one of my favorite characters in the CHRISTmas story is joseph. i really am amused at how he is portrayed in the nativity scenes on everyone's coffee tables, mantles, church altars, etc. the scene is set. a nice, clean, stable. animals surrounding the baby Jesus, resting peacefully. well dressed shepherds, usually holding a lamb in their arms. and the blessed couple, sitting by the caucasian, blonde haired, blue eyed baby Jesus, lying in a crib, er manger with clean, golden hay spilling over (that usually looks more like a crib than a feeding trough), and making the peace sign with His holy little baby fingers! but the most striking of them all is joseph. standing slightly behind and to the right of mary, hands at his chest, gazing on the infant CHRIST, a picture of strength and confidence! well, i'm here today with my big, sharp pin, ready to burst that bubble of a utopian nativity, especially when it comes to joseph!
okay, use your imagination with me for a second (that's the thing that used to make you believe you were superman when you were a kid with a towel around your neck about to jump off the back of the couch and fly! dig deep, it's still in there somewhere!), and forget you are in the year 2011, with all of your creature comforts: specifically the health department, the hospital, automobiles, serta posturpedic mattress, central heat, and paternity tests (sorry maury povich, you wouldn't have had a good show back then!). now, your fiance', whom you do not know that well, and more than likely is your fiance' because your parents made an arrangement with her family, (and is probably only 13 or 14 to boot!) comes to you and tells you that she is pregnant. keep in mind that you know that you have not touched her, for fear of the repercussions if you did (which usually meant death by stoning, or at minimum shame for your family and loss of dowry for you and death for her). you have been spending the last months getting your house ready for her to move into with you upon your marriage, as was required by jewish law, and are apprenticed to a carpenter making very little money, if any, to support a family. your world goes into a tailspin. as a very young man, you are now being forced to make decisions that not only affect your life, but the life of your fiance', your fiance's family, her unborn child, and your family as well. then, to throw even more confusion into your life, your fiance' tells you that she has not had sex with anyone, and that the Baby was put there by God. when you tell your family, they tell you that you are a fool if you believe such a story, and you should make sure that the little tramp is punished for her adultery and shaming of you. when you finally get over your initial shock, you decide to show compassion and break up with her privately rather than make a public example of her. you go to tell her the bad news, and she is gone! you find out that she has left and traveled to her cousin's house in another town miles away, making her story look all the more suspect!
while she's gone, you have plenty of time to portray scenarios in your mind. you start picturing her with every guy you have ever seen her talk to. you go to work each day and wonder who all knows. during the midst of this confusion, you have a dream at night and an angel appears to you in that dream and tells you that your wife's story is true, and that her Child is of God. you are to marry her and be a father to that Child. what's more, this Child will be the Messiah, the CHRIST that all of israel has been hoping for, and you are to name him Immanuel, which means "God with us"!
after your fiance' returns, you talk with her and take her as your wife, and everyone can now see the tell-tale bump of a pregnancy. you know that they are doing the math in their heads and counting the number of months you have been married along with how far along she obviously is, and the whispers and accusing glances start. your business as a carpenter suffers because of your reputation, so it makes it difficult to get by financially. then, just as you are finally getting used to the idea, you get word that you now have to travel a three to four day journey with your wife, who is in her ninth month of pregnancy, because of a census that caesar has mandated. you now have to deal with a pregnant, uncomfortable wife, having to stop every couple of hours for her to go to the bathroom. you have to listen to a teenager, already going nuts hormonally, magnified by the pregnancy, complain about being hot, tired, ready to get "this Baby out of her", and you are only 20 years old at the oldest (more than likely he was probably around 16)!
you finally get to bethlehem, and you know very few people there. your family is from there, so there has to be some relatives that you can maybe stay with, but you honestly do not know most of them (kind of like going to a family reunion today!). while you are looking for a place to stay, everyone notices the late stage of pregnancy that your wife is in, and they begin to do the math and ask the questions: "now how long have you two been married? ahh, i see." you are shunned by your family, and your wife goes into labor. you have never experienced a childbirth, and there is no midwife there to help you with her. you are scared witless. you have probably never seen your wife without her clothes on, and now, you are about to help deliver a Baby and see your wife in ways you are not prepared to! to top it off, there is nowhere to deliver the Baby! there are no hospitals, and bethlehem is a small farming community, unaccustomed to tourists, so there are no hotels, save maybe one or two, and they are full as well. you find an out of the way place, because you do not want everyone to see all of "her business" as she has the Baby, which just happens to be a cave out on the outskirts of town. it is smelly, damp, cool, and moldy, and there are possibly a few sweaty animals tied in there while their owners are in town. you hold your wife's arms up while she squats over a hole that you managed to lay a camel-hair blanket in to catch the Baby. after what is probably hours of labor (but you can rest assured the familiar "you did this to me!" was never directed at joseph, so that's one positive!) the Baby comes out, and is not the perfect newborn that you have been used to seeing. He is gray, covered with blood and amniotic fluid, and still attached by an umbilical cord. you know that people don't have those things hanging from their belly anymore, so you obviously have to cut it off. you get your knife, and cut the cord, but it bleeds profusely. you manage to get some twine and tie it off, and you have to lay your wife on the ground and tend to the Baby. you get Him wrapped up in the only semi-clean thing you can find, which are long strips of cloth that were laying in the corner, the kind that were used to bind a corpse before burying it. your wife is exhausted, you are exhausted, and you can't just lay the Child on the ground. one of the animals could possibly step on Him, and it's very cold and drafty on the ground, so you lay Him in the hollowed out area in the wall that is used to hold feed for the animals. you try to wife away the filth as best you can, and you grab some hay to make it a little more comfortable for Him and lay Him in it. you help tend to your wife, and get her cleaned up as best you can, and you rest your back against the wall and your wife lays her head in your lap and falls asleep. after a little while, the Baby is hungry and crying, so you give Him to His exhausted mother and she breastfeeds Him, which you are again being forced to witness firsthand for the first time. just as you think everything is calm for the moment (maybe this is the "all is calm, all is bright" moment in the song, but i doubt it!), a group of smelly shepherds come into the cave being very loud rambling about an angel appearing to them and wanting to see the CHRIST-Child! at this point, you have had enough, and most normal guys would have snapped by now and started throwing things, but you are too exhausted to put up a fight, so you say sure. one of the shepherds wants to hold Him, but you manage to convince him that the Baby just finished feeding and needs to rest so you win that battle. they leave, and you and your wife, and your newborn Son, are left in peace for the moment.
okay, you can come back to reality! i'm serious, breathe. it was all just your imagination! calm down! still think joseph was the calm, picture of strength that we see in the nativity scenes? if so, you are either in a severe state of denial, or you weren't paying attention! but you know what? i admire joseph. and i think that he is a good example for us today as we go into this CHRISTmas season.
there are two main things we can learn from joseph. first, was his compassion. how many of us, when we feel wronged, want revenge? we want to somehow get our version of justice. most of us can agree, that there is nothing more hurtful than unfaithfulness. whether it's a girlfriend, boyfriend, fiance', or spouse, betrayal on that level hurts more than most things you can think of. joseph would have been well within his rights if mary was indeed unfaithful to have her exposed as an adulteress (in those days, when you were betrothed, you were considered married, the marriage just was not consummated yet, so it would have been considered adultery). he believed her to be one, so for him to show compassion and end the relationship privately and quietly says a lot for his character.
the second character trait we can learn from joseph is his obedience. he could have given up and walked away and gave mary a bill of divorce at any time. but he didn't, no matter how hard it got. he obeyed God's command and took her as his wife, despite the impact it had on his reputation (Jesus was later referred to as the Son of mary, indicating that everyone considered Him a bastard child, which would have started at Jesus' birth). we know that he was poor by the animals he brought to the temple. two turtle doves was the minimum sacrifice for the poor who couldn't afford a lamb. carpenters typically made a decent living, so for joseph to be poor as a carpenter, it was an indication that his business suffered either from lack of time to establish it, or his reputation, or both. either way, he took on the awesome responsibility of raising the Messiah as his own, providing for Him and mary as best he could.
we do not hear any more of joseph except when Jesus was 12 at the temple. after that, Joseph is never referenced again in Scripture. Jesus' brothers and His mother were mentioned again, but not joseph. most scholars believe that this was because joseph died shortly after the time at the temple. this would have been an historical reason for Jesus' having never been married. it was the father's responsibility to find a wife for his son, which usually occurred in the mid-teen years. we do not know how he died, but we do know that he lived long enough to instill the trade of carpentry to his Son.
this year, are you being a joseph? are you extending mercy to those whom you feel do not warrant it? this is the time when God sent His Son to earth to extend that same mercy to us, so we should be especially astute to it this time of year. and are you being obedient, even in the midst of adversity? have you been tempted to throw in the towel? there are times i have looked around at the difficulties i have went through as a CHRISTian, and notice all of those out there who are anything but and are prospering, and i was tempted to say, "forget it. i'm done with the ministry. i'm going to use my biology degree and forget this whole ministry thing!" living the CHRISTian life is tough. CHRIST never promised us a bed of roses. in fact, He promised us the exact opposite. He said that we will be hated for His name's sake. so when you feel you are going through a difficult time or dealing with a difficult person, remember joseph, know that you are not the first to experience it, and you definitely won't be the last, and model joseph's mercy and obedience!
And so we pull
10 years ago
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