I didn’t believe it. When Mary told me she was expecting, it turned my life upside down. I had been looking forward to our wedding, to a quiet life in Nazareth. But this news turned everything on its head. I should have trusted Mary, it’s easy to say that now, but her story was just...impossible. An angel appearing and telling her she was going to have a child? Would you have believed her?
But then the impossible happened to me too. A vision? A dream? Call it what you like, it was definitely a message. Mary had told the truth. Her baby would be God’s son. And I would be his stepfather. Quite a responsibility, to be trusted with bringing up God’s own child. Especially when not long before he was due to be born, we had to journey to Bethlehem, my family’s home town. A small place, but with a proud history as the hometown of Israel’s greatest king, David. And by the time we got there it was a very crowded place too. When the child was born we had to lie him down to sleep in a manger, the animals’ feeding trough, because there wasn’t room anywhere else. It was a night I will never forget.
Joseph often gets rather overlooked these days. The focus is often on Mary, and that's not a bad thing. Joseph is often portrayed as a bit bumbling, or blamed for not believing Mary at first. But whatever else you think of him, he was the man chosen to help bring up God's son, to support Mary and her baby. He can't have been that bad.
I didn't intend it when I started writing these pieces but references to King David, Joseph's ancestor from Bethlehem, kept creeping in. Maybe because at the time I was reading about David, Jonathan and Saul from 1 Samuel in the Old Testament. David of course has another tie into the nativity narratives, since he started out as a shepherd. More on that tomorrow.
David was chosen to replace Saul as king because Saul had started ignoring God. David himself had plenty of flaws but he was seen as Israel's best king and a foreshadowing of a much greater ruler who would be his descendant. Jesus wasn't Joseph's genetic son, but as a member of his family, he shared in that heritage, culture and upbringing. DNA isn't the whole story of our families.
