Sermon for the Feast of St Joseph

admin | 19 March 2009

A homily on the Feast of St Joseph from The Rev’d David Curry, Rector of Christ Church.

“But while he thought on these things, the angel of the Lord
appeared unto him in a dream”

In literature and art, Joseph tends to get a bad rap. More a figure of the background, if portrayed at all in art, he is often pictured as a bit of a doddering old man, a sort of gullible fool; in literature, Robertson Davies, in the first of his Deptford Trilogy, Fifth Business, has the eccentric scholar, Padre Ignazio Blazon, describe him as “the most celebrated cuckold in history,” having been upstaged, as it were, by nothing less, it seems, than God the Holy Ghost.

There is something refreshingly honest, then, in turning to the Church’s commemoration of St. Joseph and to the scripture readings that The Book of Common Prayer provides (BCP, p. 113), along with the special collect (BCP, p. 319), for this day. We are recalled to the theme of humility and service, to a kind of magnanimity of spirit, paradoxically, which complements Mary’s response to the Angel of the Annunciation and which signals an important feature of the Lenten journey of our lives. It is not about living in the spot-light of attention. That can so easily become the way of pride and vainglory. “Look at me looking at you looking at me,” if I may summarize the culture of voyeurism and narcissism so frequently on display in our world and day!

The counter to pride is the humility of Joseph that complements the humility of Mary. In a way, Mary and Joseph are both the quiet figures of the background. “Mary,” as Luther puts it, “does not want us to come to her, but through her to Jesus.” This captures perfectly, if rather ironically, the founder of the Jesuit order, Ignatius of Loyola’s aphorism, “Per Mariam ad Jesum,” “through Mary to Jesus.” Joseph, too, plays a crucial role in that same orientation of our souls. How? By “Being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example”, as St. Matthew reports, and, not willing either to act as the aggrieved and betrayed spouse, “he was minded to put her away privily.” It is through “[his thinking] on these things” and being open to angelic direction rather than human reactions such as anger and outrage or the fear of scorn or mockery that results in his playing a crucial role, albeit in the background, in the economy of our salvation. Joseph, too, will name the child, Jesus, as suggested by the Angel. Joseph will take the child and his mother and flee into Egypt. Joseph is the quiet but steady figure who exemplifies the labours of love and service that undergird what the collect calls “our earthly vocations.”

These are the quiet labours that do not scream “look at me, look at me.” Instead, the labours of Joseph have that largeness of soul, that magnanimity of spirit, that looks to Jesus. Such is the true nature of humility. And only so can we be blessed.