“Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 1:18, ESV)Joseph was not the Dad...
Important for his absence.
It says “his mother Mary had been betrothed...”. It does not say “his parents had been betrothed...” It’s an obvious point that we often overlook. Joseph was not the Dad. The same point sticks out in the preceding genealogy like a sore thumb:
“Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born... (Matt:1:15-16)So many Fathers and then one guy who is just a husband. That is all that Matthew can write about Joseph. He is just a husband. Famous for his lack of fatherhood. Important for his absence.
Joseph is barely around in the rest of the story. He barely gets a mention. Joseph is strangely missed out during the visit of the wise men (2:11). He then receives two dreams - one that commands him to take ‘the child and his mother’ to Egypt (2:13) and one that commands him to return to Israel (2:20). Even in these moments the words on the page emphasise his distance from Jesus. Jesus is ‘the child’ and not even ‘your child’. All along the way, Joseph is denied his fatherhood. He is not allowed to act on his traditionally defined gender role and make the family decisions. And he is not granted any whiff of a fatherly title (The one time Mary refers to Joseph as Father, Jesus corrects her (Luke2:48-49)) And then Joseph disappears into oblivion.
To his credit, in the small moments of stage-time that he gets, he is portrayed as honourable, gracious and obedient to his God. From his perspective, he honours God by planning to divorce his unfaithful wife(1:19). And he is gracious to Mary in planning to divorce her discreetly and avoid her shame (shame that she deserved for her adultery). And he is incredibly obedient when he learns the truth of the situation from a dream (1:24) and adopts the child as his own.
He obediently names the child that is not his Jesus. Which is yet another big slap in the face of his traditionally defined gender role. It is usually the Dad that names the child! That’s how it was always done. Usually its even the Father’s name that gets passed on. In the story of the birth of John the Baptist (Luke 1:57-63) no one listened to Mother Elizabeth; she was being crazy by choosing a name that was not in their family line. They looked to Father Zechariah for authoritative confirmation. But for both Zechariah and Joseph, their important fatherly role was taken away from them. Joseph named the child, but he did not choose the name. He was father by proxy.
There is a sense in which that is an affront to me. How could God so emasculate this person, that the joy they should have got from their firstborn son, was taken away from them. He is condemned to being a fake father. And at the same time, I am awed and inspired by Joseph’s obedience and I see a humbling picture of my own fatherly role in his.
Father by proxy.
I have a child, a son. He is mine and he looks like me. At 18 months he is already mimicking little things that I do. My sense of pride and joy intertwine as I know he is mine, and I enjoy the authentic relationship which he brings me into. I am his father, he is my son. Without him, I could not be a Dad.
But God overrides this. He supersedes my Fatherly authority. My son is God’s child. God will be a better father to him then I can ever be. God will be more loving, more gracious, more faithful, more proud, more Joyful, over my son then I will ever be. And my fatherhood, even in my best moments, can only hope to be a crude reflection of God’s perfect fatherhood.
And most importantly: my son’s relationship to his heavenly father is more important than his relationship to me. And so I need to choose, to give up my fatherly pride and give up my son to his heavenly Father. I will try my best to let God direct his paths. And I humbly ask God to use me as his proxy father, to teach my son about what his heavenly Father is like. As I learn to be a father, in the way that God is a father, my only aim and motive should be that one day my son will hopefully see God for the perfect loving father that He is.
And so I give up my son. And even in that I suddenly realise that I am mimicking what my Heavenly Father has already done with his son.
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