A Question Of Faith
Could You Have Done The Same As Joseph?
How strong is your faith in God? This is one of the two times of the year when we think about that question the most. At Christmas mass this week we will once again hear one of the Gospel accounts about the birth of Christ.
In Matthew’s Gospel (1:18) he writes in AD 70, “When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found with child through the holy Spirit.”
And in Luke’s account (1: 30-35) written a few years later (AD 80), Mary is confronted by the angel Gabriel who says to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” But Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?” And the angel said to her in reply, “The holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.”
So at this point in the story, how many have wondered how her husband-to-be, Joseph, would react to this news. How would anyone respond? Well, Joseph’s initial reaction was similar to most men, if not all. He wanted to part ways with her and quietly divorce her, so as not to shame her. Although, I think more than a few men wouldn’t even provide her with that level of respect.
That was Joseph’s plan until he went to sleep one night and an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and informed him (Matthew 20-25), “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,” which means “God is with us.” When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home. He had no relations with her until she bore a son, and he named him Jesus.
Most of us have heard this account many times. And most likely all of us wondered how vivid the dream would have to be for us to make the same decision as Joseph. We all have dreams. Have any of you acted upon them like Joseph?
Some will say, well it’s just a Biblical writers account of what may have happened. However, if you know the Jewish oral tradition of passing along stories verbatim, you know that these are stories that were shared among the Jewish population. This had to have started with an account from Joseph and Mary and continued on from there. Whereas the accounts are a bit different, the story is the same. Matthew’s account is believed to have come around 80 A.D. following the first Gospel of Jesus life by Mark in 70 A.D, the year marking the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans. Luke’s came shortly afterwards between 85-90 A.D.
But the question is: what if you dreamed of an angel telling you to do something that was not your first choice, your initial thinking? Would you do it? Remember, these were people of great faith who understood the tradition of the scriptures and fulfilling the predictions of the prophets. Approximately 700 years before Christ the writer(s) of the Book of Isaiah (10-14) recorded that, “Again the LORD spoke to Ahaz: Ask for a sign from the LORD, your God; let it be deep as Sheol, or high as the sky! But Ahaz answered, “I will not ask! I will not tempt the LORD! Then he said: Listen, house of David! Is it not enough that you weary human beings? Must you also weary my God? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign; the young woman, pregnant and about to bear a son, shall name him Emmanuel.
All faithful Jewish people of the time of Christ were well aware of this as they were anxiously awaiting for the fulfillment of that scripture passage. Did Joseph, who was a descendant of King David, believe that the angel’s appearance was the sign from God that all Judea had been awaiting for more than 700 hundred years? Well, he went ahead and fulfilled the request taking Mary into his home as his wife and traveled with her to Bethlehem when she was 9 months pregnant, not an easy journey.
Do Joseph’s actions make him a heroic historical figure for doing as the angel directed? I believe so, because it meant his faith was so strong that he was willing to endure the reaction of the Jews in Nazareth who may question Mary’s pregnancy. We don’t know when they learned of it. We do know she was in the final stages of pregnancy when they traveled to Bethlehem for the census. Perhaps they thought Joseph married her and then she became pregnant, the normal course acceptable to the faith. However, we also know that an angel came to Joseph when they were in Bethlehem to warn him that King Herod heard the news about a new-born King in Bethlehem and ordered his soldiers to kill all baby boys under the age of 2 years old. So Joseph and Mary did not return to Nazareth until Jesus was already born and in his childhood.
Matthew (2:13-15) When they had departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, “Rise, take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I tell you. Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him.” Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt. He stayed there until the death of Herod, that what the Lord had said through the prophet might be fulfilled, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”
This also fulfilled the prophecy from Hosea (1:11) Out of Egypt I called my son.
So on this Christmas, consider for yourself, would you have done the same as Joseph? Have you been inspired by the Holy Spirit to do things in your life that you hadn’t planned? Do you act upon those inspirations? Do you recognize signs from God? Or do you just dismiss them as just something strange that happened? Or have you actually had dreams that led you to make decisions in your life that support your Christian faith?
God works in strange ways. It’s not always the way you would like things to happen in the time you would like them to happen, but they occur if God wants them to happen and when they should happen. Hence the saying Let Go, Let God.
