Joseph was a good man

Year A - Advent 4
Readings: Isaiah 7:10-17 Romans 1:1-7 Matthew 1:18-25 Psalm 24 or 24:1-7


Today's gospel reading, from Matthew, talks about the birth of Jesus - from the perspective of Joseph.
Joseph is the lesser known of the 'Mary and Joseph' pair. We don't hear as much about him, usually, but today, I'm going to focus on Joseph and his role in this story of Jesus' birth - and Jesus' life - and what kind of model that can give us as we prepare for Christmas.
So who is Joseph?
In a nativity scene, Joseph is the guy standing next to Mary and the baby Jesus. How do you know it's Joseph? Well, because he's standing next to Mary and the baby Jesus.
But how do you know if the figures are not already set up?
When you take the figures out of the box, you can find Joseph by a process of elimination:
This is Mary, obviously. Here's Jesus, obviously. This one's carrying a lamb; he must be one of the shepherds. This is a king; he's wearing fancy clothes, and he's got a gift. This one's got wings, obviously an angel. Okay, that leaves - this guy - must be Joseph.
He's not carrying a lamb or leading a camel or bringing gifts. He's not singing. Usually, he's just standing there. So why does he get to be right in the middle of the scene - in the middle of the biggest event in history?
It would look like Mary and Joseph, with the baby, are mom and dad, so if that was the case, that's why he's important. But as the angel in today's reading explained, the child conceived in Mary was "from the Holy Spirit," so God is Jesus' "real" father.
Joseph married Jesus' mother, so in a sense, Joseph was Jesus' step-dad.
Probably that wasn't something they tried to explain to the neighbors, though.
"Joseph, your son broke my window!" "Well, actually, he's not my son..."
What else do we know about Joseph? How can we imagine what he was like as a person?
Well, he was a carpenter. So, I suppose if he lived in Silsbee, he might work for Westvaco - or at the pallet factory - or maybe he'd have his own cabinet shop behind his house.
If he was a member here at St. John's, he'd probably get drafted into being the Junior Warden at least once. The first time I came to St. John's, I pulled into the back parking lot, looking for the door to come in at, and there were three guys standing outside looking up at the roof. I'm pretty sure one of them was Bill Phillips, and Lloyd Boone may have been out there, too. I don't know what they were doing exactly – I guess they were fixing something - but probably Joseph would have been in that group.
I also bet he'd have been one of those folks helping people fix their houses after Rita. He and Vernon Gray would talk shop. Probably he'd have a long honey-do list, so he and John Derkits could commiserate about that, and Mary would probably complain to Bonnie that Joseph still hadn't fixed the back door to shut all the way, and Bonnie would nod sympathetically.
Anyway, that's how I imagine it. But it's a fair enough guess, because this is a real man we're talking about, and why would he be that much different from any of the men here?
Joseph was a regular person. He did normal things, dealt with normal problems with job, house, kids - except that his oldest was the son of God... Imagine that as a step-dad - even if God did give him the job and presumably backed him up, it can't have been easy raising Jesus.
We hear a few more things about Joseph up to the point when Jesus was about 12, and then the story skips ahead to Jesus at about 30 and then we don't hear any more about Joseph. So, it's possible he died before Jesus started his ministry.Joseph was a central figure in Jesus' young life, and he can be a good model for how we relate to Jesus, just as Mary is a good model.
What do we learn about him from today's reading?
Mainly, we learn two things: he was a good man, and he obeyed God.
We heard first that Joseph was engaged to Mary when he found out she was pregnant.
The next thing said about him is that, "being a righteous man," he didn't want Mary exposed to public disgrace. He was going to treat his fiancée kindly even if she'd done wrong by him.
But then, an angel appears and tells him not to be afraid to marry her - the child is from the Holy Spirit, and he should name the baby Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.
This really is an odd message, delivered in an alarming way. I can't imagine what I would think to receive a message like that. It's hard to see how it would clarify the situation.
Joseph's response, though, when he woke up, was to do what the angel told him. We don't know whether any of this business about the Holy Spirit and God saving his people through this child made sense to Joseph; the text doesn't say what he thought about it - just that he did what God told him to do.
One thing I noticed about the way this passage tells the story is that, in this account, Joseph never says anything. He plans and decides to do something, he listens to the angel, and he does what the angel tells him. But he doesn't talk about it.
That struck me as similar to several men I know. Although quietness isn't confined to men, and there are many men who aren't quiet, there are a lot of guys who operate like this - they think about something and make plans, they may listen to advice, and when they decide what they're going to do, they do it. But there may not be a lot of talking in the process.
Maybe you know one of these guys. Maybe you're sitting next to him.
Maybe the person next to you is digging you in the ribs.
When I got to thinking about Joseph and what he may have been like, in relation to this doing-more-than-talking aspect, I thought of my Uncle Jim - not a big talker, but definitely a good man. He does right by his family, more so than we deserve sometimes, helps people who need help, supports his wife in her activities, and deals honestly with people.
That's how I imagine Joseph. Not much of a talker, necessarily, and not all that complicated, but someone who's honorable. He was kind to Mary, and he was obedient to God.
It's hard to represent that visually, unless you put a halo or something over his head, so that's why in nativity scenes, it looks like Joseph is just standing there, doing nothing special. But there's a lot more to it - he's standing there with Mary and Jesus, claiming them as his, looking out for them and providing for them. He's just a good man - and he's obeying God. That's all. And that puts him front and center in the middle of God's biggest plan for human history.
And good men, obeying God, are always right in the middle of whatever God's doing, wherever they are. It's like that for good men today - you can't tell just by looking at them, but watching how they live, it's obvious and powerful, even though it's not complicated.
Who do you know like this?
Think of these men when you look at Joseph in the nativity scene. Think how their example tells us something about how to make room and provide for Christ in our lives.
How does Joseph provide a pattern for us in preparing for Jesus' coming at Christmas?
Joseph claimed Jesus, worked to make a home for him, providing for him and for the people who nurtured him. Joseph made space for Jesus to grow and protected him while he was vulnerable and weak.
That's what we can do, individually and as a community: acknowledge Christ's place in our households, make space for him, and allow for his role in our lives to grow by providing for things that nurture our communion with Christ. Also, we can protect this process of growth, especially when it's new or weak or in other ways vulnerable.

In one of our Christmas hymns, we sing, 'O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray. Cast out our sin and enter in; be born in us today.'
But that sounds more like how Mary received him, and maybe you can't relate to the way Mary made space for Jesus. Maybe you're more like Joseph. In that case, here's a verse from a different hymn, with substantially the same meaning but a different image. 'let each heart prepare a home where such a mighty guest may come.'

There's a much more modern country and western song by Emerson Drive called 'A Good Man,' and the chorus goes like this:
I wanna be the one, when all is said and done,
who lived a good life, loved a good wife,
and always helped someone in trouble.
On the day they lay me down, I want everyone to gather ‘round
and say, 'He was a father, brother, neighbor and a friend. He was a good man!'
I was thinking that, if Joseph did die while Jesus was still a teenager or a young man, this would be the kind of thing Jesus might have said about his step-dad, the man who claimed him, made a place for him, and provided for him and his mother... "He lived a good life, loved a good wife, and always helped someone in trouble...he was a father, brother, neighbor and a friend - he was a good man."What more than that would you need?
Would it matter whether he was a pipe-fitter, a police officer, a professor or a priest?
He was a good man, and he obeyed God.
That's an excellent pattern to follow.

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Given to St. John's, Silsbee
Dec. 23, 2007