Tuesday 19 March 2013

Background

Today is the feast day of Joseph of Nazareth, the husband ofMary.

This story takes place during the couple's betrothal. Mary maywell have been only in her early teens, and Joseph perhaps a fewyears older. In first-century Palestine, betrothal was a seriousbusiness - a formal contract between the parents of the husband andthe wife-to-be. It comprised the formal, contractual elements of amarriage, but was not supposed to include the sexual relations.

There would then generally be about a year before the actualmarriage took place, but infidelity was as serious as it would bebetween a couple actually married. The penalty for an unfaithfulwife could be death by stoning, so this was no trivial matter.

Joseph is often seen as a semi-irrelevant add-on to the story.Mary is the mother, the obedient one, the one who is favoured byGod. But this passage shows us Joseph's obedience. Verse 19establishes him as a righteous man and as the passage progresses,we see what this means for his trust in God's plan. But alsorelevant is the way that the angel addresses him: "Joseph, son ofDavid". Right from the opening of his Gospel, we see Matthew'sconcern to show Jesus as the Messiah, and this meant showing him tobe firmly in the line of David, the ideal king. This is a largepart of the point of the genealogy (Matthew 1:1-17), which traces Jesus' lineageback to David, crucially through Joseph's line. For Matthew, then,Joseph is as important in the birth narrative as is Mary. Jesus'messianic identity comes both through his conception "from the HolySpirit" (vv. 18, 20) and through his Davidic descent.

Being the Messiah also explains the choice of Jesus' name, whichis the Greek form of Joshua, meaning 'God saves'. It is furtheremphasised by the quotation from Isaiah7:14, which in the Hebrew speaks of a young woman conceiving.The Greek translations of the Scriptures tended to interpret this'young woman' as a virgin, and it became understood as a messianicprophecy.

To Ponder

• Joseph's righteousness is seen in the tension between obedienceto the law, compassion for Mary and trust in God. In your attemptsto be 'righteous' (or in a good place with God), how do you balanceattention to Scripture, to the needs of others, and to theprompting of the Holy Spirit?

• Joseph's part in the story is often overlooked. Whose importantcontributions to the life of the church or to your community areundervalued, and whose voices are not adequately heard? What canyou do to help change that?