The Jesse Tree: Day 23

We don’t know Joseph very well since the Bible says very little about him, but Jesus knows him well. It was Joseph, alongside Mary, that raised Jesus, taught him to walk, and wash, and talk. It was Joseph who came home from work to find Jesus running into his arms. It was Joseph that spent days with Jesus teaching him the skills of carpentry, how to saw, sand, and sell their creations.

Jesus was Joseph’s boy.

I'm sure there were perks to having a sinless son, but I wonder if the shame ever wore off. I wonder if the rumors ever died down.

We don’t know how long Mary and Joseph had been engaged when Mary broke the news to Joseph. She was pregnant and two things mattered: what was true and what would be perceived by society as true.

Joseph knew he wasn’t the father, and the safest thing for him to do to protect his reputation in Jewish culture (where being engaged was legally binding) would have been to go through a public divorce. Mary would have been shamed and labeled an adulterer, and he would have been cleared of any suspicion of having a child out of wedlock.

Instead, we see some of the strength of character that Joseph would need in the future. He decided to have mercy on Mary by divorcing her privately because he was "unwilling to put her to shame.” It was then, while Joseph was considering how to go about this quiet divorce, that he had a dream where an Angel told him to go ahead and marry Mary because the child was conceived by the Holy Spirit.

It was here that Joseph had another decision to make, because even though he now knew what was true, it still mattered what would be perceived as true by society. Would the rumors be worth it? Would it be worth people forever questioning his legitimacy as Jesus's father? Would marrying Mary be worth the scandal?

Obeying God can be hard. Obeying God can be misunderstood. Obeying God can be viewed as shameful and even scandalous. There are consequences to obeying God that are not always easy. Our families can misunderstand us, and our friends can reject us. And yet I’m going to guess that if we were to ask Joseph today if marrying Mary and spending those days amidst sawdust and splinters was worth it, he’d smile and say, “I know Jesus really well, and Jesus knows me.”