Joseph -- Silent and Still: An Advent Meditation

Joseph – the silent partner in the Christmas story. Baby Jesus, rightfully, gets the most press. Next come the other featured players – Mary, the Shepherds and the Magi. Even horrible old Herod gets as much mention as Joseph. He is named just 10 times in the Nativity stories (half as many times as Mary) – often as a minor character. In only one portion of Scripture is he the main character.

Imagination, that most human of traits, tries to fill in the blanks. Often it does just do just that. W.H. Auden’s does in today’s poem, where he places Joseph in contemporary society. Auden was born in York, England and educated at Oxford. T.S. Eliot helped him launch his literary career, which began in 1928, the year he graduated Oxford. As a witness to the Spanish Civil War, Auden became increasingly religious and revealed that bent in his poetry. In 1946 he published For The Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio and dedicated it to his mother. Today’s poem, The Temptation of St. Joseph, comes from that Oratorio.

Joseph:
All I ask is one
Important and elegant proof
That what my Love had done
Was really at your will
And that your will is Love.

Gabriel:
No, you must believe;
Be silent, and sit still.

When we think of how people of faith are to respond to life’s difficulties, we often think of Job, that marvelous Old Testament man. “The patience of Job” is a cliché that is common currency in our language. I suggest, for all of Job’s goodness, there is an even better model for us today and that is the one of Joseph.

What happens to Joseph is almost as calamitous as what happens to Job. His life and reputation are about to be ruined by the actions of the young maid to whom he is betrothed. Dishonor is about to come upon him. Mary is obviously pregnant. Joseph, as a righteous man, he can not in good conscience marry Mary, who was now thought to be unfaithful. Such a marriage would be an admission that he had some hand in this breaking of the law. But Joseph is as compassionate as he righteous and is unwilling to expose Mary to the disgrace of public divorce. He therefore choses a quieter way of obtaining a divorce, requesting one before two witnesses, permitted by the law. It would leave both his righteousness (his conformity to the law) and his compassion intact.

Auden’s setting his Joseph in the modern world brings home to us in a way that the Christmas card setting which we’ve made the Bible story into cannot, Joseph’s dilemma – people whispering behind his back – or to his face. We cannot know the town’s people’s reaction to all this as the Bible doesn’t say. Auden helps us paint that picture ourselves. No wonder Joseph wanted to do what he planned – to put her away quietly and let the whole thing fade away.
But before he can put his plan into action, an angel comes in a dream. We modern day skeptics (myself included) by and large disregard dreams. Many of mine need to be disregarded – what can a dream of squirrels living behind the siding of my house in Seattle or my needing to give Nancy's car battery a jump while it’s sitting in an auto repair shop have to do with anything.
But dreams as means of divine communication in the Bible are the norm. In Joseph’s case, an “angel of the Lord” reminds the reader of divine messengers of ages past and focuses on God’s gracious intervention and the messenger's private communication.

The angel's opening words, “Joseph son of David,” ties this passage to the Davidic genealogy mentioned earlier in the first chapter of Matthew, from which today’s lesson comes. To Joseph, this greeting alerts him to the significance of the role he is to play. Joseph is about to find himself drawn into the mystery of the Incarnation.

The angel tells Joseph what he really needs to know -- that all this took place to fulfill Scripture. The last clause is phrased with exquisite care, literally, “the word spoken by the Lord through the prophet.”

Auden does something else that Scripture does not. He has Joseph saying
All I ask is one
Important and elegant proof
That what my Love had done
Was really at your will
And that your will is Love.

We have all felt that way at one time or another. We want to know that the circumstances that are occurring are really God’s will and that God’s will is Love – with a capital “L.”

Now some things that happen do not seem to me to have any grounding at all in my understanding of God and God’s will. And I am not going to try to force them into that. Instead, this cry of Joseph as related by Auden reminds me of the desire of my heart, to confidently affirm deep in my soul Paul’s words that “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Even when I can’t see it and especially when I don’t believe it.

The angel’s response, as given by Auden, is as profound.
Gabriel:
No, you must believe;
Be silent, and sit still.

“No, you must believe. Be silent … and still.” Hard words to hear; harder to obey. Yet that is the essence of faith at times – you must believe. Not acquiesce, but believe. Faith, after all, is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see, according to the writer of Hebrews. Sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Well, sometimes faith is stronger than at others. Still, if we desire to know that God’s will is Love, we must believe. We must trust – even when trust is impossible.

I would further suggest that the example of Joseph shows us that believing and being silent and still are actions of the inner life. They do not prohibit outward action. Joseph does not lock himself away in his carpenter’s shop. Instead he is a man of action – even if he is still in his soul. He marries the maid, they travel to Bethlehem, he leads Mary and Jesus to Egypt for safekeeping, and brings them home again when Herod’s threat is passed. There are no records of Joseph speaking anywhere in Scripture. He is a man of action, not words.

That is one of the lesson’s for us from the characters of Christmas – that our “yes” to God can be modeled on Joseph as well as any other Christmas character. He believes and acts, even when he’d rather have answers to his questions. He is silent and still in his soul.

May we be, at the season and through all of our lives, silent and still, even while we are busy living. May we be free to ask the questions that trouble our souls. May we be confident that God looks upon us with Love. May we be like Joseph – people of soulful action.

--Brent