Speaking Without Words: The Story of Joseph

Six stockings are hung by the faux chimney with care, the upstairs balcony railing twinkles with a hundred miniature starry lights, and the pink tinsel Christmas tree is fully decorated.  Already, the children's Advent box is filled with candy, the snow village is covered in a thick blanket of white, and the velvet poinsettias decorate any remaining flat surfaces. 

Little hands have arranged and rearranged (at least a dozen times) the nativity with its shepherds and other visitors at Jesus' birth.  Even the Christmas gifts are all wrapped and ready for the giving. And on the kitchen table sits my favorite, the circle of purple and pink candles awaiting the first night of Advent. 

All around me, my home whispers in celebration.  The Light of the World is coming!

While I'm sure some of you will roll your eyes at my rushing the season, this early preparation for Christmas is quite intentional.  All the trappings of the season are ready.  Even the weather has brought the bitter cold of winter.  All that is left is for me to prepare my heart for Advent.

Yes.  Instead of spending the whole month before Christmas focused on buying presents, taking family pictures, or decorating, I have more time to focus on making sure my family and I pause to dwell on Jesus.

This year, our ladies Bible study group has been working through Karen Kingsbury's The Family of Jesus.  Each week, we have been gathering to discuss one person in the nativity story--Joseph, Zechariah, John the Baptist, Elizabeth, James, and Mary.   

We're two weeks from the end of our study, and while the book, itself, hasn't provided groundbreaking revelations about the Christmas story, it has served as a wonderful springboard for my diving into Scripture to explore these persons in-depth.

Perhaps because I'm a mother, I tend to look at Christmas from Mary's perspective.   And yet, Joseph has captured my attention the most this year.  

I read through the pages of the gospels and find there is not one word by Joseph recorded in Scripture.  

Mary has the Magnificat, Elizabeth praises aloud when the infant John jumps in her womb at Mary's presence, and even Zechariah sings aloud at his son's--the forerunner of Jesus'--birth.  

Joseph, however, is oddly silent.   It is this quiet nature that makes me pause.

Matthew writes of Joseph, "Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.  But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, 'Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.' All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 'The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel^' (which means 'God with us'). When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus" (Matt. 1:19-25). 

The words "divorce her quietly" and "after he had considered this" reveal an introspective man, a man who, like Mary, pondered things in his heart without the need to make all his thoughts known to the entire world...without the need to convince an entire world that he was right.  

What I often forget is that as soon as Joseph obeyed the angel, he assumed Mary's guilt publicly.   

By marrying his pregnant fiance, he was claiming both the child and the sin as his own.   

For the rest of his days, those around him would label him a Sinner with a capital S.  Even as the years passed and as his family grew more distanced from the birth and shotgun marriage so that Mary and Joseph were again accepted more in the community, I'm sure every once in awhile, he would flinch under a Pharisee's critical tone aimed directly at him or hear his name invoked as a warning to children, "Don't do what Joseph did.  Wait until you're married to consummate the union."

Perhaps this is why God chose Joseph.  Another man when faced with this situation may have spent a lifetime yelling from the street corners to proclaim his innocence.  Another man would have spent a lifetime shoving his young son in the world's face in a "Here's the Messiah!!!" way, like some grand circus act.  

Yet, this was not Joseph.  He did not yell his innocence from the rooftops.  He did not loudly insist upon his personal importance in the kingdom plan.  As far as we know, no one but him, Mary, and likely Elizabeth and Zechariah ever knew and wholly accepted the truth of Jesus' conception.  We are not even sure if Joseph's parents or even Mary's parents knew about the angels and/or if they completely believed the story in faith, although I personally think any parents who raised such righteous people as Mary and Joseph likely knew and believed. 

Instead, Joseph simply continued walking the path he had always been on--a path of righteousness where he continued to obey God and listen for His voice...all without speaking a recorded word for the generations to come to read.

When the angel appears to Joseph in a dream not once, not twice, but three times in Jesus' early years, Scripture does not record Joseph speaking one word to question, to ask, or to reply. He simply awakens and immediately acts in accordance with what God has told him to do.

Even when young Jesus is found in the temple after having been missing for three days and Joseph is surely concerned, only Mary is recorded speaking words of concern when they find Jesus.  Joseph says nothing.   

In our present culture, it's too often about how many people can you get your message out to, how loud you speak, and how many people you can convince with your arguments.  Even Christians are guilty of getting into verbal arguments with other Christians, browbeating or withdrawing fellowship from those who dare to not agree with them on the finer points of Scripture that life-long devoted commentators dispute. Sadly, the "I am right, so you must listen to me" mentality permeates both the world and the church.

And then there is the example of Joseph. 

We who love the Lord with our whole heart, soul, and mind, can benefit from being like Joseph.  We need not insist on our own righteousness.  We do not need to make a huge name for ourselves or loudly proclaim our knowledge of Scripture as the correct reading of God's Word. 

Even if what the world thinks about us is dead wrong, we need only keep walking in the path of righteousness.  Our lives, not merely our words, will most accurately record our relationship with God.

The Significance of Twenty Children

There I am, surrounded by a table full of young boys, all under the age of six.  Two of them keep sneaking open their markers when they think I'm not watching, the temptation to color a shepherd standing alone against the void of night much too great to withstand, or so it seems.   

My Bible lies open in front of me revealing the words of the familiar Christmas story.  It's not like I even have to look, read the verses. 

I know the beginning, middle, and end by heart.  

Even without reviewing my teacher's book, I know last week was the story of the shepherds and Christ's birth.  The week before spoke of the immaculate conception as well as two angels visiting both Mary and Joseph. 

This week is the Magi.  Gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  Camels, elephants, tents, and a star lighting the way to the young Christ child's home in Bethlehem.

We count the wise men on the coloring sheet, discuss how it may have been more than three men even though they only brought three gifts.

The boys squint their foreheads hard when I ask them to remember back to Daniel and the lion's den.  I tell them this same Daniel may have been the one who taught some wise men in Babylon the prophecy of Jesus' coming birth so that the wise men generations later would continue to watch for the star.

My oldest son pops open a black marker.  Even to him, this is old news, not really interesting when there is arts and crafts lying in wait.

Then, I mention "mean ole King Herod" and the wise men's dream warning them to return home a different route because of the King's desire to kill the Christ child.  The squirming dies down a bit.  Even at four and five years old, little boys are just wired to hone in on the danger/adventure part of the story.

I have their attention, so I reread the passage where Herod lies to the Magi about his true motives.  When I ask if Herod really wanted to come worship Jesus, one boy's eyes get big.  "Noooooo." he solemnly whispers.  "He wanted to kill him."

And then my eyes fall on the next passage. 

For a moment, I had forgotten this part of the story--King Herod's response when  he realized the Magi had duped him:

"Then when Herod saw that he had been tricked by the magi, he became very enraged, and sent and slew all the male children who were in Bethlehem and all its vicinity, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had determined from the magi. Then what had been spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled:

^'A voice was heard in Ramah,
Weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children;
And she refused to be comforted,Because they were no more'" (Matt. 2:16-18).

As a teenager, I imagined the horror of thousands of children dead.  Years later when I read scholars believe Herod's henchmen may have slaughtered around twenty* children under the age of two, I was less appalled, almost even blew off the event in light of the other horrors of the New Testament. 

Twenty is such a small number in comparison to the other heinous murders Herod is guilty of (including killing his own sons).  Even the historian Josephus doesn't bother to even mention this small event--twenty insignificant Hebrew children in a tiny, insignificant town weren't a blip on his radar.

Twenty children.  Insignificant.  

Today, though, as I sit in too-small chairs with my class of little boys, when I think back to this past Friday's tragedy in Connecticut, twenty doesn't seem so insignificant any more.

My co-teacher and I pause for a moment, both of our hearts sinking in remembrance, filled with words we can't express in the presence of innocence.

I can't not make the connection between one senseless slaughter of innocents with another, even if two thousand years separate them, even if one will tie up all the newspapers and airways for months while another was virtually ignored in a world where only Roman citizens were considered important.

I want to ask God why.  Why did he warn Mary and Joseph but not the other mothers and fathers of small children living in Bethlehem? Why allow such senseless brutality--then. now.?

But with small eyes on me, I say none of this.  I don't know the answer.  I can't wrap my mind around this historical loss of this many children, much less the twenty children who have faces, names, personalities.

So, I swallow the lump in my throat and say what I do know.  

"God protects us every day.  Every second we live without harm is a gift from God.  He does not promise to always keep us from harm.  But His Word does promise that He will never leave us nor forsake us."

In this upcoming week as this sadness burdens our minds and hearts, we must cling to promises from the Word such as these.

He may not always shield us from heartache, pain, and death.  But He does weep with us and will never abandon us, even in the midst of such horrors that this life holds. 

"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me" (Ps. 23:4).

*Walvoord, John F., and Roy B. Zuck, The Bible Knowledge Commentary.  Wheaton: Scripture P, 1985.

Image: François-Joseph Navez (1787–1869) "The Massacre of the Innocents."