Posted on: Saturday, December 20, 2003
EXPRESSIONS OF FAITH
Joseph set example for world
By H.M. Wyeth
Member of Christian Science Society, Kaua'i
If there were Oscars for Bible characters, the hands-down winner for best supporting actor would certainly be Joseph Ben Heli, husband of Mary. What an extraordinary role he had in a story that changed the lives of millions. Not bad for a carpenter from a village in the back of beyond.
Who was he? From the gospels of Matthew and Luke, the only ones that contain narratives of Jesus' birth, we learn that this working-class man came from a distinguished lineage, counting among his ancestors Solomon, David, Ruth the Moabitess and Abraham.
Like the house of David, the land of David had fallen upon hard times by Joseph's day. One of the less illustrious provinces of the Roman Empire, Judea was considered a hardship post for Roman administrators. Like Afghanistan, Israel, Iraq and other fractious parts of today's world, it seethed with ancient ethnic and sectarian disputes. Although the Pax Romana (the peace imposed by Roman control) linked the Mediterranean world in a single polity — something that has never happened since — the union was an uneasy one. Political and economic power rested on another continent, halfway across the empire. The Roman occupation forces' job was to keep the lid on and the tax money flowing. Questions of local culture did not concern them.
In these circumstances, how likely was a simple workman to shape more than tables and door frames? How did Joseph do it? More important, what lessons can people today learn from him?
One of the most interesting points of the stories in Matthew and Luke is that Joseph's script has no lines at all. In Luke's account, Mary has a great spoken and sung part, yet though we hear no words from her husband, how eloquently his works speak!
Here is a man who loves Mary so dearly that he accepts her child, knowing that it is not biologically his own. In a culture that would count a man dishonored whose wife gave birth to another's child, and consider him within his rights to kill them both, he not only does not repudiate them but takes extraordinary measures (see Matthew, Chapter 2) to protect them from death at the hands of King Herod. Clearly Joseph had a sense of integrity that transcended social convention and patriarchal tradition.
Was it perhaps this gentle example that Jesus recalled in his extraordinary treatment of the adulterous woman in the eighth chapter of John's Gospel?
What else? In Matthew's account, which names Joseph's father Jacob, perhaps echoing the earlier Joseph Ben Jacob (see Genesis, Chapter 30), Joseph receives several divine messages in dreams. Like his namesake, Joseph saves his family by moving to Egypt until danger has passed. Though the Pax Romana had facilitated travel through the Mediterranean world, this would still not have been an easy journey, especially for a poor man who may have had no connections in Egypt and no certain means of support in that country. What courage, humility and steadfast love it must have taken for him to obey that angelic command.
Indeed, Joseph gives us a fine example of the kind of love that St. Paul extols in his famous sermon (1 Corinthians 13), the love that endures much, while not ceasing to love, love that does not boast about its accomplishments or make a spectacle of its expression. Though contemporary culture often casts this unconditional, quiet, and steadfast affection as the province of women, Joseph clearly shows that such pure love springs from character, not gender.
Almost 2,000 years later, theologian Mary Baker Eddy equated Joseph with "pure affection blessing its enemies." Is this not the quintessential quality of the Christmas message to all people at all seasons?
