Joseph

At our Christmas Eve service I read a poem that I wrote about Joseph, Jesus’ earthly father. I want to share that poem with you here, along with what inspired it.

I once heard a man who grew up in a jewish home talk about how the teaching about the messiah was so compelling and captivating to him as a young man. It made me think that Joseph, who was also a young jewish man, probably had a similar experience. And if he did, how wonderfully jarring it would be to then have to care for the messiah as an infant and a son. How would that challenge and change him, along with his views of God? This poem is my meditation on what Joseph expected/anticipated in the messiah, contrasted with who the messiah actually was to him.

Joseph always loved messianic teaching.

He felt like something big is where life should be leading.

To him Death seemed sad, pointless and anticlimactic,

but the messiah seemed fittingly big and fantastic.

When messiah shows up God will be revealed, 

he’ll revive the dead, and death will be repealed;

And his people, the Jews, they would be vindicated

and delivered from all the oppressors they hated.

He loved the feeling it could happen at any moment;

how his family left a seat open for Elijah the prophet.

But mostly he cared about the person: the Christ;

he loved to ponder on what he would be like.

He imagined a man mysterious and holy,

like the priests, uniquely adorned and imposing;

smelling of strange smoke and frequently stained

with blood from the sacrifices offered that day.

And A glorious man like the great kings of old.

Like King David of whom he was so often told.

Joseph was proud to be part of his line

and his greatness always loomed large his mind.

Powerful, famous, majestic, and weighty,

the Messiah would be like King David times eighty!

But now as Joseph held the Christ in his arms,

so dependent and fragile and vulnerable to harm,

he wasn’t at all the king he had hoped for;

but that just made him love the child even more.

His heart was filled up and his eyes, they were lifted.

His hopes were transformed and their center was shifted

from a focus on self to a focus on son,

which now seemed like where they should have been all along.

He blessed his great God who would dare condescend

to be born as a small town carpenter’s kid.

As Mary said, “He scatters the proud and the mighty

but he has exalted the humble and tiny.”