Jesus (9 page)

T
HE PRESENT-DAY
C
HURCH OF
the Nativity is a squat, buff-colored, fortress-like edifice built on the site of the fourth-century church mentioned by St. Jerome. Its byzantine history is summed up by the physical appearance of the church's main entrance, which clearly shows three stages of development—that is, the doorway was made progressively smaller and more difficult to enter, and the outlines of the larger, more ancient doors can easily be seen. Visitors can discern first, a large sixth-century opening (a wooden lintel is still embedded in the church wall); second, a smaller archway fashioned by the Crusaders; and finally, an even smaller entrance, from the Turkish and Ottoman periods, which was designed to prevent looters from entering the church with ease. Today the entrance to the great church is a three-foot-high doorway.

Thus, to enter the Church of the Nativity, one must bow or kneel. As a result, the paving stone has been worn smooth, with a marked indentation made by millions of pilgrims. Strangely, I found this entrance, called the Door of Humility, more moving than the church's interior. As I entered the building on my knees, I thought not only of how God had lowered himself to enter into our humanity, but also, more specifically, how Jesus had lowered himself so much that he assented to be crucified.

T
HE LONG, HIGH-CEILINGED INTERIOR
was jammed with people. Far from the gleaming marble space that I anticipated, the Church of the Nativity, with its smooth stone floor and timbered roof supported by massive columns, appeared dilapidated. Its walls and woodwork were dusty, understandable for a building dating from the sixth century. But knowing that the structure dated back to the time of the emperor Justinian imbued the gritty setting with a meaning that transcended the grime. I couldn't wait to see the actual spot where Jesus was born. I anticipated being deeply moved. But where was it?

We made our way through the crowds and inched ahead in an ill-defined line with hundreds of tourists. Soon George got antsy, bothered by the crush. “I'll see it later,” he said. I was already finding it a spiritual challenge to maintain a reverent attitude while being elbowed every few seconds by my fellow pilgrims. Gradually the throng carried me, like a twig in a river, to the main altar in the upper church. In a few minutes, the crush grew more intense as people spied our target: a narrow archway behind the main altar. Trying not to step on toes, I gingerly walked down a shallow stone staircase, squeezed my way through the arch, and was in the Nativity Grotto.

The Nativity Grotto was the only place where one of my original objections to visiting the Holy Land—the touristy sites would turn me off—proved justified. The crowd squished itself around two spots, with nearly everyone snapping photos or filming videos. The first, to the immediate right, was the traditional site of the birth of Jesus. Behind a small arch were the remains of a cave. Under an altar that stands in the front of the cave is the holy site, marked by a large silver star affixed to the stone floor and illumined by several hanging lanterns. I knelt down to kiss the cold stone and said a prayer. A few feet away is the Chapel of the Manger, where by tradition Mary laid her baby. I kissed that spot as well and prayed for my family: my mother, my sister, my brother-in-law, and my two nephews.

Upon rising, I was immediately surrounded by pilgrims talking loudly, snapping photos, taking videos, gesticulating wildly, jostling one another, and reaching into crinkly plastic bags for a water bottle or candy bar. Over the years I've visited many other crowded religious sites—Lourdes, for one—but had never found it so difficult to pray. Why? Perhaps nowhere else did the visitors seem so blasé as they did at the Nativity sites. Maybe it was just this particular crowd on this particular day, but most people were strolling around and chatting as if it were Disneyland. I wanted to say, “Wait a minute! Remember where you are!” On the other hand, who knows what was going on inside of them? Fortunately, the rest of the Holy Land was infinitely more prayerful.

When I stepped back into the cavernous interior of the church I found myself confused. This ancient holy place, where Christian pilgrims had come to pray for millennia, where I had expected to be moved to tears, left me cold. I spied George sitting in a pew by himself. With his eye for the bizarre, he pointed out something hanging from the church's ornate chandeliers. Apparently in keeping with Western traditions they were hung with garish red Christmas ornaments. “Ho! Ho! Ho!” he said.

I laughed aloud, but couldn't stop thinking about this confusing place, at once holy and off-putting.

C
ONFUSION MAY HAVE BEEN
what Mary and Joseph felt, though we are not told explicitly. Luke's Gospel is more intent on describing the physical surroundings of the Nativity: the crowded lodgings, the common manger, the bands of cloth in which the child was wrapped. He says nothing about the emotional state of either Mary or Joseph. Compare that to his vivid description of the shepherds in the field, to whom the angel announces Jesus's birth: “They were terrified.” But perhaps Luke does not need to state the obvious. Whatever the circumstances of the birth (a trip into Bethlehem or living in Bethlehem already), confusion would have been natural for the couple.

Recently I read a series of meditations by Adrienne von Speyr, a twentieth-century Swiss mystic, in which she describes insights into the lives of the saints that came to her in prayer. Although she was obviously not in Bethlehem at the time, and although the Catholic Church is notoriously reluctant to pronounce on “private revelations” (experiences in private prayer), what von Speyr wrote about St. Joseph seemed sensible: “Joseph, the righteous man, is involved in something that at first frightens him; he does not understand it. But then grace brings him a certain understanding, even if it remains incomplete.”
¹⁰

We haven't talked much about Joseph yet. But that's not unusual when it comes to the Nativity story. In many Christmas scenes (whether classical paintings or cheap Christmas cards) Mary's husband is sometimes shunted off to the side or stuck in the back of the scene, behind a shepherd. Joseph is often portrayed as a wizened old man, balding and stooped, looking more like Mary's father than her husband.

Why this relative lack of attention to Joseph, especially since he can be a powerful figure not only for fathers, but also for all Christians?

Joseph has presented a delicate problem for the Catholic Church over the past two millennia. The miracle of the Incarnation was not only that God became human, but also that this was accomplished through a virgin. Naturally, Mary is one of the stars of the Nativity story, at least in Luke's Gospel. But the emphasis on Mary's virginity may have made her marriage to Joseph an uncomfortable reality—after all, if they were married, didn't that mean that they had sex? That flew in the face of an early tradition in the church—Mary's perpetual virginity. So Joseph ended up in the background.

Some scholars have posited this as one reason that Joseph is portrayed as elderly in so many paintings, even though some experts estimate he was around thirty years old at the time of Jesus's birth. Lawrence Cunningham, a professor of theology at Notre Dame and author of
A Brief History of Saints,
told me in a conversation, “Nine times out of ten in Christian art, Joseph takes on more of father-protector role rather than a husband. That was a way of solving the sexuality problem.” Cunningham noted that in some paintings, Joseph is shown dozing off in the corner of the stable or even leaving the scene of the Nativity entirely, “out of modesty.”

We can't blame Western artists for giving Joseph short shrift. They didn't have much to go on. Joseph is given no lines to speak in any of the Gospels and is not mentioned by name anywhere in Mark's Gospel. Significantly, he is absent during Jesus's public ministry and even at the Crucifixion, where, by contrast, Mary is featured prominently. This has led many scholars to conclude that he died before the end of Jesus's earthly life. In the Church of St. Joseph in Nazareth is a moving stained-glass window entitled
The Death of Joseph,
a rare scene in Christian art. The dying man lies in a bed, his right hand held tenderly by Jesus, his left by Mary.

So what do we know about Joseph? Apart from his trade—he's called a
tektōn
in the Gospels, which is usually translated as “carpenter” but is more likely a general craftsman—not much. But Pheme Perkins, a professor of New Testament at Boston College, told me that we can draw some interesting conclusions if we read the Gospels carefully.

“The most obvious assumption in antiquity would have been that Joseph had been married before and was a widower,” Perkins told me. “Most likely, an arrangement was made for him to find a young wife.” This is the basis for the Catholic tradition that Jesus's “brothers and sisters,” mentioned in the Gospels, were from Joseph's first marriage. (Mainline Protestant churches are generally more comfortable with the possibility that Mary could have given birth to other children after Jesus.)

Given that Mary seems not to have been forced for economic reasons to remarry after her husband's death, “Joseph must have been a good provider,” Perkins said. She is not certain that his portrayal as an elderly man in so many works of Christian art necessarily had to do with issues surrounding sexuality. “We usually make revered figures older,” she said. “If you look at most of the paintings of St. Peter and St. Paul, they look older, no matter what stage of life they're in.”

Though most of Joseph's life goes unmentioned in the Gospels, he carried out an exceedingly important task: helping to raise the Son of God. During the first years of Jesus's life, and perhaps into his young adulthood, he would have learned much of what he knew about the Jewish faith—its beliefs and practices, its history and ethics—from his mother
and
his foster father. Perhaps the skills Jesus learned alongside Joseph in the carpentry shop—patience, hard work, creativity—were put to use in his later ministry. In this way Joseph represents the holiness of the hidden life, doing meaningful things without a great deal of fanfare.

Joseph's actions during the Nativity story offer a powerful model for Christians. The Gospel of Matthew describes him as a “righteous man” who does what God asks of him after his initial confusion. After discovering Mary's pregnancy, Joseph thinks of “quietly” ending their marriage plans, so as not to disgrace her. But the Gospel of Matthew tells readers that an angel reassures the clearly confused Joseph in a dream: “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife,” says the angel, who then explains the unusual circumstances of the birth. “The child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.”
¹¹

In both the Old and New Testaments, dreams are privileged ways in which God communicates with people. In the Book of Genesis, Jacob dreams of a ladder reaching up to heaven, with angels ascending and descending.
¹²
Jacob's son and Joseph's namesake, the Joseph of Genesis, receives messages in dreams about his future and later, as a servant in Pharaoh's court, becomes an interpreter of dreams.
¹³
In my experience as a spiritual director, I have noticed how dreams are sometimes means through which God can communicate difficult truths, which the conscious mind might not be ready or able to grasp. And in my own life, I've had several revelatory dreams that, though they didn't predict the future or tell me that my wife was going to miraculously conceive a child, seemed indeed gifts from God.

Joseph faced an agonizing decision. But with God's grace he moved from confusion to a process of discernment and finally to acceptance. In this way he mirrors Mary more than we might initially suspect. While the sequence is different for Mary and Joseph, both face confusion, both have vivid experiences of God, both are confronted with a never-before-made decision, both assent to God's will, and both then prepare themselves for a life that will be, needless to say, confusing.

Matthew, by the way, may also have been more intent on describing Joseph's role because of the evangelist's desire to present Jesus as the fulfillment of the Old Testament. His Gospel begins with a lengthy genealogy starting with Abraham, continues through David, and ends up with Joseph. In this way Joseph is a symbol of both continuity (the continuation of the royal line of David and the placement of Jesus in the long line of Jewish prophets) and discontinuity (the unique way that Jesus's birth will come about and the utter newness of his ministry).

During the latter part of the Christmas story, the Holy Family leaves their homeland. Again in a dream, Joseph is told to flee from Bethlehem to Egypt to escape the rage of Herod, who will order the slaughter of all male children under two years of age. “Now after they [the wise men] had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.'”

Throughout the entire story, the personality of Mary's husband shines through, wordlessly. “Here is a model of someone who represents all the virtues in the Hebrew Bible,” Perkins told me. “He is asked to do something shocking, but because he's righteous, he follows God's guidance.”

Joseph was responsible for protecting Mary and her son in extreme conditions. Perkins calls him a “model for how people can follow God through difficult times.”

H
OW DID
J
OSEPH DEAL
with these difficult times? By pushing on in the midst of confusion. Matthew describes God communicating with Joseph through two dreams, first to explain Mary's pregnancy and then to direct him to Egypt. “But,” as von Speyr intuits, “he will never fully comprehend what happened with Mary the Virgin.”
¹⁴