Joseph - the forgotten person in the Christmas story

Last week I was sat with a friend at a church Christmas lunch and my friend passed comment that we never hear enough about Joseph. And that “Joseph was a good man”. And I agree, Joseph was a good man. In fact that is something of an understatement.
All we know about Joseph is contained in Matthew chapter 1:16 through to chapter 2:23 And in Luke 1: 26 – 2:52. And in Matthew 13:55 Jesus is referred to as “the carpenter’s son” and therefore we assume Joseph was a carpenter.

Traditionally, Joseph is portrayed as being older than Mary. Perhaps quite a bit older. Certainly there is a belief in the Orthodox Church that he was a widower and had children with his first wife who was called Salome. But the point is we simply do not know. We do not know how long Joseph lived in his role as Jesus’ earthly father – he is last mentioned in the Gospel of Luke when Jesus is 12 years old.

We simply don’t know enough about Joseph.

So to the story we know so well. Mary comes to Joseph and tells him she’s pregnant. It is something straight out of a soap opera today. But the story is more complicated than an EastEnders plot.

Joseph and Mary are engaged to be married. And at the time this was a binding arrangement between people. In essence it meant that they were considered to be husband and wife even though they weren’t married. Therefore, unfaithfulness when engaged was considered to be adultery. And under Jewish religious laws adultery meant divorce or death.

We’re told that Joseph is “a righteous man”. This means he was “right with God” he followed God’s wishes. As Joseph was Jewish he also would have followed the Jewish laws which meant he was righteous. And as I’ve said those laws dictated either death or public divorce as a punishment for adultery. Joseph was clearly in love with Mary and didn’t wish to see her die so he had it in his mind to quietly divorce her.

Up to now Joseph is acting righteously. He is doing what Jewish law, God’s law, says he must do. But actually he is doing more than that. He is acting in a way that shows he is concerned for Mary’s dignity and welfare. He is acting through love.

Another way of thinking of “righteous” is by thinking of righteous meaning “just” or “committed to justice.” And Joseph fits that description perfectly. He is following the law as set down in the Jewish scriptures but he is also following what we might think of as a Christian way of thinking – the way of love. And really by following the way of love, an attitude that Jesus would demonstrate in his later life, Joseph was prepared to bend, if not go against the Jewish laws in order to follow the way of love.
In many respects Joseph stands as a fairly minor figure in the Christmas story. And yet he demonstrates to us what it means to be a follower of Jesus. It means that we are to look to the Bible for guidance but equally we are to listen to what God is telling us to do now. These aren’t always one and the same, for I believe God is still speaking and he says things that aren’t in the Bible.

If Joseph had followed what the Jewish scriptures said then Mary would have been very publically divorced or killed. But instead Joseph listened to what God was saying to him. Firstly to treat her with love. And then of course take her as your wife. Forgive her and bring her child up as your own. Oh, and by the way call him Immanuel.

Joseph was being shown how Jesus would teach the world later. In the famous Sermon on the Mount Jesus adopted the same approach “You have heard it said that the law tells you to do this. But I tell you, you have to do more than that” For example:

43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour[i] and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, Matthew 5: 43 - 44

By choosing to live out the heart of the law – which is God’s love for all people – rather than the letter of the law, Joseph was already living out the values that Jesus would demonstrate. The values of God’s kingdom – love.

2,000 years later we as God’s people are still facing situations where we are pulled in different directions. Where the Bible seems to tell us one thing and yet where our hearts are telling us something else. For example over the issue of gay marriage. The Bible appears to have a set of teachings that set out that homosexuality is wrong. But then we hear Jesus telling us to love our neighbour. What is God saying now?

It seems to me that we all could do with the courage and wisdom of Joseph. The courage to obey God and to listen to what is God is saying to us. And the wisdom to discern God’s message of love. And the wisdom to realise life isn’t as simple as we may think. For God is a God of surprises. A God who uses ordinary people like a carpenter from Nazareth to do extraordinary things.

Give me patience and give it me now!

Many of us grew up with the adage “Patience is a virtue” ringing in our ears. Or maybe “Good things come to him who waits”

In James 5: 7 – 10 the writer talks abut patience.

7 Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming.

James 5:7

Having given this piece of advice James then goes on to compare the patience of waiting on the Lord to the patience of a farmer.

“See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains.”

Generally I don’t give much thought to patience. Patience isn’t something I have to be concerned about – unless of course I’m stuck behind a cautious driver at a junction and I find myself saying “Go on! You could have gone then!” And then a voice from the passenger seat says to me “Be patient.”

Patience is a virtue. In other words to be patient, to have patience, is a good thing. So why is that? Why is it good to be patient?

I suppose in certain fields of work or aspects of life, patience is a virtue. For example someone who is engaged in creating a piece of art has to be patient. Or perhaps someone repairing a watch. Or an airline pilot bringing in a plane to land. These all require patience.

But of course it is not just in the world of work that patience is required. To play the piano to the level required to play a complex piece of music by Bach for example requires patience – patience to practise and practise. To play golf to a decent standard requires practice and patience too. And I suppose all of us can understand that kind of patience – the practice makes perfect kind.

We can see then how patience can be a virtue in certain jobs and in certain pastimes. But can patience be a virtue in other senses too?

Patience can be a virtue in situations where waiting is required and where essentially we have no control over a situation or where we are powerless to change things. So to go back to my illustration earlier. If I’m stuck in traffic, to have patience is a virtue because I cannot do anything about the cars in front of me. Similarly when queuing at an airport to check in or to go through security it is pointless getting agitated because it is so slow a process. In such circumstances we cannot do anything to change anything so we may as well be patient.

And although James of course could not have been thinking about traffic jams or queues at airports, I think it is to these second scenarios that he is thinking. Situations where we have no influence or control so we may as well be patient.

Try as we may there are some things in our lives that we cannot exert any control over.
It’s hard for any of us at any age to be patient. Particularly when we are in a time of stress.

There was a delightful little story in the Reader’s Digest from Mrs. Nolen Cash of Lonoke, Arkansas. Mrs. Cash said that with the due date approaching for the birth of their first child, her husband was becoming increasingly fidgety.

One evening she told her husband that she was having some slight pains, but she assured him that they were not serious. Later, she was relaxing in front of the TV when she heard her fidgety husband shaving. Then he began to throw on his clothes.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

With great exasperation he said, “You can sit here if you want to, but I’m going to the hospital!”

Sometimes these are trivial but sometimes they are serious. We can either get angry and frustrated and feel our blood pressure rising or we can be patient and accept that we cannot do anything.

In summary, waiting can be aggravating. But we may as well accept that there is nothing we can do apart from wait patiently.

To illustrate his thinking about the scenarios where we have no influence and where we cannot change time, James uses the illustration of the farmer. At the time James was writing, farmers in Palestine relied entirely on natural irrigation and rainfall. In contrast as I understand it, nowadays Israel is very green due to the widespread use of irrigation systems. But then whether or not a crop grew depended almost entirely on how much moisture fell, and in what form and at what time.

There had to be rain when the crop was planted in order to help germination and then rain later to nourish it. But if rain came just before the harvest or during the harvest the crop could be ruined.

Since there was nothing the farmer could do to influence these climatic events the farmer just had to be patient.

James is writing to a group of early Christians who believed that Jesus’s return was imminent. They were becoming impatient for this event. So this is why James is preaching patience. This is why James is saying to them that there is nothing they can do to change the timescales so they may as well wait patiently.

I suppose for us it is slightly different. Although we hear during Advent that Jesus will come again, after 2,000 years of waiting we’re patient. We’ve got used to waiting. Or maybe we’ve moved on from waiting patiently and think Jesus’ return will never happen. Either way we hear the promise he will come again and we wait. So we may as well wait patiently.

However, sometimes we have to be impatient. Sometimes to be patient can be an excuse to do nothing or to sit back.

During my visit to America in the summer I learned a great deal about the civil rights protests of the 1950s and 1960s. And one thing that became clear to me was that the protests were sparked in large part by black people, and those who were sympathetic to their plight, running out of patience. For years they had been promised reforms but it had never happened. Finally their patience ran out and many of them decided to do something about it via civil disobedience.

In his great “I have a dream speech” Dr Martin Luther King said:

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

Patience in the face of unjust circumstances that can be changed is not a virtue. Justice delayed is justice denied.

Being patient with injustice, hoping in other words that things will eventually change but not seeking to bring about that change, such patience is wrong. It is unvirtuous.

So yes James is right that in some things, which we cannot influence, we have to be patient:

7 Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming.

8 You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.

But we should not be patient when we see wrongs happening now. We should not be patient with the fact that, according to Shelter, this Christmas 80,000 children in this country will be homeless. We should not be patient with MPs who could receive an 11% pay rise.

Be patient in waiting for God’s Kingdom to come and our Saviour to return in glory. But be impatient with the in justice of this world until he comes.

A pleasant surprise at Aldi

For the last couple of years Stratton Methodist Church in Swindon has been running a project called "Community Kitchen". On the second Saturday of the month, we open the church up and offer the homeless and lonely somewhere to come for a meal and some companionship. We also are able to provide guests with packs containing toiletries and we also have some clothing available.

Last month we had a record number of guests and many of them asked if we had any shoes they could have. We didn't have any shoes but I remembered that the local Aldi supermarket had some in stock. So I went round to Aldi and bought a few pairs of trainer style walking shoes. These proved popular with the guests and we promised we'd get some more in for next time.

I do quite a lot of our shopping in Aldi as it is very convenient for where we live and very good value. So every time I've been in since last Community Kitchen I've looked to see if they had any shoes in stock. Until today I've been out of luck but this morning I saw they had just had a delivery of "Winter boots" - walking boots. I bought five pairs as the church treasurer had said to me if I saw any shoes get them.

The chap on the till looked at me slightly quizzically for having five pairs of boots.So I explained to him that I was buying them for the homeless project at Stratton Methodist Church.

I was just packing my trolley, when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned round to see a lady with a £10 note in her hand.

"I couldn't help but hear what you said about the shoes. So please can you take this money for the project."

I could have hugged her. All I know is that as I thanked her for her kindness I felt tears in my eyes.

It has apparently become quite trendy for the middle classes to shop at Aldi and Lidl for bargains. (A recent newspaper feature in The Daily Telegraph summed it up "How Aldi won the class war - and became the fastest-growing supermarket in Britain. How has the German giant conquered Middle England? ") So was the giver of the tenner some Yummy Mummy slumming it to buy the 79p coconut milk? I don't think so. I think the giver was an "ordinary" person who just wanted to do something for someone else in the lead up to Christmas. £10 to her may have been quite a lot of money relatively speaking. But her generous gift will mean a lot to someone leaving Community Kitchen next week with some new boots.

Whoever she was, that lady's spontaneous act of generosity touched my heart. Thank you whoever you are.

Breaking through the silence to listen for the inner being

On Saturday morning (30th November) the news reports were dominated by one news story – that late on Friday evening a police helicopter had crashed late into a crowded city centre pub in Glasgow Scotland.

The reports on the radio were filled with eye witness accounts of the helicopter crashing. But also stories of how people in the pub had helped one another to escape. And how in fact some people had purposely gone to the site of the crash to help out.

Come Sunday morning the news reports told of the work carried out by the emergency services. How they had arrived very quickly on the scene and how they had set about rescuing people who were trapped and treating the injured.

But we learned too that 8 people were known to have been killed (now 9 at the time of writing.) And these include the 2 police officers (PCs Kirsty Nelis and Tony Collins) and the civilian pilot (David Trail) aboard the helicopter.

On Sunday morning I heard an interview with the Reverend Gordon Armstrong, Church of Scotland chaplain to the Fire and Rescue service. He had arrived on the scene about half an hour after the crash. And spent many hours offering comfort and support. He shared with the interviewer (BBC’s Paddy O’Connell) how members of the emergency services need to be able to share what they have experienced.

Mr. Armstrong described how shortly after he arrived a silence descended on the area. In fact a calm, as the emergency services got about their task. Mr. Armstrong said:

“It was as if all there knew where their thoughts were and our thoughts were in the same place”

Paddy O’Connell then asked Mr. Armstrong

“In your job you need to break through the silence”

“Well we do. That’s where we as chaplains come in. We step in and try and break the silence. Sometimes it is met with silence. The thought is ‘It could have been me or someone I know.’ A lot of what we do is listening. Listening for the glimpses of the inner being in all of us.”

I thought Gordon Armstrong expressed the role of a chaplain so well. And those of us involved in chaplaincy will be able to relate exactly to what he said there. I am fortunate in not having been on duty when police officers have had to deal with anything traumatic. Nevertheless, much of my role is about listening and in the listening trying to hear “the glimpses of the inner being”. To distinguish between what is general chit chat or moaning and something more important underlying.

In the conclusion of the interview, Paddy O’Connell commented that Gordon Armstrong was about to set off for morning service on the first Sunday of Advent. “How will you marshal your feelings?”

Gordon Armstrong replied that one of the Advent readings was Matthew 24 speaking about the “Day and hour being unseen.” In other words none of us know what the future holds. The events at the Clutha Vaults bar in Glasgow certainly tie in to that.

I am pleased that the Rev Armstrong’s views have been sought at this time. It is important for serving members of the emergency services and members of the public to learn of the roles of chaplains. Though of course I wish it hadn’t taken a tragedy like this in order for the media to show some interest in chaplains.

My thoughts and prayers of course go out to those who have been injured and to the families and friends of those who were killed. But as a fellow chaplain I pray for Gordon Armstrong and other chaplains and of course for the members of the emergency services having to deal with this tragedy.

Love shall be our token

A couple of weeks back children from Moredon and Rodbourne Cheney primary schools came to look inside St Andrews. They asked me questions about faith. It was great, for the questions included “Who created God?” and “Who was St Andrew?” I could answer one of those but not the other!

The discussion moved on to saints in general and I mentioned Saint Nicholas – Santa Claus. This then prompted a boy to ask “Why doesn’t Jesus give presents at Christmas instead of Santa Claus?”

And I explained how the giving presents at Christmas is related to the giving of gifts to Jesus by the Magi rather than Jesus giving gifts. I suppose it was inevitable that a discussion about Christmas would lead on to presents.

We all know that Christmas has become about buying. Buying presents. Buying food. Could the wise men have foreseen what their gesture of giving gifts would lead to?

I don’t know if you saw the recent interview the Archbishop of Canterbury gave to Martin Lewis the “Money Saving Expert”. The Archbishop said that people are making themselves "miserable" at Christmas because of the pressure of buying expensive gifts for loved ones.

In the interview Justin Welby admits it is a cliché for him to be complaining about modern consumerism - but said that people were risking their relationships by spending big, leaving themselves short of money.

The Archbishop urged families to show "love and affection" at Christmas rather than giving expensive presents.

He added: "Giving at Christmas reflects that generosity of God. So be generous in a way that shows love and affection rather than trying to buy love and affection," he said. "You can't buy it; you can show it, and when you show it, it comes back at you with interest”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24896330

Love is the essence of Christmas and that is what we must all remember. Christina Rossetti wrote a poem:

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,
Love incarnate, love divine;
Worship we our Jesus:
But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,
Love be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign