Joseph’s role alongside Mary and Jesus has struck me afresh,
inspiring me to follow and promote his way of being present to emerging, often
marginalized and ever-threatened agents of God’s Kingdom.
I came upon these thoughts as I met with Julio and Salvio
for our weekly pastors training course at Tierra Nueva, and used them as we commissioned
Salvio and Chris the following Sunday as Tierra Nueva’s newest pastors. This
reflection continues to clarify as I met last Sunday with six Hispanic inmates
in Washington State Reformatory who each appear to be stepping into pastoral
callings.
Joseph models a sort of spiritual husbandry or midwifery
desperately needed today in our world. He is alert to an evolving role that
includes adoption, accompaniment, protection, and guidance to assure divine
destiny for his charges. He is a shepherd, parent, bodyguard combined.
From a broad sacred history perspective Joseph comes to
serve and guard in ways the first Adam failed at, embodying the human father’s
role to raise up the new Adam and all future children of the Father (Romans
5:18-19).
The first Adam failed to protect Eve from the serpent’s
predatory deceit. He stands beside her passively while the serpent falsely
depicts God as ungenerous, untrustworthy, unreasonable, deceptive power monger.
The man does nothing to put the creeping thing under his feet. Nor does Adam protect
or intervene when his firstborn son Cain becomes enraged at his second born
Abel. Adam does not model mastery over the sin that crouches at the door, and
Cain succumbs to jealousy and anger and murders his brother with no resistance
from Adam.
“Does this still happen today?” I ask the men gathered in a
circle in the prison chapel last Sunday.
My friends give concrete examples from their upbringings and
lives of crime to illustrate passivity in the face of threats and temptations.
One man tells of ignoring a warning from a pastor who prophesied his demise
should he continue selling drugs. Now at the end of a seven-year sentence he’s
keenly aware that he needs to pay attention continually.
Julio is especially inspired to use his natural on-point
alertness to trouble for the good. Julio seems to instinctively know where
every cop (even undercover) is within any given neighborhood he enters. He is
increasingly alert to predatory spiritual powers and watches over people who
attend his nightly Psalms reading group like a Kingdom of God vigilante. We
read about Joseph in Matthew 1-2 and find inspiration.
In the new garden in Israel at the eve of the First Century
AD the new Eve, Mary, conceives the Savior, the new man, through a divine act
when the Holy Spirit comes upon her. Joseph plans to send away his pregnant
fiancé away rather than marry her or publically disgrace her. An angel appears
to him in a dream, telling him to take Mary as his wife. He doesn’t sleep with
Mary until after Jesus’ birth to protect the integrity of the divine Paternity.
Joseph offers covering and legitimacy to Mary and adoptive father to Jesus— a necessary
protection as threats to his life are immediate.
We read together in these various Bible studies and at the
commissioning service Revelation 12, which speaks of this new beginning in
cosmic terms.
In heaven a woman clothed with the sun is with child. A
dragon stands before her ready to devour her child, “a son, a male
child, who is
to rule all the nations with a rod of iron.”
There’s a war in heaven and “the great
dragon was thrown down, the serpent of
old who is called the devil and
Satan, who deceives the whole world;
he was thrown down to the earth,
and his angels were thrown
down with him” (v. 9).
A loud voice in heaven
declares the victory of the child: “Now the salvation, and the power, and
the kingdom of our God and the authority
of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been
thrown down, he who accuses them before our God
day and night”, who is “enraged with the woman… making war with the rest of her
children, who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus
(v. 10-11, 16).
“Do you see signs of this
accusing, warring aggression against God’s children today?” I ask the inmates. The
question is so obviously answerable that it requires no discussion. Our prisons
are filled with the accused. The blood of young men and women are flowing
everywhere, most visibly now in news stories about Chicago, California, Yemen, Syria, El Salvador and Honduras.
These accusing, threatening
powers of death are embodied in human rulers there in the beginning of
Matthew’s Gospel, and we read on about Joseph’s important role as the on-point
guardian.
When Herod hears that the King of the Jews is born in
Bethlehem he sends troops to kill all the baby boys. Once again an angel
appears to Joseph in a dream, warning him, saying: “Get up! Take the Child and His mother and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is going to search for the Child to destroy Him.” Joseph
responds immediately, taking the child and his mother while it is still night
and leaves for Egypt.
Then after Herod dies Joseph
is once again recruited into his adopting and guarding ministry. An angel of
the Lord appears to Joseph in a dream telling him to take the child and his
mother back to Israel. When Joseph hears that Herod’s son is reigning in place
of his father and is afraid to return to Bethlehem, his own keen observations
are confirmed by a warning dream, leading him to settle in far away Nazareth
instead.
Joseph like his namesake Joseph son of Jacob pays attention
to his dreams, ends up in Egypt and eventually acts wisely to counsel Pharaoh
regarding food provisions, offering covering for Jacob and his sons. Joseph,
descendent of Adam through Seth according to Luke’s genealogy embodies and
models the first human’s original call to serve and watch over any and everyone
born of woman as they step into their spiritual adoption as children of the
Father of Jesus.
We end our gatherings reading how the woman’s children “overcame him
[the dragon] because of the blood
of the Lamb and because of the word
of their testimony, and they did
not love their life even when faced with
death (v. 11).
In each of my recent
gatherings people have felt convicted by passivity and mobilized towards a new
active resistance and protective orientation towards sheltering and nurturing
God’s threatened but victorious church. The inmates lament their failure and
inability in their incarcerated state to be present to protect their wives and
children, and long for a new opportunity. People are inspired to pay closer
attention to how the Spirit is alerting and guiding them. I wonder how Joseph’s
example might inspire us to encourage our governments to offer refuge and
support to the most vulnerable (like Syrian refugees
awaiting resettlement).
We end our times together by
me leaving them with a Scriptures about being alert to read on their own (1
Corinthians 16:13; Ephesians 6:18; 1 Thessalonians 5:6), ending with a reading
from 1 Peter 5:8-10
“Be of sober
spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary,
the devil, prowls around like a
roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist
him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being
accomplished by your brethren who
are in the world. After you have suffered for a
little while, the God of
all grace, who called you to His
eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect,
confirm, strengthen and establish
you. To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen.
