Joseph couldn’t sleep. He had thought he would drop off immediately, after nearly twelve hours of travel through the rocky desert country south of Bethlehem. They had tried to get as much distance possible between them and Herod’s soldiers. But after he had made sure that Mary and the baby were well wrapped against the cold night air, he went outside the small cave they had found and looked out over the starlit expanse which stretched out below them.
He felt guilty. “Should I have told them?” he wondered. “When the angel warned me to take Mary and Jesus and flee at once for Egypt, should I have at least asked someone to spread the word to all the other families in Bethlehem?” Joseph stirred restlessly and looked upward, as if expecting an answer. “They wouldn’t have believed me anyway,” he told himself. “They don’t know me, and after all it was only a dream, just because I know it was true doesn’t mean that anyone else would. And then it would have taken us far longer to get out of town, and anyway the angel didn’t tell me to do anything else but to get out of town as soon as we could. Besides, if Herod’s soldiers can’t find us, surely they’ll just go back to Jerusalem and report. Surely they won’t do anything to the townspeople.”
Joseph sat down abruptly and put his head on his hands. Six months, it had been. Only six months ago that Mary had come back from visiting her cousin Elizabeth and told him she was pregnant. He shook his head, as if to shake out the memory of the feelings that had flooded him at the news. His Mary! Good, pure, modest Mary, with the sweetest smile in Palestine! He had had to walk out to keep from saying something that he would regret. Thank God he had not even had the impulse to strike her, although he knew men who would have. After all, a betrothal was as binding as a marriage, and no one argued that a husband should not chastise an unfaithful wife. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t hurt Mary, no matter what she did. So after walking off his fury and shame, he went back to the home he had dreamed of bringing Mary to, and tried to decide what to do.
As Joseph sat in the darkness, quietly guarding his sleeping wife and child, he continued to remember back to the beginning. They had gone into the courtyard to be alone, just the two of them, after Mary had said there was something she needed to tell him. And then the blow fell. She was pregnant.
Mary swore to him that she had not lain with any man. But that wasn’t possible! Maybe she had been overcome with the heat after working too long in the sun, and abused as she lay unconscious. Or she could had been attacked by a stranger and been too ashamed to tell anyone. But this tale of being approached by an angel, and filled with the Spirit of God! How could she expect to believe that? Perhaps if she had confessed to what she had done and begged for forgiveness, he would had taken her for his wife anyway. But how could he trust someone who thought he was so gullible as to believe such a far-fetched story? Joseph rose and paced some more. It was probably close to sunrise by the time he had decided what to do. He resolved to divorce Mary quietly, and send her away where she could start another life where no one would point their fingers at her, shaming her before people who had known her since babyhood. Yes, that was it. He could not marry her, but he could not shame her, either.
Having made the decision, Joseph fell into a restless sleep. And in his dreams he saw the same glowing angelic figure Mary had described, speaking his name. “Joseph,” it said. “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid. Mary has told you no more than the truth. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has chosen her to be the mother of the Messiah, the savior of Israel. You need not fear to take her as your wife, for she remains the pure maiden you have always known her to be. Your name will be honored along with hers as long as people tell the story, and you will be the father of the redeemer of Israel until he is old enough to begin the work the Lord of Hosts has called him to do.”
When Joseph woke a part of himself tried to shake off the vision, saying that it was shock and disbelief that had conjured up the night’s imaginings, but he really knew. Joseph knew in the deepest part of his soul that he, too, had been honored by the messenger of God, and that his marriage to Mary would be even more deeply wonderful than he - or, indeed, any man - could have imagined. Their earthly marriage would begin after this miraculous child was born, but their heavenly marriage began now, here, as he accepted the call God had placed upon his life. Joseph often thought, later, of the surprising truth of his own name. Surely his parents hadn’t known, when he was born, why they should name him Joseph. But it meant “God grant posterity,” and God certainly had.
But of course it wasn’t that easy. It never is. Joseph thought, with grim humor, of the months after Mary’s condition began to show. As long as Joseph clearly continued to accept her, and planned to bring her into his home after the year’s betrothal was complete, people wouldn’t say or do anything openly against Mary. After all, Joseph did have a certain amount of influence among the righteous men of Nazareth. But by the same token, he knew that his reputation suffered, too, as anticipating the actual marriage was frowned upon by the rabbis. So he kept his counsel, and worked at his business and readied his house to welcome his bride. And in the evenings he worked on a cradle for the baby.
Joseph practiced saying “Yeshua” to himself. “Savior.” A lot of boy- children were called Yeshua, or, as the Greeks would say it, Yesus. After all, wasn’t Joshua one of the great heroes of the Hebrews? The right hand of Moses? The conqueror of Canaan? There were half a dozen in Nazareth alone. And yet here he was, about to become the father of the real, the true, the divine savior sent from God. He would roll the name around in his mind and on his tongue, and doubts would overwhelm him. “How can I do this?“ Joseph remembered looking around at his house. It was serviceable enough, he thought, he made a fair living as a carpenter. He wouldn’t have been contemplating marriage if he hadn’t known he could provide for a family. But - for this child, God’s son, the Messiah of Israel! Suddenly it wasn’t that impressive. There were no luxuries, no cedar or embroidered linen or glass to proclaim a high status. “Why did God choose us,” he wondered, “simple people who never thought to move higher in the world.” And he prayed as he worked that somehow he would know what to do with this unexpected son. A son! But not really his son. What would this Yeshua be like? Would he ever disobey or talk back? How could Joseph discipline him as a father, knowing what he knew?
And so the days went by until just a few weeks before Mary came due the news arrived that Joseph had to return to the town of his fathers, Bethlehem in Judea, for the new census. His first reaction was panic. He couldn’t leave Mary here! He knew what the village cats might do to her. And yet, how could he ask her to make the trip? A woman as close to her time as Mary was shouldn’t travel that far, even on a donkey. Joseph had always been proud of his ancestry, coming a he did of the line of Israel’s kings.But here it was, turning around to trip him up just at the most important moment of his life. “Pride’ll get you every time,” he thought. “It’s my being descended from Israel’s kings that has gotten us into this predicament. Lord,” he prayed, trying hard not to complain, “This timing isn’t good. Are you sure this is part of your plan? Should I put the welfare of my wife and son above my duty to the kingdom, stay here and risk getting into trouble? Or should we simply trust you to take care of us and do as we’re told?” But there was no answer. Joseph had a vague recollection that there was something in one of the prophets about the Messiah being born in Bethlehem, but he didn’t want to check with the local rabbi to make sure. They’d laugh him out of town!
And so he talked it over with Mary, and the next thing Joseph knew they had a couple of robes tied on the back of a donkey and a week’s travel food packed into a leather bag, and were on their way. If everything went well, they might be able to get to Bethlehem, pay the tax, and get back to Nazareth before the baby came. It would be tight, he thought, but they could do it. If God wanted it that way.
“So far this midnight flit is going better than the first trip, which we actually had time to plan for,” thought Joseph wryly. But that time everything went wrong. Mary was having pains by the end of the second day, and they lost at least two days because of having to stop so often. The strap holding their possessions to the donkey’s rump broke, and it took another couple of hours to get that fixed. The goatskin started leaking just before Jericho, and they had to buy another one at an absolutely outrageous price. You simply don’t climb up to Jerusalem without water. And by the time they got to Bethlehem there was not a room to be had. There wasn’t even a corner in the courtyard of the caravanserai, and besides, Mary’s pains were coming faster and harder, and he couldn’t, he simply couldn’t, let her give birth practically in public. God had given him the job of taking care of Mary and the baby, and here he was failing at every turn.
As he sat there in the dark on the hillside, Joseph remembered, with a renewed pang, the helplessness he had felt as they kept being turned away from one door after another. Mary was crying softly and he wanted to shout and shake someone and make them, just force them to find a place. This was Mary. He couldn’t say, “This is God’s Messiah.” They’d think he was a lunatic, and then Mary would have no one to protect her. Not that he was doing such great shakes at it anyway.
Finally one of the innkeepers grudgingly allowed as how they might as well bed down in the stable. It would be private enough, he said, and the beasts would help keep her warm.
So that’s what they did. Joseph forced his mind past the terrifying memory of Mary’s labor, the pain and the blood and his fear. He was a carpenter, for goodness sake, not a herdsman! He’d never so much as helped birth a lamb. But finally it was over, and the baby cried a little, but mostly just looked around as if he were memorizing the whole thing, until Mary reached up and put him to her breast. Her face was white and tear-streaked and he thought he had never seen anything more beautiful in his entire life.
Joseph glanced behind him, to the east, and realized that it would be dawn soon. He would have to get some sleep before he woke Mary and they started up again. He still didn’t know what to make of the shepherds who came to gaze at the baby, or the wise men from Persia and India who brought gifts, or the two old people in the temple who seemed to have been waiting for them. All this was beyond his comprehension. He and Mary would talk it over, and somehow they would bring up a boy who would become a King. I’ll raise him to be a good man, Joseph thought, an honest workman, a lover of Torah and a respecter of the traditions. If that’s not enough, God will let me know. I’m not the first Joseph to go to Egypt, and Yeshua - like Moses - will return for the salvation of Israel when the time has been fulfilled.
Joseph sighed, yawned, crept in beside Mary and the baby, and slept.
