A worried mother telephoned the church office on the afternoon of the annual Nativity play. She said that her small son, who was due to play the role of Joseph in the Christmas play, had a bad cold and had been sent to bed on doctor’s orders.  “It’s too late now to get another Joseph” said the director of the play, “We’ll just have to write him out of the script.”. And so they did and very few of those watching the play even noticed his absence.

That, I’m afraid is the sad lot of Joseph who has, in most nativity plays, no speaking part. He’s a bit of an extra – there to make up the tableaux of journeying to the inn and, after the birth, to stand dutifully gazing at the baby Jesus – his role simply to complete the image of the Holy Family.

This image of the Holy Family has, of course, given rise to the idea of the perfect Family on which much Church teaching about family life is based.   One of the Eucharistic prefaces for the Incarnation in the old Alternative Service Book prays:

And now we give you thanks because in his earthly childhood you entrusted him to the care of a human family. In Mary and Joseph you give us an example of love and devotion to him, and also a pattern of family life.

This pattern rests upon a verse in St. Luke’s Gospel when Jesus was lost after a feast in Jerusalem. The incident – which might be thought by some to be an example of parental neglect – ended with the boy Jesus returning with his parents to Nazareth where he obeyed them.

The biblical evidence for the family life of Jesus, Mary and Joseph is really rather scant.  John and Mark never even mention Joseph – and John never actually names Mary preferring to speak of ‘the mother of Jesus’.  Luke, our main resource of information about the Holy Family, concentrates mainly on Mary. Even in the incident of losing Jesus at the Temple, it is Mary, not Joseph who questions Jesus as to where he has been and it was Mary who pondered on the incident in Luke 2: verse 52.

Apart from today’s Gospel passage from St Matthew, Joseph is referred to only once more. In Matthew 13:55 when Jesus encountered opposition in his home town of Nazareth the people said of him, “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son? Isn’t Mary his mother?..”  Whether this reference to Joseph suggests that he was still alive is open to conjecture. The Gospel isn’t really concerned with our Lord’s family circumstances and we know nothing of his ‘hidden years’ between the ages of 12 and 30.  Certain other writings which did not get included in the New Testament when it was finally compiled do have more extensive references to Joseph, especially an Infancy Narrative, but these books were rejected by the Church as being less than authentic.  So we are left with the Gospel passage which we have just heard from Matthew as our main source about him.  The passage we heard is Matthew’s Nativity story. It lacks all the detail of St. Luke and the birth of Jesus is confined to one line at the end –  Joseph had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.  But the section before it is Joseph’s moment and all we really know about him with any certainty is contained in those few lines.  What we find there demonstrates that far from being superfluous to the Nativity of Jesus, he was essential.

It was Joseph who was from the family of King David and therefore of royal descent, though as he was a tradesman his branch of the family was a bit like the poor relation.  Joseph did, however, through his fosterage provide the link between Jesus and the throne of David so essential if Jesus was to be the rightful bearer of the title ‘King of the Jews’ and so fulfil the prophecies about the Messiah.  In a sermon preached by St. Bernadine of Sienna there is the claim made that in Joseph the Old Testament finds its fitting close. He brought the noble line of patriarchs and prophets to its promised fulfilment.  What the divine goodness had offered as a promise, he (Joseph) held in his arms.  Apart from Joseph providing the link between Jesus and the promise made to King David, the passage from Matthew offers us more than a theological history lesson.  It offers us three things and all of them are essential for our own Christian lives.

First, Joseph was a man of principle and integrity.  He had deeply held religious beliefs but he held these with compassion.  When he discovered that Mary was pregnant he should have denounced her.  Hard-line believers who stood for black and white interpretations of morality would have been quick to do so.  In Mary’s case the denouncement would have resulted in the harshest death penalty – that of death by stoning.  It is worth noting that had Joseph taken the path of self-righteousness he would have denied the world of Jesus and – this is rather important in our own judgemental times – he would have thwarted God’s plan.  But Joseph was not only a man of principle he was a man of compassionate integrity and, of course, he was a man deeply in love.  You don’t get betrothed to someone unless you are convinced that you love them. It was compassion and love which won over strict moral absolutism.  Joseph was unwilling to expose her to public disgrace so he planned to set her aside quietly. No doubt, to do so, he would have had to say that his feelings had changed and that he no longer loved her and that would have been a heart-breaking choice to make. It could in fact be made only by someone whose love was absolute and pure because only such a love wants what is best for another.  Whenever we are faced with moral choices it is easy to take a black or white view but the best, if most difficult, morality is exercised in compassion and, particularly, in love. Love, it could be argued is the only true moral absolute because Love, as St John reminds us in his epistle, is from God because God is love.

The second thing we learn from Joseph’s story is that he was willing to change his mind – but only after an intervention by God.  Much is made in the Bible about the significance of dreams as a means by which God communicates His will. Later it was a dream that warned Joseph of Herod’s threat to kill Jesus and led him to take Mary and Jesus into exile in Egypt.  The dream in today’s gospel was significant at two levels.  First, the content of the dream is significant because it contained a reassurance from God about Mary’s condition and it is for Joseph the same kind of Annunciation as came to Mary herself – and as usual it came via an angel – God’s messengers who not only do his bidding but who are the agents for God’s most significant pronouncements.  The other reason the dream is significant is that God can communicate to us only when we are still enough to hear him.  So often when we seek God’s will we are actually seeking God’s approval of our own will. We take a view and we want God to confirm it.  God, however, acts when our will is stilled and sleep is a time when at least consciously, we are not putting forward our own ideas.  If we want to know God’s will for us – and our part in his plan – we need to stop bombarding him with our opinion and actually try to listen to what he is trying to tell us.  The Bible is full of such moments when God visits people in quietness and stillness and shows them the way he wants them to go.  There is a lesson there for us all.

There is also a reassurance in this dream of Joseph and St. Bernadine of Sienna puts his finger on it in the same sermon I have already mentioned.  He said:

There is a general rule concerning all special graces granted to any human being. Whenever the divine favour chooses someone to receive a special grace, or to accept a lofty vocation, God adorns the person chosen with all the gifts of the Spirit needed to fulfil the task in hand.

In other words – when God wants us to do something for him – what we might call fulfilling our Vocation – he equips us for the task through the Holy Spirit.  That is rather important for us when we use next Lent to pray over what God might want from us as individuals and as a Church.  Whatever God asks of us he will give us the strength and gifts to do it.  For Joseph this meant being the trustworthy guardian and protector of God’s greatest treasure – his Son - and also of Mary.

The third thing we learn from Joseph is that he was immediately obedient.  Waking from his dream – he did as God asked.  Obedience is at the heart of every vocation and is a greater test of love than mere emotion. When we are obedient to God’s call to us – no matter how difficult that might be or demanding – then we are really saying that we love God – who if course, considers it His vocation to love us first.  Doing God’s will ought to be the guiding force of every Christian life and this is something Joseph shows us.  Joseph has much to tell us if we ponder this very short but highly significant passage from the Gospel.

What it also tells us is that far from being a bit part in the Nativity story, Joseph was vital to it. Indeed, without Him, it would never have happened. He is not in the shadows – He is centre stage but in being there he points us away from himself and allows us a vision of God, who in Christ Jesus – in the babe of Bethlehem – Lived a life of compassionate loving obedience attentive to God’s will and that, too, was Joseph’s vocation – and it is ours too.