I love so many things about Christmas - I love decorating, cooking, baking and looking at lights. I love shopping and buying gifts for others and wrapping them up and seeing them under the tree. I just don't get tired of it.
However, something else I love are nativity scenes. I remember being little and rearranging the nativities that my mother and grandmother both had. The little baby Jesus, the shepherds and animals, setting out the wise men and moving Mary close to the manger and Joseph just behind her.
Our church is focusing on The Journey this season. The Journey is a study on the various characters of the Nativity and the journey that Mary and Joseph took to Bethlehem. I think we all tend to forget that each of those characters was an intricate piece of the puzzle. A real living and breathing person who actually existed and lived in this world in, what seems, a million light years ago. This is what today's lesson made me think about:
We always talk about Mary whose part of the story is clearly important but what about Joseph?
As our pastor said this morning, we tend to move Joseph to the back a little, making him a sort of speed bump in the Nativity scene. In fact, Joseph's piece of the story is just as important, if not more so than some of the other characters. It would never have been the story that it is without his sudden leap of faith to follow God's command, something that was not without risk. He made that leap of faith, fully agreeing to not only take on a young wife who was pregnant with a child that was not his but to protect and raise the child. He was responsible for the care of God's son. Not an easy task. Technically by the laws of the time he was required to break his engagement or divorce her, leaving her to be stoned to death. Instead, he spared her public humiliation, even death and married her anyway. What kind of man of character must he been? How brave?
Who was Joseph? Here's what I think:
If Mary's father was any kind of traditional Jewish daddy, he probably had Joseph picked out for several reasons.
We know that Joseph was a carpenter. In that time and even up into the Middle Ages boys as young as 8 were given a trade. Trades like carpentry and iron working were passed down from father to son or if no father was available, boys were sent to work in an apprenticeship with a master craftsman. If they were successful they could take on the craftsman's business if no son was able to take over or start their own. If Joseph followed the norm, he probably started his trade in carpentry on his own at about 16. We don't know if he was a master craftsman or if he was simply a free lance carpenter. He must of made a decent name for himself no matter what he did. My guess was he was established in his 20s and by the time he met Mary, he was probably in his 30s. What Jewish father (or any father for that reason) wouldn't want his daughter to marry a mature, established man with a trade who could care for her, his grandchildren and give his family a good name??
We should also remember that people at that time did not marry for love. That was kind of the last thing you thought about. Parents still chose their children's spouses or at least pushed them towards the one of their choosing. They wanted them to marry for a variety reasons but namely for practicality - did he/she come from a good family? Could he provide for them? Was there a good dowry from her family to be had?
Mary was very young, probably no more than 15 which would have been the perfect age for her to marry. Heck by normal standards of the day she was getting old and Joseph probably seemed like the perfect choice.
I wonder if he loved her? He must have in the end. Look what he chose to do for her! There really isn't a whole lot we know about him but maybe that's God's plan. Maybe he wants us to only see what happens if we make the choice to follow His plan for our lives, regardless of whether they mirror our own plans. It is by Joseph's example that we see what comes from simply saying yes rather than worrying.
So this Christmas when you pull out the Nativity, move Joseph a little closer to Mary and Jesus. After all, good men should never be in the shadows....
