Joseph and the Grace of Forgiveness

The entire spring issue of Cultivating Oaks is devoted to the theme of grace. Published are stories by Lancia Smith, Malcolm Guite, Annie Nardone, Junius Johnson, Adam Nettesheim, Amy Malskeit, Steven Garber, Corey Latta, Tom Darin Liskey, Nicole Howe, Amelia Freidline, Lara D’Entremont, and several others. 

For me, reading a very familiar Bible story – the account of Joseph in the Book of Genesis – led me in an unexpected direction of grace. You can read the story, “Joseph and the Grace of Forgiveness,” at Cultivating Oaks Press. 

 

Photograph by Michael Olsen via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Backward and forward

After Hebrews 11:22 and Genesis 50:15-26 

He looks backward

and forward, there 

at the end of his life.

It is important

to remind his family

and the people from

where they came. He’d

arrived a slave; he became

a near-king, wielding

unimaginable power.

The refuge would become

a prison; they’d slip

into slavery, quietly,

until freedom arrived. He

reminds them, when they’d

leave, to take his bones

with them, to be buried

in the land promised.

 

Photograph by ccd20 via Unsplash. Used with permission.

Some Sunday Readings

 

A Selection of New Songs for Christians – Tim Challies.

 

Live for Days You Will Not See – Scott Hubbard at Desiring God.

 

Just a glimpse – poem by Joy Lenton at Poetry Joy.

The second gift of Christmas

After Matthew 1:18-25

A wife to be, then.

A child to be, then.

A man whose marriage, then,

was not to be.

He did not beat his breasts

he did not tear his clothes

he did not shout his victimhood

he moved quietly

because of regard

because of feeling

for her

his self was crushed

but he was a righteous man

a fair man, a just man

until the dream

the second dream

and he knew

what he thought a curse

had become a gift

the second gift

a gift to care for

a gift to grow

a gift to protect

a gift to name

Painting: The Dream of St. Joseph, oil on canvas (1642-43) by Philippe de Champaigne; National Gallery, London.

Joseph’s Psalm

Never have I known such fear.

Never have I felt such weight, as if all of the wood that passes through my hands presses down upon my soul.

Never have I known such a dream, a dream which changes everything.

Into my hands is placed responsibility for Mary, and for the child to come.

The child will be a son, not my son but my son, my son whom I will love and cherish.

I am to raise my son to be a man, a man who will save his people, the man not a man foretold by the scriptures.

Comprehension is hard. Acceptance is not. Acceptance becomes the obvious thing, the natural thing.

I am experienced in working common wood; it is my life. Into my hands is being placed the finest cedar of Lebanon, the wood God used to build the temple, the temple planned by David and erected by Solomon.

The best wood, the finest wood, the most beautiful.

Never have I known such fear.

Never have I know such love.

Related: Herod’s Lament.

Painting: Joseph and the child Jesus by Giovanni Battista Caracciolo (circa 1622); private collection, Venice.

“A Winter Dream” by Richard Paul Evans

Joseph Jacobson works with his 11 brothers in a Denver advertising agency owned by his father. Joseph, the second youngest (from his father’s four marriages), is clearly the favored son. His brothers are consumed by growing envy and anger, and eventually find a way to banish him from the firm, the family and Denver.

Sound vaguely familiar?

It should. It’s the story of Joseph – he of the coat of many colors in the Bible, the son of Jacob, the young man sold into slavery who eventually becomes the second most powerful man in Egypt. In A Winter Dream by Richard Paul Evans, Joseph Jacobson becomes the second most powerful man in a Chicago-based advertising agency.

Evans, author of the 20-year-old favorite The Christmas Box and numerous other books, has told an engaging story that demonstrates the author’s own knowledge of the advertising business and a fairly clever way of retelling the Biblical story. Evans includes a number of modern flourishes and embellishments – a girlfriend from southern Utah, assignment to a company backwater instead of the prison of the Biblical story, and a coat that, while it isn’t of many colors, is still full of meaning for Joseph and his brothers.

Telling a story that holds the reader’s interest is Evans’s long suit. This isn’t serious literary fiction, but it’s not meant to be. It’s simply a story about relationships, brokenness, healing, and redemption. The novel includes a bit of accelerated plot development at the end – some of the resolution could have stood another chapter or two – but it is still a good story.

Related: My review of The Christmas Box.

The Character of Joseph

One of my favorite movies about the birth of Christ is The Nativity Story, released in 2006. One of the reasons is that it has more about the character of Joseph than most nativity movies.

There’s not much we really know about Joseph. He was a carpenter in Nazareth, engaged to marry Mary. After learning she was pregnant, he resolved to divorce her. The text in the Gospel Matthew says he wanted to divorce her quietly and not expose Mary to public disgrace, “because he was a righteous man.”

But then he has a dream, and an angel of the Lord explains what’s happening. The account is not as lengthy as that of the angel and Mary in the Gospel of Luke, but it’s clear that Joseph does exactly what Mary did: he obeys. He “did what the angel of the Lord commanded him to do” and takes Mary into his home as his wife. And when the baby is born, it is Joseph who obeys once again and names the baby Jesus.

He takes the pregnant Mary to Bethlehem for the census, and he was most likely with her when the baby was born and may, as the movie suggests, have helped deliver the baby (there wasn’t anyone else around in the manger). Eight days later, he and Mary bring the baby to the temple “to be consecrated to the Lord,” required for every firstborn male.

While the timing isn’t exactly certain, we know he was with Mary when the Magi visit and present their gifts. And then Joseph has another dream, where the angel of the Lord warns him that Herod is out to kill the child and to take Mary and Jesus to Egypt. After Herod dies, Joseph has a third dream, and an angel tells Joseph to return to Israel.

We can deduce that Joseph taught Jesus to be a carpenter. We know that Jesus had half-brothers, and that Joseph would have been the father (whether you believe Mary was their mother depends upon whether you accept Protestant or Catholic teaching). But we do not know anything else about Joseph – his age, when he died, what he thought about raising Jesus, whether he had doubts like Mary seemed to have at times, or what his personality was like. And nowhere does Jesus mention or refer to Joseph.

We know he was a righteous man. We know he obeyed what he was commanded to do – three times. We know he trained Jesus in his trade, as any father would have done at the time. His job, one that he accepted in rather unusual circumstances, was to protect Mary and the baby, and then to raise the child as his son. He protected his family from both physical harm and the shame that would have attached itself to an unmarried mother and illegitimate child, especially in a small town like Nazareth.

He was an ordinary carpenter who was called to do extraordinary things, and he obeyed.

Over at Faith Barista, Bonnie Gray is asking the question, what character in the Christmas story is speaking to you this year? To see how others answer the question, please visit Faith Barista.

The Giving of a Name

In the gospel of St. Matthew (1:18-23), Joseph, shocked and likely reeling from the news of Mary’s pregnancy, and confronted with the evidence that she had obviously been unfaithful, determines to divorce her, but quietly. It says a lot about the man and his regard for Mary. He didn’t rant and rave and react with outrage. He didn’t make a scene. Instead, he determined upon a quiet course.

Then he has the dream, and the angel tells him what really happened.

Rereading this passage, I’m struck by what I’ve always missed about it. I’ve focused on the result of the dream – Joseph listens, accepts Mary and takes her as his wife. How many times have I read this, and yet I missed something, something I think is important.

And it’s about names. In the dream, the angel does a lot of naming.

The angel calls Joseph by name, and calls him the “son of David,” indicating his heritage, yes, but also an indication of one of the names of Jesus. In other words, the angel was identifying Joseph with the child Mary was carrying, even if that would only become obvious later.

The angel names Mary, and tells Joseph not be afraid of taking her home as his wife.

The angel names the father of the child – God, working through the Holy Spirit.

Then the angel tells Joseph that he, Joseph, will give the child the name Jesus, “because he will save his people from their sins.” Jesus, as my Study Bible points out, is the Greek form of Joshua, which means “the Lord saves.”

Finally, in verse 23, Matthew writes that all of this happened to fulfill what the Lord said through the prophet Isaiah, that the virgin would be with child and give birth to a son, and they will call him “Immanuel, which means, ‘God with us.’” More naming.

But the naming that struck me was that the angel tells Joseph that he will name the child Jesus. This wouldn’t have been news to Mary; the angel had told her at the beginning that she was to name the child Jesus. But the angel didn’t explain why to Mary -- according to the gospel of St. Luke, the angel only said what the child would be. But Joseph was told why the name would be Jesus – because he would save the people from their sins. The angel spelled it out for Joseph.

It was the practice at the time that a son’s name was given at circumcision when the child was eight days old, with the father likely announcing the name. But here the angel is telling Joseph what the name is, telling him that he is to give the name, and essentially telling Joseph that he’s responsible for both Mary and the child – that Joseph would be this child’s earthly father, that just as Mary had been chosen to give birth to this child, Joseph had been chosen to be his father.

And what did Joseph do? He took Mary as his wife, he had no union with her until she gave birth, and he named the child Jesus.

He listened. He did what he was told to do by the angel. He honored Mary and the child. He honored God.

He named the child, like any father did at the time. Like Mary, Joseph accepted the responsibility he’d been given. His obedience was just as striking as Mary’s. And it’s both implicit and explicit in this idea of a name.

(Painting of St. Joseph's Dream by Rembrandt, 1645. Staaliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz,Gemäldegalerie; Berlin)