What about Joseph?

My friend Jeff Hamilton and I were talking the other day, and we got onto the subject of Joseph. He's been reading through Luke, and upon reading chapter two, he had some questions about the role of Joseph. What did Joseph think about everything that was going on? He's mentioned hardly at all in Luke's version of the Christmas story...but he has an interesting part to play.

We wondered: did Joseph just flat out trust Mary's account of what happened? Her story of how she became pregnant...did Joseph believe the part about the angel? According to legend, the gossipy rumor was that Mary had been ravished by a local Roman centurion. Is this what Joseph thought? What did he think? What was he thinking about as he and Mary travelled from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Their marriage isn't official until the two of them consummate it, and that won't happen till well after this child is born. So Joseph has taken Mary with him, presumably because her father kicked her out - Joseph is taking a woman who is not yet his wife, impregnated by someone other than him, traveling through the rough Jordanian valley under harsh Roman rule into the realm of the tyrranical and vicious King Herod. Merry Christmas indeed.

Why did Joseph take Mary with him? Why did he accept HER firstborn son as his own? Why were they not able to find a quality room in which to give birth? Were they rejected by their ancestral family as well? Did Joseph serve as the mid-wife? How long had they been in the village prior to the birth? How were they faring before and after? How well did they know each other before all this happened? Since marriages were arranged between the father of the bride and the family of the husband, did the two actually know each other prior to all this? Assuming the small village nature of Nazareth, they likely knew something of each other...but was this trip to Bethlehem their first time being together? Merry Christmas indeed.

The text doesn't indicate any kind of reluctance on Joseph's part, and as the story unfolds, the two seem to become one, dedicated to fulfilling the law and believing the prophecies of their son. Joseph seems to have accepted Mary as his wife, her son as his own, and her future as his. For all the attention that Mary gets in this story (and deservedly so), Joseph seems to live up to his namesake, preserving the future of Jesus just as the first Joseph preserved the future of Jacob's tribe. Merry Christmas indeed.