• Wes Bloomquist •
• Originally published January 8, 2009 at 10:48 a.m., updated January 8, 2009 at 10:48 a.m.

Here we are beginning a new year and wondering where the time went. Am I the only one that is beginning to have a challenge with the speed by which time seems to be moving. Oh well, as I begin my ninth year in Bay City, I am still excited as the day I got here. When I was growing up, if someone had told me that I would have returned to this town, a town we would come in from Wadsworth once a week – to us it was the big city – I would have never believed them. Oh well, I am praying that your 2009 will be blessed with the presence of God in everything you do. As we begin to look forward to the arrival of the Magi in Bethlehem, I continually wonder what happens to Joseph. It is kinda strange that in narratives that has such male dominance Joseph doesn’t play a bigger role. Matthew tells us that Joseph was a righteous man; a man who live by the Old Testament law (called the Torah). That law said that when Mary turned up pregnant, she should be stoned (see Leviticus 20:10). If Joseph had been only righteous, Mary would have been dead. But instead, Matthew tells us that because Joseph was “unwilling to expose her to public disgrace,” he “planned to dismiss her quietly” (Matthew 1:19). Being faithful to God meant that while he respected the law, he acted in mercy. Shakespeare described it in The Merchant of Venice (ca. 1596-98) when he wrote: And earthly power doth show likest God’s When mercy seasons justice. Joseph could teach us a lot about what it means to season justice with mercy. I wonder if he might have taught Jesus that lesson too. Rumors about Mary’s pregnancy were evidently still floating around Nazareth thirty years later. You can hear the unspoken accusation behind the question, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” (John 6:42). I wonder if, about the time Jesus was old enough to understand the gossip, Joseph may have taken him aside and said, “Son, there’s something I need to tell you.” And I wonder if, the day when the righteous people were ready to stone a woman who had been caught in adultery (see John 8:2-11), Jesus might have remembered that his mother could have received the same punishment. When Jesus saved that woman, I wonder is he might have been thinking of the way Joseph honored the law but acted in mercy to save his mother. That’s all conjecture, of course, but perhaps something of the way Joseph seasoned justice with mercy became a part of God’s Word made flesh in Jesus. Joseph shows us that faith is visionary. It isn’t afraid to believe that the improbable, even impossible things might actually come true. By taking Mary as his wife, Joseph acts. He dares to follow God’s call into an utterly unpredictable future. He demonstrated the truth to William Sloane Coffin’s words: “The leap of faith is not a leap of thought but of action. . . Faith is not believing without proof; it’s trusting without reservation” (Letters to a Young Doubter [Louisville; Westminster John Knox, 2005], page 150). I was introduced several years ago, by a seminary professor to a painted entitled the “Adoration of the Shepherds” by a fifteenth-century Italian artist names Domenico Ghirlandaio. All the typical characters are there, but there are surprises too. There artist set the scene in fifteenth-century Italy. He even inscribed the date on one of the columns supporting the roof of the stable. Historians tell us that the faces of the shepherds are the faces of the donors who paid for the painting, with the exception of one who has the face of the artist himself, his finger pointing to the child. And then there is Joseph. Unlike most paintings of the Nativity, Joseph commands our attention from the center of Ghirlandaio’s painting, directly behind Mary and the child. Instead of looking at the child, he is looking up toward an angel who flutters in the corner. And with his right hand Joseph is scratching his head. Assuming that scratching your head in the fifteenth-century means the same as it does today, then Joseph might be asking the angel: “Just what is going on here?” But yet here I am, shepherds, angels, Magi coming – wow! But Joseph was there and did as God commanded because he trusted enough to change his life. He trusted that what God told him to do would turn out okay in the end. Is that where you are – ready to take in 2009 a leap of action, not just thought? For some of you reading this, maybe this will be that year that you decide to read the Bible, maybe attend church on a regular basis, maybe attend a Bible study, ,maybe pray, maybe (you can fill in the blanks)? It’s never too late, wherever you are, God is there with you. All you have to do is trust and leap into action. . . . .

• Print
• •
• Share
  • Share this item

    Send this to a friend

    Share on FaceBook

  • Grab the link

    Copy and paste the link:

  • Blog about it

    Blog about this page.

  • Close
• •
• Post a Comment
• •
• Favorite
• •
• Report error
  • Thank you for your submission.
    Error report or correction

    Contact name (optional) Contact phone/e-mail (optional)  

    
  • Close
• •