The Figure in the Shadows

The Rev. Whitworth Ferguson III
Manassas Presbyterian Church
Manassas, Virginia
December 9, 2007
Second Sunday in Advent

The Figure in the Shadows
Matthew 1:12-16
Matthew 1:18-25

He stands there solid, strong,
the glow of the light reaching out and down,
away from him,
casting a soft blanket over mother and child,
but leaving him in the dark,
on the edge,
in the shadows.

I collect nativities and in almost all of them,
Joseph is given the same pose:
standing over his wife and newborn son.
In many of them he holds a lantern,
a small flickering flame fed by olive oil
illuminating that first Christmas,
casting light on everyone --
mother, child,
shepherds, wise men,
even the animals,
light on everyone but himself.
He stands there a figure in the shadows.

We know so little about this man Joseph,
the husband of Mary.
Mark’s gospel, the first to have been written,
says nothing of him.
Mark has no infancy narrative,
but instead picks up with Jesus’ life
in adulthood as he began his ministry.
In chapter 6 we find a reference to Jesus as “Mary’s son” (6:3)
as though Joseph never even existed.

John’s gospel, written about 40 years after Mark’s,
also is silent about Jesus’ birth and childhood,
and equally silent about Joseph.

Only Luke and Matthew include stories about Jesus’ birth,
but they differ greatly.
Luke’s birth narrative is the one we probably know best,
and in his the focus is almost entirely on Mary.
It is Mary the angel Gabriel visits;
It is Mary who learns that her child is to be named Jesus.
Joseph is there, but in a quiet supporting role.
By the end of chapter 2, we find Joseph on his way out
as the 12-year-old Jesus seems to bat him away
in that dramatic confrontation in the temple,
when he stayed behind, so he could
“be about his Father’s business” as he told
the anguished Mary and Joseph.

Only Matthew gives us a picture of Joseph.
Only Matthew takes the lantern from Joseph’s hand,
lifts it up and casts its light on the face of the carpenter,
the face of Mary’s husband.
Here, it is Joseph the angel visits,
Joseph the angel speaks to.

The angel – who is not named –
tells Joseph not to be alarmed
that his wife-to-be is pregnant.
He reassures Joseph that nothing scandalous has happened;
that instead something extraordinary is about to happen
from the hand of God himself.
The angel tells Joseph to name his son Jesus,
a Hebrew word that means “he saves”,
“for he will save his people from their sins.”
(1:21)

That’s all the angel says to Joseph
and yet Joseph acts with as much faithfulness
as Mary does in Luke’s recounting.
We do not hear Joseph speak the same words
that Mary spoke,
“Here I am, the servant of the Lord;
let it be with me according to your word.”
(Luke 1:38)
but Joseph’s actions convey that same faithfulness.
He did just what the angel asked of him,
even in the face of possible scandal,
even with all the questions that must have been
swirling through his mind.
In quiet faith, Joseph took Mary as his wife.

It is only in Matthew’s gospel that we find the Wise Men,
and when they finally found their way
to where the star led them,
Matthew tells us,
“they saw the child with Mary, his mother.”
(Matthew 2:11)
Where is Joseph? He’s completely absent,
not even a figure in the shadows.

Matthew provides us with one last appearance for Joseph.
You will recall that when King Herod heard from the Wise Men
that a child had been born King of the Jews,
he was frightened, for Herod was the King of the Jews,
and had worked hard through bribery and corruption
to assure his position,
with the help of his Roman overseerers.

When the Wise Men failed to come back to tell Herod
where he could find the child born in Bethlehem,
he sent out an order that all boys in Bethlehem
under the age of two were to be killed
to wipe out even the remote possibility
that his power might be challenged.

The angel reappeared to Joseph, though,
and told him to take Mary and the child
and flee to Egypt where they would be safe.
And Joseph did just that, again acting without question,
leaving home and hearth behind,
taking his wife and newborn son to a strange land,
a land where they knew no one,
didn’t speak the language,
a land where they would be foreigners, aliens.
And there they remained
month after month after month,
until the angel spoke to Joseph and told him ,
that it was safe to return to the land of Israel.
So Joseph packed up his little family one last time,
and journeyed north from Egypt
going past Bethlehem,
all the way to the region of Galilee,
to a town called Nazareth,
and there they settled.

And there the story of Joseph comes to an end:
just two chapters into Matthew,
two chapters into Luke.
Nothing in Mark, nothing in John.

More than one hundred years following Jesus crucifixion
and resurrection people had a growing desire
to know more about Jesus as a child, an adolescent,
something about all the years that were missing in the gospels.
They also wanted to know more about Mary,
and more about Joseph.
And so a number of gospels popped up,
all of them considered now to be apocryphal,
which means simply that we think of them as
of questionable authenticity.
But they make fascinating reading,
and help us to understand some of the mythology
that has developed over the centuries.

One that is referred to as “The Proto-Gospel of James”
tells us that Joseph was an widower.
One day the leaders of the Temple
called all the elderly widowers
to the Temple to determine which of them God
would assign to look after a 12-year-old girl named Mary
who had been raised within the Temple.
When Joseph was chosen, he protested at first,
“I have sons and am an old man; she is but a child.
I do not want to become the laughingstock
of the sons of Israel” (9)
But he was pressured into taking her,
not as a wife, at first, but as his ward,
his responsibility.
No sooner did Joseph accept the responsibility for Mary
than he left her in the care of the Temple,
and went off to practice his trade,
building houses as an itinerant carpenter.
When he returned six months later,
he found Mary with child,
and he was horrified and mortified.
But he was prevailed upon to take her as his wife,
and there the story follows a more familiar path.

The most charming of the various gospels
is the “Infancy Gospel of Thomas”.
It is thought to have been written around 150,
about 120 years following the crucifixion and resurrection.
In it Jesus appears as a precocious youngster,
finding himself filled with powers he did not understand,
but which he used for great fun,
as well as more than a little mischief.
His beleaguered father did not understand
his son’s strange powers either,
and tried to rein him in, asking him once,
“why do you do such things?”
Another time, when Joseph tried to discipline him,
he “took hold of Jesus’ ear and pulled it hard.”
Jesus’ response to Joseph was cold and biting,
“You have acted very stupidly. … do not vex me.”
Later in this gospel,
as Joseph worked to make a bed for a customer,
he made a mistake in cutting the beams for the frame,
with one ending up shorter than the other.
But his 8-year old son saved the day for him
by pulling the end of the shorter beam
and miraculously stretching it
to make it the same length as the other.

Reading these and other stories are interesting,
but they don’t really help us to find answers about Joseph:
What was it like for Joseph to know that Jesus was not his son?
Did he live long enough to see the beginning of Jesus’ ministry?
Did he know that Jesus was the Son of God, the Messiah?
How would he have felt if he had read either of the genealogies
we find in Matthew and Luke that try to establish
that Jesus was descended from the House of David
through Joseph, but both of which make clear
that Jesus was not Joseph’s son?

Did you hear that in our first lesson?
We have one “begat” after another,
this one the father of that one,
But did you hear the difference when we got to Joseph:
Listen to it again: “Matthan, the father of Jacob,
Jacob the father of Joseph,
the husband of Mary,
of whom Jesus was born, who was called the Messiah.”
(Matthew 1:16)

Luke was no less subtle when he wrote,
“Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his work.
He was the son (as was thought) of Joseph…” (Luke 3:23)
a powerful, pointed parenthetical
that left Joseph standing in the shadows.

And yet when we shine light on him,
Joseph emerges from the shadows,
a man of quiet faith, peace-filled faith,
a man who responded so faithfully and willingly
to God’s every call,
doing what was asked of him,
demonstrating time and time again
the faith of Abraham.

In some of my nativities Joseph is posed with a shepherd’s crook,
rather than a lantern,
and that seems so very appropriate,
for he was very much a shepherd,
watching over his young wife,
and the son born to her,
looking after them, protecting them,
even leaving everything behind
to take them to a strange land
to keep the son born to Mary from danger.

I have only one nativity in which Joseph
is not standing over the manger scene.
It is a lovely, tiny nativity that came from France.
There’s no stable, no shepherds, no Wise Men,
no ox, or ass, or cattle.
Just Joseph, Mary, and the baby Jesus.
And Joseph is on his knees,
just as Mary is,
the two of them obedient, humble,
worshipful before the son of God,
before Emmanuel,
before God himself.
In this nativity, Joseph needs no lantern,
for he is in the light,
the light cast by the Son of God,
the light that shines on all us.

This nativity is a helpful reminder to me
not only of who this man Joseph was,
but also that is on our knees
as obedient, humble children of God
that we all emerge from the shadows,
and find ourselves bathed in the light,
the light of peace, the light of joy,
the light of expectation and anticipation.
It is on our knees that we are best poised
in humbleness and obedience
to know the light that overcomes all darkness,
the light that leaves no one in the shadows:
the light of the Son of God,
the Messiah -
our Lord Jesus Christ.
AMEN