Mary's Joseph

Fathers rule.

And I dont just mean metaphorically.

God has many names-Jehovah, The Great I Am, Almighty, Everlasting, Omnipotent-all of which bespeak His power, His Eternity, and His desires for us.

And yet

Of all the names He has, isnt it interesting that the one He prefers most is that of Father? He could have chosen any of the plethora of names that lay before Him, but it was Father by which He has come to be known best. The ultimate ruler of the universe, the Alpha and the Omega, the final Judge in Israel, is, when its all said and done, a Daddy-Papa. He is indeed masculine, and His sons have Deitys DNA in them-the born-in ability to themselves have the ultimate power of a God--fatherhood.

Papa has given this hardest of jobs to His sons. And the man I think of most when I ponder on the burdens and joys of fatherhood isnt my own dad or even my husband. It is a man born centuries before me, rarely mentioned in the scriptures, but whose job was the most pivotal, most important, and most forgotten in history. I think of the man who had to raise a son who wasnt really his, born of a woman he loved madly. A son he felt unworthy to rear but loved without pause, a son who would call him "Father", a son he would raise as a sacrifice for sin.

Marys Joseph.

Now the New Testament spends a lot of time discussing Mary, and Im not saying theres anything wrong with that. After all, she had been long foretold in the Old Testament, she would be the only woman in all of human history to conceive a child without the aid of a human male, not to mention a child who was half-God, half-human. We knew long before Mary was even born that the Savior of humanity would be born through the lineage of Judah, in Bethlehem, to a virgin named Mary. For centuries Jews looked for this Mary, and by New Testament times, her name was both popular and sacred. Every Jewish parent who named their new-born daughter Mary surely had to wonder if this was the fair maiden who would raise the Child of God, the King of the Jews. And each daughter of Israel who bore that name surely had moments of wonder themselves. But this fore-ordained Mary was espoused to Joseph, and deeply in love with him. Her days were spent planning her wedding, not contemplating her role in history.

However, a few years ago, I began to wonder about Joseph. I wondered about the kind of man God Himself chose to bear the burden of raising this most unique and mortally vital Son to both manhood and Godhood, and the heavy role this Son was to play in the history of man and God. The chosen "para"-father would have to be a remarkable man indeedtaught well in the history of his people and God, but not so rigid that he could not accept a new way, a new time, an impossible situation, and a glorious miracle.

To understand just how remarkable a man Joseph was, we need to understand the thinking of the time. Under the laws of ancient Hebrews-those under which the Jews lived and legal matters were settled-a woman was to be a virgin when she was married. Laws were quite harsh then, and it is true that they did indeed favor the man. A woman who had sex outside of marriage could be open to public scorn and ridicule, exiled, or even stoned to death. While in written form they could be applied to men as well, they rarely, rarely were. Much of a mans sexual appetite was overlooked, or seen as the nature of the beast-even ordained by God at times of plural marriage--and therefore given more leniency.

But hold on here. This in no way made it any easier for men. Just because a mans sexual indiscretions were "overlooked" it didnt mean he didnt suffer. His womans "sins" were heaped upon him with a fervor and cruelty that could be back-breaking. A wandering girlfriend, wife, or even a daughter was a cause for an "open-season" attitude on the men in her life unless they chose to punish her harshly. Under the laws of the time, if you were espoused to a woman who was found to be dallying with another man, or who had lied about her virtue, you had three choices. You could put her aside quietly, breaking the engagement without public announcement. You could bring her before the city and publicly humiliate her, breaking the espousing and letting the world know why, making an example of her, and a warning to other women who might find themselves tempted. You could also bring her before a tribunal, opening her to both public humiliation and the possibility of being exiled or-in extreme cases-put to death by stoning.

Now comes the difficult part for men within such a society. Once it became public knowledge that a mans woman had chosen to seek out sexual comfort in the arms of another, the men within that society could be heartless, relentless, and wickedly cruel. Such was the fear of the pressure exerted upon a scorned man that most fiancés or husbands chose to, at the very least, publicly disavow this woman, therefore redeeming himself in the eyes of his fellow men. Even if he didnt want to do so-if he loved his wife and wanted to stay with her-the social pressures of the time were almost impossible to overcome, and most gave in to them.

Such was the world in which the love of Mary and Joseph bloomed. They didnt worry about the laws surrounding a broken engagement; such things didnt apply to them, for Mary was known to no man, and Joseph was secure in this knowledge. He was proud of his beautiful wife-to-be, and as anxious for the wedding as she was.

And then Josephs world was blown apart.

Mary decided suddenly to visit her cousin Elizabeth, and was gone for three months. Joseph was a little confused, but knew that with the wedding coming up, he would be busy building their home, and that Mary was anxious to visit her family, so he didnt object. For him the time dragged; he missed her so. But for Mary, it went all too quickly. She knew that when she went home, she would have to do the hardest thing in the world-tell the only man she had ever loved that she was with child-a child that he would know was not his.

The day came. Mary was home, and surely Joseph was overjoyed to see her. He must have seemed confused by her sorrowful demeanor and quiet voice. Perhaps she was pale with worry, and seemed older than her young years portrayed. What she had to say must have hit Joseph like a blow to the gut.

He must have stared at her for a long time. How could she have done this to him? I am sure that Marys eyes pleaded for him to believe her. After all, he had been raised knowing that the promised Messiah would be born to a virgin named Mary, a descendant of David through the lineage of Judah. But to Joseph, it just couldnt be this Mary, HIS Mary. Maybe it is because the Torah made no mention of Mary being married, or even needing to be married, that he disbelieved that the foretold Mary was this Mary, standing before him. Maybe it was that all-too-frequent failing of mortalswhile he believed in the words, the reality was just so ordinary, so unexpected, that it just couldnt be.

The emotions that flooded his being had to vary from shock to anger to deep sorrow. And yet in spite of what he had been taught and accepted as doctrine, Joseph could not bring himself to believe. Still, Joseph was a good man, and looking into the warm eyes of a woman he loved, he promised to end the engagement and put her aside quietly, without humiliation. They both knew that she would suffer enough-she would be showing soon. Joseph would not add to that suffering.

Mary went home a broken-hearted woman, and Im sure cried all night long. Josephs tears were no less just because he was a man, and sleep was not his that night. So when the angel appeared and told him that Mary had spoken the truth, and not to fear taking her as his wife, he didnt have to be awakened. When the angel explained that Mary would need a husband to take care of her and shield her from the cruelty and scorn of man while she raised the Son of God, Joseph accepted the calling then and there, and could scarcely wait for morning to run and tell his beloved that all was well, and that they were still to be one. Their joy was complete, and the marriage went on as planned.

But while Mary was made a legitimate wife, Joseph was not so lucky. Understand that people were not stupid. Mary was at least three months along in her pregnancy when she returned from her cousins, and by the time she and Joseph wed, she was probably close to being half way through the nine month gestation. Even back then people knew how long a pregnancy was. How cruel the snickers and whispers behind their backs must have been. People assumed that either Mary had been with another man, or that Joseph was lying when he claimed to have not "known" her before the wedding. Either way, the scandal and backbiting-especially between the gossipy hordes of women in the marketplace-had to be brutal.

Oh how Joseph must have suffered! Not only was he not allowed to consummate the marriage with Mary until after the birth of Jesus, but he bore the awful burden of the rumors and accusations alone. He loved Mary, and would have shielded her from the words of the others. And when I think of how the men of his town must have treated him-their taunts, their viciousness, their insinuations-I bleed for Joseph. Marys burden grew in her belly each day, and would be relieved with the agony of birth. Joseph would live the rest of his life with the load he carried not just for himself and the cruelty of the community, but for this woman he loved, and the son he would raise as his own.

I dont know if there came a point when Mary and Joseph told Jesus about His parentage, or if this Son of both Heaven and Earth simply used that part of Himself that was God and discerned it. The Scriptures do not say. Nor is anything more said of Joseph after Jesus is found teaching in the Synagogue when He was twelve years old. But here is what I do know to be true about the man who raised the Son of God.

He was a kind man, because he did what most men in his place would never have done. He was a good teacher, because he raised and taught Jesus as best he could, under the weighty knowledge that he was responsible for teaching a child who was part God. He was patient and loving with this child, and loved Him as he did the other children that would later be born to Mary and himself. I am sure that he thought himself unworthy of the task of raising the Messiah, the Son of God. I am sure he prayed often, yelled occasionally, and even cried when the frustration and weight of his calling pressed down hard upon his shoulders. And perhaps most difficult of all given the times in which he lived, he was a loving, gentle, and long-suffering husband to Mary, carrying and fighting not only his own demons, but hers as well. Joseph was not only a remarkable man, but the worlds best example of a father. This man who wasnt even foretold in the Old Testament and rarely mentioned in the New Testament, I believe, was the second most important man in all of history.

And to those feminists out there who would use the story of Mary and Joseph to somehow manipulate and twist into their own "I-told-you-so!" story of ultimate unfairness, I submit to you that Joseph played perhaps the ultimate role in shaping the future teaching of Jesus Christ himself. I wonder if Joseph and his kindness toward Mary was on the mind of Jesus when the adulterous woman was brought before Him by the hypocritical Pharisees of the time. He knew the law of the land; He knew that they had the right to stone her. I wonder if He thought of His sweet mother, and the law of her time that would have had the right to stone her. I wonder if He thought of the man He knew as "Papa," and the mercy and compassion Joseph had shown to Mary when he had thought she had broken her covenant with him and slept with another. I wonder if the example of forgiveness that entered His mind was that of Joseph, who had originally chosen to not humiliate and hurt this woman, even when he had every right to exact a pound of flesh when his pride was wounded, and his manhood shamed. I wonderdid Jesus mind play upon what might have been had Joseph not been the man he had been?

I have no doubt that the role Joseph played in the life of Jesus was at least as pivotal as the role God Himself played. The story of Joseph wasnt just background noise to the "Greatest Story Ever Told." Joseph himself was the greatest story-the story of a father. Jesus had the benefit of being half-God-the only person in human history to pull off perfection had to be half-God to do so.

Joseph was a fully mortal man-just as prone to weaknesses and failings as anyone else. And yet in spite of these things, he rose to the occasion. Jesus wasnt just the story of a Son, He was the story of a father-and not God the Father, but Joseph the father. I believe with all my heart that the New Testament was more than just the story of Jesus, but the story of a father, and a magnificent one at that. The story of Jesus was Gods way of telling the story of a father.

Thank God for men, and the fathers they are. They are magnificence in the face of mortality, glory in spite of failings, and great achievement in the face of overwhelming odds. In the face of a justice system that has cut them out of the process, and a society that has left them impotent in the name of Political Castration, they still manage to rise to the occasion, showing that Deitys DNA is as embedded in them now as it was in the time of Joseph.

God is male, but most of all a Father. Joseph was a man, but most of all, a father. Within the realm of Heaven, there is a God who would be Father. It is no stretch of the imagination to believe that within all men, there is a father who would be God, and a son who is watching, and learning. Heaven decreed itfathers confirm it.

Happy Fathers Day, menyou are mans closest link to God, and Gods greatest hope for man.

Keep the faith, dadsyou are in all things courage personified.

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