Joseph

Who was Joseph? We slide over him--the shepherds get more air time than he does in the Christmas plays. Of course he wasn't the father, and wasn't the husband--yet. Either would have been a position of authority--everybody knew to look first to the father in the family. But he was only a stand-in.

Of course God was turning the old order on its head, and now the ruler was helpless and God's power shone in weakness. But even so, Joseph wasn't the worldly family ruler yet. He hadn't even married Mary yet--accepted and acknowledged, but not married.

Why not marry her and forestall the odd looks? There might have been some prosaic problem like a lack of funds to pay the expenses, but my guess is that he was too awed to marry yet. Something holy was happening, and he had to wait. So he had reverence and practical (maybe even emotional) patience.

We're told he was just (or righteous--the word's the same). When he found that Mary was pregnant, which meant she had been unfaithful/impure, he remembered his duty to God's justice. There's a punishment for lawlessness, even for those dear to you. He tempered this with mercy--not Divine gracious mercy that shares the punishment, but the honorable mercy of a man who tries to mitigate the punishment. But he listened when God told him what was really about to happen.

What would that message have meant to Joseph? In his home the Savior would grow up. He was a poor man--how can he possibly prepare things correctly for the Savior? Would the Savior need to go study under the greatest rabbi?

If the mother governs the nest, representing the welcome and nurture and growth, the father is the guardian of the threshold, looking both ways and representing the claims of the family to the world and of the world to the family. He must be both just and loyal, and in some way justice must come first. He has the responsibility of the sword to fight for his family, and it is evil to do that without justice. Joseph was just.

He took on the responsibilities of being the husband without being the husband yet. He took on the responsiblities of being the father, without being the father-yet. He unexpectedly took on the ludicrous role of protector of God.

In the great drama he was not going to be a central character, though he probably expected to be important, and didn't know he would completely vanish from the scene. Mary was to be the archetypal Christian. Joseph was more like John the Baptist: she must increase and I must decrease. Or perhaps like Martha, with the necessary lesser duties.

I imagine Joseph outside the stable with the livestock, keeping an eye on the displaced beasts that panic at the smell of blood, waiting and hearing the pain he cannot protect Mary from. Wondering how he's going to try to raise a prophet and Savior. And now and then wondering how he's going to pay the midwife. For he was a just man.