Joseph is the easiest part to play in the Christmas Pageant. I was delighted to have the role in sixth grade because there were no lines to memorize. I just had to walk around and look supportive of Mary. After all, she is the one who is carrying God’s chosen one, doing the heavy lifting, riding on a donkey while pregnant, and giving birth in a stable. That’s why we sing “Ave Maria,” not “Ave Joseph.” We never call him the Blessed Virgin Joseph, though he might have been a virgin too. Mary becomes the symbol of motherhood, but Joseph’s role seems to be to cover for Mary and an ill-timed pregnancy, keep the baby Jesus safe, and then disappear from history. Joseph is missing from all the key moments of Jesus’s adult life.

Joseph probably had a plan for his life. He was engaged to Mary, a lovely young girl the two families had arranged for him to marry. He had a trade as a carpenter, maybe a few shekels in Bethlehem Savings and Loan to start a family. I wonder if Joseph watched the sunset and dreamed about the lovely house he would build to raise his family. Let’s call that Plan A. Get married, work hard, and raise your family. 

But news reaches Joseph that Mary is pregnant. We don’t know if Joseph was relieved, sad, or angry, if he loved Mary, or if he was disappointed that this arranged marriage wouldn’t work. We only know his actions. Matthew tells us he was righteous and didn’t want Mary to be publicly disgraced, so he planned to dismiss her quietly. Back in the day, young women pregnant out of wedlock were sent away to live with relatives for a year, have the baby, give the child up for adoption, and life went on.

Joseph’s discretion is no small thing. Deuteronomy 22:23-24 reads:

²³ “If there is a young woman, a virgin already engaged to be married, and a man meets her in the town and lies with her, ²⁴ you shall bring both of them to the gate of that town and stone them to death….So you shall purge the evil from your midst.

It sounds barbaric, but at least the man gets punished equally in the Bible. Stoning could have been his option if Joseph was a lesser man, prone to insult. Instead, he chooses grace and moves on to Plan B. Did he go to bed that night wondering what to do next? Who might be available to be his wife? “Too bad about Mary, but she was high-spirited; maybe she would have been a little high maintenance. Gretchen is a nice woman but a little dull. What about Sarah, she always has a nice smile? Honestly, Mary was my best option, but what else could I do?” 

He falls asleep and dreams of an angel who says, “Joseph, I have another plan for you. Go ahead and take Mary as your wife because she is pregnant by the Holy Spirit and will give birth to the child who will save Israel, God’s chosen one.” Matthew is a sparse storyteller, saying Joseph wakes up and precisely does as the dream tells. Don’t you want to know more? What was the conversation like with Mary or her family? Was she grateful? Did they exchange angel stories? “My angel was tall and glowed; what was yours like?” Wouldn’t that be a great scene as the new couple bonds over sharing profound spiritual experiences? 

Would you take such a significant step from a dream? Would you think about it? Maybe talk to a therapist first, someone skilled in dream analysis. Would the therapist say the dream revealed your lack of self-esteem and encourage you to follow your God-given dreams? You can’t possibly believe this. Come on, Joseph, you know where babies come from. This dream is just weird. Don’t base your life on it.” But he does.

Ancient cultures had different views on dreams than we do. I’m reading Otto Rank's “The Origins of the Soul.” Rank believed that the idea of the soul comes from dreams. People would dream about people they loved who were dead or haunted by enemies they killed in battle. The notion of the soul living beyond our bodies grew out of these dreams. Many native American cultures believed it was imperative to follow the directions of a dream, that the dream world was as real as the physical world, perhaps more important because that is where the soul exists. Ignore a dream at your peril. Dreams are central to Joseph’s story. Three dreams will shape his life.

One dream into the story, Joseph decides to claim this child as his own. We don’t get any wedding stories, so maybe Mary and Joseph eloped. Did they do a Vegas wedding and hope people didn’t count the months too closely before Mary gave birth? You know how brutal small-town gossip can be. Most likely, everyone knew, but nobody talked openly about Mary and Joseph needed to get married for propriety’s sake. The important thing is that Joseph does the right thing. People might gossip down at the local Chatterbox Café. But Joseph was a carpenter, and no one wanted to get on his bad side. Then you will have to wait months to get your leaky roof fixed or kiss the new deck goodbye. Mary got pregnant out of wedlock, Joseph did the right thing, and life went on.

What intrigues me is Matthew emphasizes Jesus being of the House of David, the royal family, as prophecy says about the Messiah. But Joseph is not Jesus’s biological father. Jesus is adopted into the house of David. The Holy Family has a built-in awkwardness, but it is no big deal to Matthew. I find this meaningful because I am an adoptive father for two sons and the stepfather for Jeanne’s two children. They are my children by grace, and the tie is as deep as if they were children by biology. Occasionally people have asked me if I had any children of my own, and I gently say, “These are my own children.” Matthew’s agenda is about the fulfillment of prophecy, but I love how this opens our understanding of family as bound together by love, not just biology. 

Family values are remarkably flexible in the Bible. After all, the Bible is where I learned the word concubine. Abraham and Sarah decide to have a child through a surrogate named Hagar. Sarah gets pregnant, gives birth to Isaac, and throws Hagar and her son Ishmael out of the house. But God honors the promise of covenant to both Ishmael and Isaac. Matthew includes several surprises in Jesus’s genealogy. Tamar was a prostitute. King Solomon was the son of David and Bathsheba, so we have adultery in the picture. Ruth was a Moabite woman, so you have a foreign bride in the mix. And now, the culmination of the house of David is an adopted son. Can you imagine Jesus drawing his family tree for a school project? It’s like an old, gnarled tree, with the scars of limbs cut off years ago and branches stretching out in odd angles, but the peculiarly shaped tree draws the eye. That tree has survived to tell an interesting story. Every angled limb testifies to a plan B, where the tree had to adapt in crisis to thrive. 

Most families hide their awkward course of events, but Jesus’s family hangs out there for everyone to see, prostitutes and all. Furthermore, Matthew says this is how God works, creating love amid all the mess and questionable choices. People like Joseph commits to God’s prompting, follow new dreams, and do what it takes to hold on. And Joseph must change his plans not just once but three times. We have the journey to Bethlehem and untimely birth in a stable, which will be my Christmas Eve sermon. 

Joseph has two more dreams of angels that guide his fatherhood. An angel warns him that Herod wants to kill baby Jesus. So, he must flee to Egypt with his family. We don’t hear how Joseph got a job, lived as an immigrant, or understood his dreams of angels. We only know he is faithful to what the Spirit puts in his heart.   

I’m inspired by Joseph’s story and Matthew’s unembellished honesty. God works amid family drama to create a new beginning. If Matthew’s family tree represents the path of the Messiah, our families can work too. We adopt people out of love. Families love when our kin don’t conform to what others say is normal. We love our children when they come out as gay when they go through heartbreak, divorce, or gender transition. None of this is more shocking than the Old Testament family life.

Many of us are living Plan B, C, and D. But if the family tree is rooted in love, by God’s grace, new dreams will guide us. Thanks be to God!