Joseph: the Forgotten Man at Christmas

I just heard a speaker say she had searched the web for contemporary Christmas songs about Joseph and found only three. I know of a few more than that from the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Most of them are secular pieces that mock him for being a cuckold. Poor Joseph deserves so much better than that.

We can learn a lot about him by juxtaposing Matthew's account and Luke's account of Mary's pregnancy. When Mary told the angel, "May it be to me as you have said," the Holy Spirit probably came upon her immediately. In the very next verse, she was on her way to visit Elizabeth.

We can only imagine what might have gone through Mary's mind or what conversations she may have had after she realized she was indeed pregnant. It does seem almost certain, though, that she was not showing when she left for Elizabeth's village. When she returned to Nazareth three months later it must have been obvious to everyone. Did she dare tell anyone about angel visitations and the power of the Most High? If she did, why would anyone believe her?

Pity Joseph. He was betrothed to this obviously pregnant woman and knew he could not be the father. By rights, he could have denounced her as an adulteress, and as a result, she would have been stoned to death. For whatever reason, he rejected that course of action. He decided to divorce her quietly--perhaps send her out of town to have her baby and live as well as she could manage.

By the way, ignorant people who fancy themselves intellectuals sometimes explain away the "myth" of the virgin birth by saying that people two thousand years ago did not know as much science as we do now, so of course they would believe all kinds of impossible things. Joseph knew enough science to understand that he had not had sex with Mary, and that therefore she was not bearing his child. He and everyone else knew enough science to know that someone had to be the father, and not a one of them jumped to the conclusion that she became pregnant without having a sexual experience.

Matthew tells us that Joseph accepted this conclusion, preposterous on the face of it, after having a dream in which the Lord of the Universe spoke to him and told him to go through with the marriage. The two of them must have had a miserable time dealing with all the gossips in Nazareth. It is from Luke that we learn of the decree from Caesar Augustus that sent them to Bethlehem. What was probably a headache and inconvenience for most people forced to travel to an ancestral home must have seemed like gift from God to Joseph and Mary.

According to Luke, Jesus' birth took place in a stable, where shepherds paid a visit after hearing a choir of angels singing. Probably the majority of creches show both the shepherds and wiremen gathered around the manger, but Matthew 2:11 clearly says that the wise men visited the holy family in a house. That Herod ordered the slaughter of all baby boys in Bethlehem up to two years of age indicates that Joseph had decided to settle there to be safe from the unpleasantness they had known in Nazareth. Another dream warned him that it was not safe from Herod, so he took his family to Egypt.

After learning that Herod had died, Joseph intended to return to Bethlehem until he learned that Herod's son ruled in his place. Another dream sent them back to Nazareth, where whispers and looks of disapproval for Mary and pity for Joseph probably made life continually uncomfortable.

God chose his human parents with great care. It is not enough that both were descendants of David. Both had personal characteristics of obedience and faith that made them ideally trustworthy to care for the God/Man during his childhood and youth.

Joseph exhibited great love and tenderness when, believing Mary to have been unfaithful to him, declined to take steps to have her executed. He exhibited great courage as he chose to marry her, accept her shame as his own, and stand between her and the gossips. When God himself thwarted his evident hope to settle permanently in Bethlehem, Joseph exhibited great humility as he meekly and without hesitation moved back to Nazareth.

In him we see quiet strength sufficient to enable him to follow through with decisions that make no human sense at all and to live with the consequences without complaint or hesitation. After one more incident that happened thirteen years later, Joseph disappears from Scripture.

God apparently determined that we do not need to know anything more about him in order to discern a character of monumental and heroic faith. Among other things, the Christmas season gives us an annual opportunity to marvel that such a man ever walked the earth and played such a critical role in preparing for the salvation of the whole world.