Faith and Promise: Choosing to be Obedient

It is dark. The moon does not shine tonight. The stars slip in and out of a thin cloudy blanket. The rocky hills roll silently onward, only shaken with the echo of bleating and other weary travelers settling in for a fitful night. A young girl, exhausted, sleeps on a rough mat; her belly swollen with promise, her eyes dreaming of an unseen burden and worry. And in his restless thoughts, a man kneels near by; alert to the darkness and reality of the times. But, instead of heeding to the temptation of anxious thought, he covers his head with his prayer shawl, closes his tired eyes, and turns with empty hands upward to heaven. In wisps of perceived utterance is heard the practice of blessing for he knows soon he will speak it over his unborn child…

Y'va-reh-ch'cha Adonai v'yeesh-m'reh-cha, Ya-air Adonai pa-nahv

ay-leh-cha vee-choo-neh-ka, Yee-sa Adonai pa-nahv ay-leh-cha v'ya-same l'cha Shalom.

His eyes open and a burned sigh removes itself from his body. His feet are blistered with access walking. One more day and they would arrive. One more day. And one day…

One day I will pray the Shabbat prayer over my children… and my child… my son. Will ever be my son? Not bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh… and yet, Adonai, God of All has entrusted me with His son… what can these hands do for the Maker of All?!

He hangs his head and lines of disbelief and distraught etch his tan face, but he breathes out and relaxes after a few moments. The cool air quiets his mind and he directs his soul to converse with He who is unseen.

Oh God, You have given me these hands and with them… I… I will hold his hands as he learns to walk and run, I will teach his hands to carve and build, to feel the sway and bend of the olive tree so he will know what trunks will be the best for crafting and what cedars will be the strongest for beams. I will train his hands to be gentle as he works with the knots of the sycamore trees and firm with the oaks of the North. I will teach his hands to balance fair prices, to be patient, as the day grows dark, and to work quickly and efficiently when there is fear of taxation and oppression amongst our people. He will have strong hands, good hands… And the misrah shall be upon his shoulders… Peleh (Wonderful), Yoetz (Counselor), El Gibbor (Mighty God), Avi Ad (Possessor of Eternity), Sar Shalom (Prince of Peace).

The realization of the prophecies foretold and taught by the Rabbis for generations overwhelms the man and he stands, against the will of his body, forgetting what hour it is or who may be listening.

How can this be God?! The child she carries is He? The weight and glory of the prophets comes to my house? What am I doing? Where am I going? To Bethlehem… for out of it shall come a ruler who will be Lord over the peoples. Me? Such a simple man. My hands are scared and callus and yet I will hold the… the – no! I am so lowly, the lowest. I work with wood. I am poor. I am not learned as the Rabbis and teachers of the Law. They are influence and stature. Surely the Son of God would be far better off in their houses. Why me?

Bodily weariness overtakes his legs and the man returns to the ground, kneeling in the cooled dusty terrain. His eyes wander through the obscurity and soon find the young woman lying near his unladed animal, who too sleeps just as soundly as she. A gentle look crosses the man's face as he watches his wife stir quietly in her dreams.

For her. If not for her, I would not be here. I… I do love her. But it broke my pride more than my heart when I found out she was pregnant. So young… so innocent to the fear and hatred of the world. How could I follow her into the sin everyone said she had committed? How could I love her then when I had worked SO hard to build my reputation, my business, my standing with the leaders of Nazareth? I was so close to telling her to break the vows we had made to each other so that I could save face. I am a weak and lowly man to go so far as to disgrace and shame her by breaking the promise of marriage without people knowing it and let my desires of a perfect, quiet, little life die away while she would be lead to be stoned outside of town… Hinei HaAlmah (the unmarried young virgin)… that is what the prophets called her. Shmo Immanuel (God with us)… that is what the prophets call Him. They did not prophecy about me… if they did, I would not be the man they would write about. What a fable to be written if they really knew how weak and afraid I was… I am. Like a leaf in the dead of winter shakes against the wind, there I was in a dream after finally accepting the fact that I would divorce Mary in the morning. But, instead I closed my weary eyes and saw before me a being… Take Mary as your wife and she will conceive and give birth to a son and He shall save the people from their sins… How!? I do not understand. How can this all come to pass…?

I didn’t needed to know then… I don’t need to know now. I rose from a cold sweat and didn’t even bother to think about what time it was. I ran to the house of Heli and took Mary into my own home that very day… I am a simple man; I don’t need big, elaborate explanations or long-winded proposals from the town leaders… I just trusted what the angel had said. I did what I was to do… and now I am here… between what I knew, my comfort, my home… and what is to come, the birth of the child, the future of Israel, and the world. Ha… the world! It is too much…

I am far from perfect. I am no one. I make mistakes and fall into choices motivated my pride and selfishness. But, what God sees in me is far from what I see in myself.

Joseph removes his prayer shawl from covering his head and looks into the eyes of the night and the stillness envelopes him.

So… I will be content to stay between what was and what will come… I will trust and do what Adonai wills… whatever end that is.

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In my research of Joseph, earthly father of Jesus, I kept meeting the reality that every time Joseph is mentioned in the Bible, he is being told to do something - marry Mary, flee to Egypt, and return home - now. And he does it without question, without ponder - he is a man of action. I wrote this originally as a monologue to be performed, and revised it. As I was editing Joseph's internal/external conversation with God, I realized how important it truly is for us to be people of action. When Holy Spirit asks you do something, you do it. Don't question it. Just do it (as the saying goes!). We don't have any documentation of what happened to Joseph after the angel tells him to return home with Jesus and Mary, but just from the few encounters we have with his personality, it is not hard to imagine this surrogate father sitting with his son, teaching him the trade of a good, honest man. After all, Joseph was a real, ordinary person obedient in unordinary times.