the month Thargelion, on which day the people of Delos say that Apollo also was born. And he died as Hermippus says, at a marriage feast, in the first year of the hundred and eighth Olympiad, having lived eighty-one years. But Neanthes says that he was eighty-four years of age at his death. He is then younger than Isocrates by six years; for Isocrates was born in the archonship of Lysimachus, and Plato in that of Aminias, in which year Pericles died.
III. And he was of the borough of Colytus, as Antileon tells us in his second book on Dates. And he was born, according to some writers, in Aegina in the house of Phidiades the son of Thales, as Favorinus affirms in his Universal History, as his father had been sent thither with several others as a settler, and returned again to Athens when the settlers were driven out by the Lacedaemonians, who came to the assistance of the Aeginetans. And he served the office of choregus at Athens, when Dion was at the expense of the spectacle exhibited, as Theodorus relates in the eighth book of his Philosophical Conservations.
If fav'ring Phoebus had not Plato given
To Grecian lands, how would the learned God
Have e'er instructed mortal minds in learning?
But he did send him, that as Aesculapius
His son's the best physician of the body,
So Plato should be of the immortal soul.
Phoebus, to bless mankind, became the father
Of Aesculapius, and of god-like Plato;
That one to heal the body, this the mind.
Now, from a marriage feast he's gone to heaven.
To realize the happy city there,
Which he has planned fit for the realms of Jove.
Understood in this intellectual climate, similarity rather than uniqueness is the point. Jesus of Nazareth is like and in the company of other great men of Hellenistic culture. Thus, one way to approach the virgin birth story is as a first century literary technique designed to make clear to readers, from the beginning, the significance of the hero of the story. Early Christians appear to have added the story of the virgin birth with the transformation to Hellenism, where the idea of the generation of a king or hero by the godhead was widespread. They would be puzzled by the biological questions we might raise.
I invite you to reflect upon the theology Matthew presents.
Jesus, the first name, means “the LORD saves,” and that Jesus will save his people from their sins (v. 21). Jesus has been sent to earth to be the One to save us from all the sins and shortcomings that fracture our relationships with God and the people around us. We make such a mess of our lives, as individuals and as communities, that we need a Savior to rescue us. Jesus does this by offering us forgiveness for our past failings, and guidance for the path that lies ahead. We might sing about his saving work at Christmas, using the words of the carol, “O Little Town of Bethlehem”:
O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray;
Cast out our sin and enter in; be born in us today.
Cast out our sin — that’s the work of Jesus, the Savior. The letter to the Hebrews tells us that Jesus came to “remove sin by the sacrifice of himself” on the cross (Hebrews 9:26). Jesus casts out our sins, once and for all, in an act that never needs to be repeated. He lays down his life for us in an act of loving sacrifice, one that brings us forgiveness and new life. We need Jesus to save us. He does for us what we can never do for ourselves, no matter how hard we try. Each of us is like an addict who discovers that recovery requires turning to a higher power — a power greater than ourselves. When we put our faith in Jesus the Savior, we find that forgiveness and change are possible.
Immanuel, the second name, communicates that God is with us (v. 23). Turning to a higher power also helps us discover that we are not alone. With Immanuel in our lives, we are never alone. Using the words of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” again:
We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;
O come to us; abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel.
Jesus came to abide with us, to live with us, to stay with us forever. That is the work of Immanuel, God with us. We need this now, more than ever.
Joseph is an amazing man. Joseph consistently gets out of the way to make room for God to do God's work in his life. He allows God to add to him, rather than trying to force his own will, even when God's plans completely alter the course of his life. We need to be more like Joseph, someone in whom the presence of God grows large.
He is the supporting actor to the starring role that Mary has. Dads are often in the background when it comes to family. You know the “joke.” Father spends time playing football with his son, son eventually scores winning touchdown, looks into the camera, and says, “Hi, mom.” In the Christmas play, the little boy complained that he had to play Joseph, for he has nothing to do but stand there. Love is like that, of course. It is often in the background. For a few moments, the plan of God is in the hands of this man.
Joseph was far from ordinary. This quiet saint — this forgotten man of faith — was handpicked by God to be the protector and provider for the Savior of the world. Though his voice is silent in the gospels, his actions speak volumes about courage, obedience and faithfulness. Let’s take a closer look at Joseph, the quiet saint.
He’s the good guy. His girlfriend gets pregnant. She tells him a tale that stretches credulity. Joseph is hurt, heartbroken and confused, but he chooses compassion over punishment, mercy over pride. He decides to let her go quietly, protecting her dignity even in his disappointment. Yet, after a night vision, he stays committed to her. He plans to adopt this child and raise him as his own. And in the meantime, no sex until after the birth (see v. 25). He’s devoted to Mary. He’s obedient to God.
Joseph listens when God speaks. Joseph was going to deal with Mary privately to minimize any embarrassment that might come to her, “but just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream …” (v. 20). God interrupts Joseph’s plan, and the message is staggering: “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. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (vv. 20-21).
Joseph doesn’t argue. He doesn’t delay. He doesn’t wake up and say, “Wow, that was just a crazy dream.” He believed. “When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife” (v. 24). He obeyed. He changed his whole life because of what God said.
Joseph is the quiet hero of the Incarnation. Let’s not rush past this:
Joseph stays.
He takes Mary as his wife.
He embraces the shame and whispers from others.
He raises a Son who is not biologically his.
He teaches Jesus the trade of carpentry.
He protects his family when Herod threatens.
He moves his household to Egypt in obedience to another dream.
In a culture where honor, bloodlines and male pride were everything, Joseph lays all that down to do the will of God.
That is sainthood. That is discipleship. And that is why Catholic and Orthodox traditions revere him as Saint Joseph, a spiritual father, a model of masculine humility and a protector of the Holy Family.
[1]
[2] Krister Stendal
[3]
[4] Schweizer, TDNT, VI, 342.
[5]
[6] Schweizer, TDNT, 402.
[7] Delling, TDNT, V, 835.
[8] Schweizer, TDNT, VI, 342.
[9] (
[10] Rudolph Schnackenburg
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I thought this was very good. Enjoyed it. I liked the mention of Joseph's righteous being more than the pharisees. In terms of Joseph's role, I was preached a sermon on the fact it is harder to be a good father than it is to rule a kingdom. Think of David, Solomon, Gideon, Eli. Jospeh stands in contrast to these "great" men.
ReplyDeleteWell said
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