Advent 4 22
If you are a fan of the TV series Call the Midwife, you may recall a story which featured in an early episode. I first came across it in Jennifer Worth’s memoirs on which the TV series is based, an account of her experiences as a midwife in the East End of London in the 1950s and 60s
She tells of an older man, a widower in his late fifties, who’d married a woman twenty years his junior. He loved her very much, with a quiet, loyal devotion, but while she was fond of him, it was plain that it was something of a marriage of convenience for her.
They hadn’t expected to have children, and the husband hadn’t had any with his first wife, but the woman discovered that she was pregnant, and he was delighted, and took his role as father-to-be very seriously, doing everything to support his wife.
Eventually the time came for the child to be born, and the midwives were called. The husband was banished downstairs to wait, as was normal then, and the baby was delivered safely. A perfect baby boy. The only problem was that while both husband and wife were white, the baby was very clearly of mixed race. It couldn’t possibly be his. There was an awkward silence in the bedroom, until the woman said that she supposed her husband had better be invited up. Everyone expected a huge scene, shouting, tears, crushing disappointment on the part of the husband, but he came into the room, looked in the cradle, picked up the child and announced that this was the most beautiful baby boy he’d had ever seen. He was delighted. The midwives looked at each other. Had he really not noticed? They said nothing; it wasn’t their place. The mother said nothing. And neither did her husband, not then, and not ever. The boy grew up, doted on by the man who called him son, cared for and supported despite the fact that he looked nothing like him. Of course, there were plenty of people who laughed at the husband behind his back, but he took no notice. Jennifer Worth’s verdict was that he’d seen that if he questioned his paternity, the child would be the one who suffered most, and he’d decided that having this child in his life was worth more than any injured pride he might have felt. As Worth put it “Perhaps an angel’s voice told him that any questions were best left unasked and unanswered.” As a result, a child and his mother, who might both have been rejected, knew love and stability. Tragedy was turned into triumph because of that man’s courage and commitment.
It's not hard to see why that story might have come into my head as I looked at our Bible readings today. Joseph knew that whoever the father of Mary’s child was, it wasn’t him. And if 1950s Britain wasn’t a good time to be found to be pregnant by someone other than your husband, first century Palestine was even worse. The penalty for adultery was stoning, and at the very least, having a child out of wedlock was likely to result in rejection and shame, for mother and child, and for their extended family too.
Joseph faces utter humiliation, when Mary’s pregnancy is discovered, and while we might think it terrible that he was planning to “dismiss her quietly” – break off the betrothal – that was actually the compassionate option. At least he wasn’t calling for her death, which he could have done.
But in his dreams an angel appears to him and asks him to do something that would have seemed extraordinary to those around him - to throw in his lot with this mother and baby. The child is “from the Holy Spirit”, he’s told. God is at work in this situation, in Mary and the child. So Joseph does what he’s been asked, and takes the consequences, sheltering and guarding the little family from the murderous King Herod, taking them as refugees to Egypt, and then returning to live in Nazareth, where it is clear from references in the Gospels that people were very aware that there was something suspicious about this child’s birth.
It’s a costly choice, but one which Joseph makes freely and deliberately, and there’s a tiny detail in the story which underlines that. The angel tells him to name the child and, in the closing words of the Gospel story, that’s exactly what Joseph does.
In Jewish thinking either the mother or the father could name the child. In Luke’s Gospel it is Mary who is told to name him. But if the father named the child it was considered a sign that he accepted the baby as his own. There was no way to prove a child’s paternity scientifically at the time; men had to decide for themselves whether to acknowledge a child. Roman custom went one step further. The child was laid on the ground at birth, and if the man decided to acknowledge it as his, he would pick it up. There’s no evidence Jewish fathers did that, but naming the child performed the same function. By doing as the angel asks, and naming Jesus, Joseph treats him as his own, even though he knows he’s not. Mary and Jesus may, technically, not be anything to do with him, but he makes them to do with him, part of his life. Metaphorically, if not actually, he picks him up and takes him into his arms, and says, “my life is going to be tied up with this child’s, and his with mine.”
We can read, and be inspired by this story in many ways.
It can be a starting point for thanksgiving for all who father and mother children who aren’t biologically their own – foster parents, adoptive parents, step-parents, godparents, the teacher or youth worker who goes the extra mile for a child in need of encouragement.
The early Christians saw in this little family an image of the church, a place where a diverse group of people were shaped into a new and different family by their choice to love and care for each other, not by an accident of their birth. We can ponder the story from that point of view too.
But it seems to me that we can also read it as an invitation to look at our own relationship with this child. Are we prepared to let our lives become entangled with his, as Joseph does? It’s tempting to be a spectator in our attitude to faith, to keep our options open, to shy away from commitment, but what would happen, this story asks, if we threw in our lot with Jesus, committed ourselves to living as he did, loving as he did, let him be an abiding presence in our lives, “God with us”? What would it mean for us to name him – Jesus – which means “God saves”? How would he save us? What from? What for? How would he change us, as every child changes their family? This story invites us to pick up the child, to declare that he has a claim on us, that he is ours, and we are his. That sort of commitment won’t ever be simple or trouble free – it certainly wasn’t for Joseph - but in the end, if we could ask Joseph, I think, like that man in Jennifer Worth’s story, he’d tell us it was worth it, bringing blessings that he could never have imagined.
Amen
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