These days if you are out in a boat on the sea of Galilee you may be buzzed by a C-130, or if you are in the small hill town of Nazareth by an F-16. Back in Joseph’s day when Zebedee was out on the lake with his two small boys, James and John, teaching them to mind the nets and watch the currents, and when Joseph was using his hands to hew a piece of furniture for a neighbor or build a wall for the nearby new town of Caesarea Philippi, there were no airplanes. There were, however, powerful forces that you could not ignore.
And that had been true before, and Joseph knew it. In the time of Isaiah the prophet, when Ahaz was king in Jerusalem, the powerful forces that threatened were from the north, the then kingdom of Assyria, and trouble was brewing. Joseph would have known about this, perhaps, and then he would have known about the prophecy that Isaiah gave to his king. Ahaz was probably trembling in his boots - or sandals - knowing much larger kingdoms were arrayed against him, threatening his little hilltop capital. And he would have hoped, as Will Willimon puts it, for an army. But that is not what the Lord sent him.
And that is not what the Lord sent Joseph, in his day. Joseph lived in the time of Roman occupation and Roman overlordship. Sure, there might have been a king in Jerusalem - but he was Caesar’s buddy Herod. And Caesar had troops handy, as close as Damascus, or closer, to back up Herod.
So what did the Lord send Ahaz, trembling in his boots, looking to the hills, wondering from whence his help would come? No army. No present help at all, but a promise: a hope. A baby. For behold, a virgin shall bear a child. And that child shall be called “God with us”.
Linger on that for a moment. Take a break from the threat, the lowering clouds. God with us. That is a promise. That is what the people of God always looked for, always look for: the presence of God among us. That is where salvation lies.
And that is what Isaiah the prophet promised his king. God is with us. And in yet a little while, the threat you fear shall be gone, as certain as the summer sun melts the snow. “Before the child shall know to refuse the evil, and choose the good,” the threat you worry about will be past.
Joseph may have known this history. Of course he knew the rest of history and he knew that history was not over. There was a more modern threat in his time, one more systematic, organized. It was the hegemony of an empire that lasted a thousand years. Rome. (Add another thousand, if you count Constantinople.)
And it was not to be turned over lightly. (Indeed, it was to be shaken - and changed.)
But there was that promise again. A young woman, a girl, shall conceive and bear a child.
It sounds so passive. All Joseph had to do was wait, right? The summer sun would melt the snow, the oppressive occupiers would fade away, and all would be well.
Not so fast.
And not so easy.
The kingdoms that Isaiah faced, and the empire that Joseph faced, did not disappear with only a promise. Joseph had a hand in what happened next. He took on the challenge. He was not passive, but powerful, with the power only a pair of hands that shaped a future could hold.
He did not merely accept a promise, and an unwanted challenge, he rose to take them in those work-worn hands of his, and made a future, and made a family. With the family God gave him, he made a future. A future not only for them but for Israel, for the whole people of God.
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In his gospel, Matthew tells the story of the birth of Christ with five significant dreams, and four significant dreamers. The first dreamer, and four of the dreams, belong to Joseph.
(The other dream, and dreamers, come with the arrival of magi from the East. There will be another dream, and dreamer, in Matthew's Passion.)
Joseph's first dream was monumental and simple.
Do not put away this woman. Marry her. Raise her son. For in him and in her is the hope of ages. And you have a job to do, a role to play, that is essential to its fulfillment.
And he did.
Joseph, in his dreams, takes place toward the end of the long line of prophets, prophets including Noah, Moses, Elijah, and others. The warning dreams - flee, go back, turn aside - could be those of a troubled man tossing and turning, deciding what to do - and finding the answer in emerging consciousness. The first dream, however, is this and more: for Joseph sees beyond the moment to its deeper meaning.
A professor of mine used to distinguish between what is happening - like little waves on the surface of a lake - and what is really going on - in those deep currents and upwellings of great significance that breach the surface of time in critical moments.
This, Joseph perceived, was one of those moments. This was not just an ordinary occurrence, the unexpected pregnancy of a young woman. If it had been, his initial plan of 'putting her away quietly' - so she could bear her child in rural obscurity - would have been the familiar and highly recommended route. But there was more going on than what just appeared to be happening on the surface. This was the beginning, if Joseph was as docile to the spirit's leading as Mary had been, of the redemption of time.
A woman gets serious about life when she marries, that same professor of mine once said. And a man when he becomes a father.
Twenty years later his widow, with a wink, said that was certainly true in his case.
When I think about Joseph this week I think about the trust that was handed to him. The tremendous gift and responsibility of being a husband to Mary and raising her son. The joy and the sorrow that were to come. Of perhaps seeing ahead to her widowhood and bereavement.
For now though and for years to come he had a wife to care for and a boy to raise.
Not just any boy. For in him was embodied the promise of ages.
Joseph had an extraordinary trust. This child to raise. This woman to protect, and to love.
God had entrusted him with this charge. It would change the world. And it would change him.
What would it mean, one can only guess, to realize what his dream meant. What a solution it was to the apparent dilemma he had gone to bed with. What a challenge it meant on waking.
This one, after all the ages, will carry forward what God had been doing all along.
For Joseph was, as a scion of the house of David, an heir to the promise to Israel of a new hope, a messiah, one anointed to bring them freedom from fear, freedom to worship, freedom of speech, freedom from want. Those days of destitution, of oppression, were to end. Freedom as a people.
It was not to be, not yet. But in this hope of Israel was carried a greater hope: that the joy of God, the life of people in communion with their creator, redeemer, and sanctifier, would encompass all the people of the earth.
Come to me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, the son would say, and I will give you rest.
Israel had all these centuries carried the trust, the hope and joy and burden and sorrow, of being God’s people, chosen to bear witness to the truth and bear it forward into the world.
God is one. One who loves what God has made. One who does not forget his promise. One who brings hope to the world.
In Jesus, in what he did, the signs and splendors of that hope became visible in the world. It was not the end of suffering but it was the presence of God with us in the midst of travail.
It was the beginning of the completion of the hope begun in Eden and carried on the cross at Calvary and discovered at the side of an empty tomb, and awaited everywhere after Easter.
The one who was, the one who is, the one who is to come. The hope of the world.
And it all began with this little baby.
Hold him Joseph, hold him close. And hold his mother beside you.
JRL+
