Saint Joseph

Reni’s Portrait of Saint Joseph with the baby Jesus

Paul’s Letter to the Romans makes a strong case that our inheritance as children of God depends not on the law, but on faith. What does it mean to be faithful? During the season of Lent I have had a bit of a shocking realization. As I look back at past Lenten disciplines, I have discovered that I spent a lot of time creating laws for myself. While for some giving up or taking on something provide a new spiritual intimacy with God, I tended towards the extremes. If I give up chocolate for forty days, then God will shower me with grace. I started to believe that I needed to make myself feel so bad that I would have to rely more heavily upon God (not good), or that I needed to lure God into loving me by making myself into such lowly creature (much worse).

The Rev. Evan Garner pointed out on Ash Wednesday, Lent IS NOT about competitive suffering (bragging about how bad we have it) causing God to love us more. God loves us unconditionally! Lent IS NOT a time to make ourselves feel bad enough that we have to rely more on God. Focusing on sin (especially in others) can be an obsessive and self-centered practice that does not even allow God in to transform us. Upon reflection I have been “Lenting” all wrong. Lent IS a time when we intentionally focus upon giving our hearts back to God. It IS a season about returning to God. Lent IS all about faith, but again what does it mean to be faithful?

Faithfulness seems a slightly evasive quality. Sometimes I find it easier to describe what it is not, then what it is (it is not being perfect, right, or unquestioning). Yet, even more helpful than describing what faithfulness is or is not, talking about who is faithful aides me in understanding how I might continue to return to God in this season of Lent.

Today we celebrate a saint who is a paragon, a shining example of faithfulness. Today we celebrate Saint Joseph, the husband of Mary mother of Christ Jesus. Today we look at a quiet, faithful man that stands out as an ideal partner in our Lenten journey.

When I was a child growing up at St. Andrew’s, Birmingham there were only two parts in the Epiphany pageant that I wanted to play. One was the role of the inn keeper because I only had one line, “There’s no room in the inn,” and the other was that of Joseph. I liked acting as Joseph because he said no words, he just protectively walked with the pregnant Mary, like a loyal sheep dog, and watched over the birth of Jesus with loving admiration. Reflecting twenty years later, I find that being Joseph taught me that his seemingly small and simplistic part in the Incarnation of God took faithfulness that sheds light on how to walk through Lent.
Only two of the four Gospel accounts even mention Joseph, and in those books, Matthew and Luke, he is not even quoted. His faithfulness was not seen in mighty words, but rather in his deeds. Matthew describes Joseph as a righteous man who was going to dismiss Mary quietly when he discovered she was with child. Joseph could have legally put Mary to death for adultery, but instead he had a dream. In this dream an angel told him that he was to take Mary as his wife, as the child within her was from the Holy Spirit. Joseph could have ignored the dream, but instead he acts upon his faith and takes Mary as his wife, knowing that the child she bore was not his own but God’s.

Courageously later in Matthew, Joseph again led by angelically laden dreams, protects his family from Herod’s psychopathic, narcissistic slaughtering of innocent children. Joseph dreams that he should take his family from Israel to Egypt and he does, then he guides them back to Israel. Joseph fearing that Archelaus, the son of Herod, would seek revenge against him, even has a final Divine dream in which the Lord told him to avoid Herod’s son and go to Nazareth.

Yet, Joseph’s faithfulness to God was certainly not always easy. Joseph, a carpenter by trade, most likely had to work very hard to provide for his family. And while he probably taught Jesus’ his woodworking trade, traditionally scholars believe he was much older than Mary, and he died before Jesus’ adult ministry. So the last example of Joseph’s faithfulness is what we read today from Luke’s account of the Gospel.
What about this passage shows Joseph’s saintly quality, his faithfulness? After acting out a plot line that belongs in a Hollywood movie, Mary and Joseph track down their missing twelve-year-old Jesus, who has been in the Temple for three days with the religious elite of the day. Mary offers an appropriate parental response, “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” Jesus almost nonchalantly answers, "Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" Luke says that Mary and Joseph do not quite understand this.
Maybe Joseph was not smart enough to get what Jesus was saying. Maybe he was not paying attention. However, I believe that Joseph’s misunderstanding points to an extreme sense of faithfulness towards Jesus. He believes that Jesus is his son. Even when the adolescent Incarnate God says that his Father is in heaven, Joseph still wants to protect him, to provide for him, and to teach him how to live in this world. This is Joseph’s faithfulness, staying by Jesus even beyond understanding.