St Joseph | All Along the Watchtower

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Apollo 8, Christmas, Christmas Eve, Quality of life, St Joseph

In the last few days, we’ve talked a bit of St Joseph, and we have commented that we see a lot of him in what we call ‘ordinary Joe’s’. Well, I’m not so sure that they are really very ordinary, because they too are creators, not of life perhaps, but of quality of life. What do they create? Kipling put it like this:

We were taken from the ore-bed and the mine,

   We were melted in the furnace and the pit—

We were cast and wrought and hammered to design,

   We were cut and filed and tooled and gauged to fit.

Some water, coal, and oil is all we ask,

   And a thousandth of an inch to give us play:

And now, if you will set us to our task,

   We will serve you four and twenty hours a day!
      We can pull and haul and push and lift and drive,

      We can print and plough and weave and heat and light,

      We can run and race and swim and fly and dive,

      We can see and hear and count and read and write!
Would you call a friend from half across the world?

   If you’ll let us have his name and town and state,

You shall see and hear your crackling question hurled

   Across the arch of heaven while you wait.

Has he answered? Does he need you at his side?

   You can start this very evening if you choose,

And take the Western Ocean in the stride

   Of seventy thousand horses and some screws!
      The boat-express is waiting your command!

      You will find the Mauretania at the quay,

      Till her captain turns the lever ’neath his hand,

      And the monstrous nine-decked city goes to sea.
Do you wish to make the mountains bare their head

   And lay their new-cut forests at your feet?

Do you want to turn a river in its bed,

   Or plant a barren wilderness with wheat?

Shall we pipe aloft and bring you water down

   From the never-failing cisterns of the snows,

To work the mills and tramways in your town,

   And irrigate your orchards as it flows?
      It is easy! Give us dynamite and drills!

      Watch the iron-shouldered rocks lie down and quake

      As the thirsty desert-level floods and fills,

      And the valley we have dammed becomes a lake.
But remember, please, the Law by which we live,

   We are not built to comprehend a lie,

We can neither love nor pity nor forgive.

   If you make a slip in handling us you die!

We are greater than the Peoples or the Kings—

   Be humble, as you crawl beneath our rods!-

Our touch can alter all created things,

   We are everything on earth—except The Gods!
      Though our smoke may hide the Heavens from your eyes,

      It will vanish and the stars will shine again,

      Because, for all our power and weight and size,

      We are nothing more than children of your brain!

True, isn’t it? We did build that, and more

Tonight back in 1968, the America that I grew up in, and still love, using mainly our brains (and our slide rules) sent the world a message as well. Here it is

Sometimes, it seems as if those days are gone forever, and in a way, I suppose they are. But you know, that America (And the rest of Western Civilization) is still here, plugging away, without much notice or reward, just like Joseph, to protect, comfort and feed our families, and the rest of God’s children as well.

Merry Christmas to all

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Christianity, St Joseph

Watching the Nativity Play last night, I was struck, as I’ve been before about the place of St Joseph. The girl playing Mary had a good part, as did the wise men, and, to some extent, at least the youngest of the shepherds, but old Joseph, well he was there, supporting mum and baby, making sure the donkey moved, the inn-keeper found some space for them, and leading them all off to Egypt. But he was very much, as he is in the Bible, a background figure.

We’re told little about Joseph other than that he was a righteous man. As such, he observed the Law and did his duty as an orthodox Jew. We don’t know if tradition is right when it portrays him as an older man, although we can be pretty sure that modern portrayals of it as a love match are wide of the mark. What we are told is that when he discovered his betrothed was with child, he was minded to put her aside. This was actually very decent of him, as he could have denounced her as an adulteress and had her stoned; whoever would believe their girl if she said she was in the family way because of an angel? After all, angels are not noted for that sort of thing. But being a decent sort, Joseph wasn’t minded to make a fuss. Then the angel came to him too, and, whatever fuss there may have been about it all, he looked after his betrothed and the child. That along marked him out as an exceptional sort of chap.

We see and hear little of him – like so many dads, his role seems to have been to act as support for the family, to provide the living, and to give them the necessities. He took on that traditional role, and, as far as we can tell, fulfilled it. He found that stable, he took them to Egypt, he did his duty as he ought; something which our age might well care to ponder. The family unit needed them both; young Mary couldn’t have coped alone. How many lasses end up in the abortionists’ hands because their lad is nowhere to be seen?

We have to presume Joseph accepted that his son was the Son of God, but that it made no difference, and that he looked after him as though he’d been his own. Whether the ‘brothers and sisters’ were also Mary’s children, we don’t know – they may have been the product of an earlier marriage – but we know Jesus grew up as part of an extended family unit. When I was a lad I had a book with Jesus working with his dad in the carpenter’s workshop; as I used to hand around my dad’s workshop, it gave me a fellow feeling.

We don’t know when or how Joseph died, just that he wasn’t there when the Lord began his ministry, and that when he was crucified, there was only St John into whose hand he could commend his mother. That protecting hand had long gone. But Joseph had been the example to Jesus of what a father was – protecting, dutiful and loving. Like so many dads, he may have been so busy earning a living for the family that was, to some extent, never at its centre. But I think at a time of the year when we’re all thinking of Jesus and his mother, a thought should be spared for old St Joe.