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“Holy Carpentry”
Sermon delivered Sunday, December 23, 2007
Fourth Sunday in Advent
by Agnes W. Norfleet, Pastor
Shandon Presbyterian Church, Columbia SC
Matthew 1:18-2; Isaiah 7:10-16
Of all the artistic ways to render the people who gathered around the birth of Jesus, I
think Joseph is best suited to stained glass. We have to gather pieces about him from here and
there and weld them together to remember how Joseph fits into this nativity story. Whether Mary
is depicted in stained glass, or paintings, cast in plaster or carved in wood, she is always so easily
recognizable. She bows her head, lovely in blue, and Joseph usually serves as her backdrop
dressed in brown, lingering in the shadows, while the light falls more perfectly on her radiant
face. Out of the attic we pull down our manger scenes, open the box, unwrap each piece and
assemble the characters within the stable. Joseph’s identity is often determined by who he is not,
a sort of un-shepherd. He’s the one who comes out of the box with the commentary, “He doesn’t
have a crown and he’s not holding a shepherd’s crook; he must be Joseph.”
And if our visual imagination about Joseph is lacking, it’s even worse in music! Ever
tried to find something eloquent about Joseph in a Christmas carol? Forget about it! Before
Advent begins the music staff and I plan all the way through Advent and Christmas to make sure
that all of your favorite, treasured hymns and Christmas carols will be sung during this season.
Preparing to preach on Joseph today, I combed through every text in the hymnal and find not one
word about him, other than some indirect reference to his being engaged to Mary in a hymn in
which she, of course, plays the leading role. Bill McNair was willing to journey all the way back
to 18th century France just to find today’s Prelude about Joseph having a dream, but that piece
was written with no words to accompany the music.
In art, in music, and even in scripture, Mary is easy to find, and Joseph is always hard to
figure out. In the Bible Mary sings her famous Magnificat, but Joseph himself says not one word,
and after the infancy narratives he is never even seen again. And yet, despite the fact that we
have a much more complete picture of Mary, the gospel writer, Matthew, carefully defines
Joseph as very important, as he gives glimpses of Joseph’s role, piece by piece.
Let’s look at the three places where Matthew makes mention of Joseph, because it may
just be that through the one we have to piece together we find our own entry into the birth story
of Jesus. First of all, Matthew opens his whole gospel with a genealogy of Joseph’s side of the
family, an interesting way to begin when you consider the fact that Joseph is not Jesus’
biological father, but only his adopted one. Full of names from the Jewish scriptures, the family
tree Jesus inherits through Joseph is sure to raise interest among Matthew’s readers. There is
Abraham, the first great patriarch, through whose descendants all the families of the earth will be
blessed, and David, the royal highpoint in the history of the people of Israel.
In addition to the patriarchs, there are some interesting women to remember on Joseph’s
side of the family. Tamar is listed, the seductress, and Rahab the prostitute. There is Ruth whose
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union with Boaz, was at best unconventional. And interestingly, Bathsheba is listed as the wife,
not of David, but Uriah whom David had killed just to have her. Moreover, none of these women
in Joseph’s proud family lineage were Israelites. Rahab and Tamar were Canaanites, Ruth was a
Moabite, and Bathsheba, the wife of a Hittite was regarded as one as well. (1) The curtain hasn’t
even risen over Bethlehem, and the Playbill is warning the audience that there is something
extraordinary, irregular, even scandalous in the story which is about to unfold from Joseph’s side
of the family tree. Matthew must think it is Joseph who links Jesus to a broad portrait of the
human family, filled with diversity of individuals and peoples – both sources of blessing and
scandal as well.
The genealogy is the first mention of Joseph, and there is a later picture in the gospel
before we come back to our story for today. Did you realize that Matthew is the only gospel
writer who lets us know that Joseph was a carpenter? Mark mentions that Jesus himself was a
carpenter and you could infer therefore that his Dad was too, but only Matthew, way over in the
13th chapter, says that when Jesus was preaching the crowds asked, “Is not this the carpenter’s
son?”
I’ve got to admit that Joseph’s vocation as a carpenter piqued my interest, given the fact
that my husband Larry is an architect and homebuilder and we’ve spent a lot of time together
watching carpenters at work. For the earthly father of Jesus, God could have chosen a priest in
the Temple accustomed to handling holy things. God could have chosen a shepherd who would
have at least known something about helping another give birth out in the night air. But God
chose a carpenter who worked with tape measures and levels and instruments of precision in
order for things to come out just right. “Measure twice and cut once,” is how they say it.
All lines are straight and exact. In choosing Joseph, God was taking a very ordered life of one
accustomed to putting things together just so, only to turn that life completely up-side-down.
I asked Larry what he thought about the fact that Joseph was a carpenter, and he told me
how one of his architecture professors compared architects to carpenters. He said, “An
architect’s job is to look at every possible solution before anything is built and work it out ahead
of time on paper; a carpenter, by contrast, takes tools, materials and know-how, and develops
plans along the way, because a carpenter often runs into unforeseen circumstances.” Joseph was
a carpenter who, in this amazing birth narrative, ran into unforeseen circumstances for sure. By
the nature of his vocation, he must have known something about making adjustments, changing
plans, and being discerning along the way about how to get the job done.
Maybe carpentry is a pretty suitable profession after-all for the adoptive father of Jesus,
because look at what happens in today’s scripture reading. Joseph’s engagement to be married
gets wholly disrupted with an unplanned pregnancy. To be betrothed back in those days, was like
an engagement, but also, like a marriage in that it was legally binding. Families might have had
young children betrothed to one another, but then waited until an appropriate age for marriage.
According to the law, a woman who broke the legal covenant of betrothal, by becoming pregnant
by another, could be put to death. Because Joseph is “righteous,” he plans to follow the law that
says he should get out of this arrangement, BUT because he is also compassionate he plans to
divorce Mary quietly and protect her from public shame. That is, until an angel visits him in a
dream, tells him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, and lets him in on the secret that she is
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pregnant by the Holy Spirit. His plans completely disrupted now, Joseph did exactly what he was
asked to do, and in so doing he built the most beautiful thing of his life – a family and a home in
which a newborn baby could grow into his name, Jesus, as the one who would save people from
their sins. He was a righteous man, Matthew tells us, one of those good people of few words.
With the plans he had for his life shattered, he paid attention to his dreams, and did what was
kind and good.
Yes, Joseph may best be depicted in stained glass, put together piece by piece. He gives
Jesus a genealogy, showing how Jesus will fulfill all the promises made to Israel, as well as how
God works through surprising interruptions among all kinds of unlikely people through history.
Joseph, who works in a measured and ordered profession like carpentry, handles his own
unforeseen and chaotic circumstances trusting in God. As one commentator put it: “He learns
that being truly righteous does not mean looking up a rule in a book and then doing the ‘right
thing’; it means wrestling with the complexities of a problem, listening for the voice of God and
then doing God’s thing.” (2)
In a word, Joseph was the product of God’s Holy Carpentry. God put him together, piece
by piece. With the sharp edges of some of Israel’s most scandalous people in his family tree,
with the colorful situation of an unplanned birth, with compassion toward his beloved Mary,
and with hope in his heart that dreams come true, Joseph is indeed a work of art through which
the light of God shines.
At last our picture of Joseph is nearly complete, except for one thing. Joseph may be the
character in this story of the birth of Jesus who looks most like each of us. Maybe that’s why we
have a hard time finding a clear picture of him. Perhaps he fades into the background behind
Mary’s radiant face precisely to enable us to try his sandals on, and imagine how God is present
in the complexities of our lives: in the oddities of our own family trees, in the unforeseen
circumstances that turn us up-side-down in unexpected ways, in our struggles to do what is right,
in our hopes for a savior named Emmanuel, God with us. Perhaps there are no hymns about him
because he is standing along side us singing our carols with us, praising God for disrupting our
everyday lives with impossible dreams.
Yes, I am certain that Joseph is best rendered in stained glass, put together himself as if a
work of God’s own Holy Carpentry. Because the beauty of his rendering, even in scripture,
comes from pieces collected among broken shards and painstakingly reassembled. And we know
the light of the gospel shines through Joseph because it is reflected even in the likes of us.
Amen.
NOTES
1) David Schnasa Jacobson, “Joseph Was a Righteous Man: The Scandalous Child,” from Pulpit Digest, Nov. /Dec.,
1998, p. 52.
2) Thomas G. Long, Matthew. Westminster Bible Companion, p.14.