{"id":1220,"date":"2021-12-07T08:06:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-07T13:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=1220"},"modified":"2021-12-07T08:06:00","modified_gmt":"2021-12-07T13:06:00","slug":"unspectacular-obedience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2021\/12\/07\/unspectacular-obedience\/","title":{"rendered":"Unspectacular Obedience"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Throughout this season of Advent our focus is \u201cThe Story of Christmas in 20 Words.\u201d  On each of the 20 weekday mornings ending on Christmas Eve, we\u2019ll spotlight a single word from the Gospel accounts that helps us ponder more deeply the birth of Jesus.<\/em>

7. Did<\/strong>

In the story of Jesus, Joseph is a bit like the father of the bride at a wedding.

He\u2019s prominent at the beginning.  Then he disappears.  But in the end has to pay for everything.  

We know very little about the man who assumed the role of Jesus\u2019 father.  Aside from several key anecdotes associated with Jesus\u2019 birth, we see him only once more in the Gospel accounts \u2013 when Jesus at the age of 12 is engaging some of Israel\u2019s teachers in a theological bull session.  He is identified in several texts as \u201cJoseph the carpenter,\u201d a trade which he apparently taught his son.  The word translated \u201ccarpenter\u201d \u2013 tekton<\/em> \u2013 is at the root of our modern word \u201ctechnology,\u201d and described someone who could work with both wood and stone. 

Since Mary always appears alone during the accounts of Jesus\u2019 adult ministry, it has long been assumed that she was widowed by the time her son turned 30.

What happened to Joseph?  No one can say.  What was he like as a father, and what kind of child was Jesus?  Those questions proved to be so interesting to the early church that a few creative authors couldn\u2019t resist the temptation to invent fanciful back stories.

Some of them appear in The Infancy Gospel of Thomas<\/em>, a spurious document that was written at least 150 years after Jesus\u2019 birth, and certainly not by the apostle Thomas.  The young Jesus is presented as an arrogant brat who practices magic tricks.  Joseph tries to redirect his talents to more positive ends, coming across like Peter Parker\u2019s uncle in Spiderman<\/em>: \u201cWith great power comes great responsibility.\u201d 

In other \u201cchildhood narratives,\u201d Jesus makes birds out of mud, claps his hands, and brings them to life \u2013 something that genuinely impresses his playmates.  When Joseph cuts a board too short, he calmly assures his dad that he\u2019s got the problem covered and pulls it out to the right length.  When a neighborhood boy disrespects him, Jesus strikes him dead. 

The early church, to its credit, recognized that such stories were absurdly out of character with everything else we know about Jesus.

The History of Joseph the Carpenter<\/em>, another document of dubious validity, suggests that Joseph was a whopping 90 years old when he became engaged to Mary, and was a widower with six grown children.  Italian Renaissance painters occasionally portrayed him as an old man cradling his newborn son. 

These artists and authors seemed to think that Joseph needed to be more like a grandfather (or great-grandfather) to Mary than a young husband \u2013 someone old enough and wise enough to take care of a vulnerable wife and child. 

But there seems little reason to doubt that Joseph and Mary had three things in common:  They were both starting out in life, they both loved God, and they both displayed extraordinary courage.  

If Joseph was typical of other young men in Israel, he was 16-18 years old at the time of his engagement to Mary.  And assuming that he shared the typical sentiments of any man who has ever been engaged, he must have been devastated by the news of her pregnancy.  The Bible reports his response in a single poignant sentence: \u201cJoseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly\u201d (Matthew 1:19).

Engagement was serious business in first century Palestine.  It could only be terminated by divorce. 

Joseph could make a big scene to protect his reputation: \u201cHey, it wasn\u2019t me.  It\u2019s her!  Can you blame me for dodging a bullet by backing out of this marriage?\u201d  We get a sense of Joseph\u2019s compassion when we learn that he plans to sever the relationship quietly, behind the scenes, without subjecting Mary to the inevitable cascade of public shame.

Then an angel appears to him in a dream.  Like Mary, he learns that this is not an ordinary pregnancy, and these are not ordinary circumstances. 

Matthew 1:24 goes straight to the heart: \u201cWhen Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.\u201d

He did<\/u><\/em> what the angel (that is, God) commanded him. 

This is prompt, simple, unspectacular obedience. 

It\u2019s fascinating that Joseph never speaks in any of the Gospel accounts.  He silently does what is right.  He chooses to come alongside Mary and endure what will undoubtedly be a lifetime of public misunderstanding.  He will not leave her alone in an impossible situation.  Joseph doesn\u2019t journal about his feelings, talk things over with his small group, or post a message to his Facebook page that he is thinking about devoting the following year to an exploration of his spiritual identity.

He simply does<\/u><\/em> what God asks.  Pastor Adam Hamilton gave his account of Joseph\u2019s life a one-word title: Faithful<\/em>. 

Joseph\u2019s willingness to walk steadily with God \u2013 to \u201cpray and obey,\u201d as the old saying goes \u2013 prepares him for two more dreams: the one that will prompt him to take his wife and child to Egypt for safe-keeping from the murderous Herod, and another that will prompt him to return his family to Nazareth.

As Bible scholar Dale Bruner reminds us, Jesus will not greet his followers in the next world with the words, \u201cWell done, good and flashy<\/em> servant.\u201d 

Like Joseph, we can be good and faithful<\/em> servants. 

Let it be said of us what has been said of Jesus\u2019 earthly father for twenty centuries:

He simply did<\/u><\/em> what God commanded. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Throughout this season of Advent our focus is \u201cThe Story of Christmas in 20 Words.\u201d  On each of the 20 weekday mornings ending on Christmas Eve, we\u2019ll spotlight a single word from the Gospel accounts that helps us ponder more deeply the birth of Jesus. 7. Did In the story of Jesus, Joseph is a bit like the father of… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1221,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[119,369,370],"class_list":["post-1220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christmas","tag-joseph","tag-obedience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1220"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1222,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220\/revisions\/1222"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}