In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today’s biblical readings, beloved in the Lord, from the epistle to the Galatians and the gospel of Matthew, introduce what I am prompted to call an international perspective. Speaking of his conversion, St. Paul tells us today, “I went away into Arabia; again I returned to Damascus; then after three years I went up to Jerusalem.” And Matthew today says that Joseph “rose and took the child and his mother by night, and departed to Egypt.” Pretty international, at least the Western half of the Fertile Crescent.

In each account, someone must flee under cover of darkness because of a threat. Paul was in danger of arrest at Damascus, and we recall that he was lowered by night in a large basket out of a window high in the wall. As for Joseph, Matthew tells us, he arose and took the child and his mother by night and departed to Egypt. Both stories are about fear and flight. Both stories are also about personal revelations, to St. Paul and to St. Joseph. Both these accounts are revelations concerning the identity of the Messiah. Each story is about a man’s faith in God.

With respect to the gospel account, it’s instructive to notice several things. One could hardly read this gospel at all, I think, about Joseph’s revelations in dreams, without thinking of another Joseph to whom God spoke in dreams. In fact, he was known to his brothers as the Dreamer. Likewise, this morning’s reading from Galatians seems to be hard to forget Jeremiah, when Paul talks about being separated from his mother’s womb and called, an apostle to the nations. If you look at the opening chapter of Jeremiah, how he described his own vocation, to the nations.

In the gospel account, it’s instructive to observe that Matthew begins and ends the story of Jesus with a man named Joseph. As Joseph of Nazareth saves the baby Jesus at the beginning, so Joseph of Arimathea buries him at the end. In short, there are many possibilities from which to choose in our considerations this morning, almost an infinite number of points, but I plan to direct our specific attention to the character of Joseph, if only because the Church observes this as his feast day.

I undertake this task aware that Christian antiquity provides me with only scant guidance. In the sermons of the early Church Fathers, Joseph rarely appears except in passing. There are no sermons—no sermons—specifically about Joseph in the Church at all for the first thousand years, and then not very many after that, nor can I think of a single icon that’s centered on Joseph, with him as a figure—I’m not talking about the narrative icons of the Nativity and the Flight into Egypt; I’m talking about a specific icon, the kind we have now, where Joseph is holding the Christ Child: I can’t think of a single example for the first 1500 years of Christian history. It appears to me with respect to Joseph the Church has some catching up to do.

Indeed, this pattern of silence and invisibility with respect to Joseph may serve to introduce my first point this morning. Point one: Joseph was a man of self-effacing and silent service. We know at least a few words spoken by Jesus’ mother, including a whole poem. Of Joseph her husband, there are no recorded words. At no time does he ever draw attention to himself. He was not an apostle nor a prophet nor a preacher nor an evangelist. Joseph was a direct descendant of King David and King Solomon. Through his veins flowed the blood of Hezekiah and Josiah. But Joseph was not a king; he was a laboring man.

When Jesus addressed the Jews in Nazareth, those in the synagogue inquired, “Is this not Joseph’s son?” Matthew provides an instructive variation on this question: “Is this not the craftsman’s son?” The Greek noun here, usually translated as “carpenter,” is techton. Techton is a term including any sort of builder, craftsman, skilled laborer, even a blacksmith. A techton is somebody who constructs and fashions things with his hands: techton. A techton is not a man of ideas; rather, he is a man of things. He takes things literally in hand, and he manufactures them—manus facere: fashions them with his hands. He does something with things.

George Eliot, in her portrayal of Adam Bede, speaks of “the mechanical instinct.” The mechanical instinct: the key sensibility to harmony, the unconscious skill of the modeling hand. A techton is an artist, but he is a practical artist, very much engaged in practical life. He does not make things to be looked at; he does not compose things to be listened to—he makes things to use: houses to live in, utensils with which to eat, tables and chairs for sitting, door frames to pass through, axes to cut down trees, plowshares with which to cultivate the earth. These are the deeds of a techton. Try to have any civilization, any economy, without such men.

But note that such men are customarily quiet men, silent men. When I was a young man—I mean, I’m talking about very young: when I was a mere boy, hardly able to do more than walk, and I was helping my father do things, the last thing I was permitted to do was talk. I could ask questions, but he wasn’t interested in hearing any of my stupid ideas. He didn’t say much when he taught me how to wind a wire around a steel cord to make a motor, when he told me how to splice wires, how to countersink a screw or a bolt—all those things that traditionally young men learn from their fathers. When he taught me how to solder, when he taught me how to saw or use a hammer or screwdriver, there wasn’t anyone talking: you concentrated on the work.

The labor of such men requires discipline and steady concentration. Not surprising, then, there are no recorded words of Joseph. If there were such a recorded word, it would be something like, “Son, hand me that hammer.” [Laughter]

We’re certain that Joseph spoke, because he passed these technical skills onto Jesus, who was also called in the Scriptures a techton. A techton was a man with talented hands. In that connection, consider the hands of Jesus. Jesus’ hands could heal the sick and the injured. That’s a really exalted form of technology. Mark, the Evangelist Mark, certainly recognized the irony of calling Jesus a techton in the context of his miracles and teaching. Listen to this from Mark:

And what wisdom is this which is given to him, that such mighty works are performed by his hands? Is this not the techton?

[Laughter] Notice how Mark is playing on the double meaning.

In summary, Joseph represents the sanctification of labor, but more particularly the tradition of labor: the handing on of skills required for the preservation of human life and culture. Joseph represents that, those skills that we associate with a culture. Without such skills, you can’t even speak of a culture. That’s what Joseph represents: the tradition which is at the heart of a culture.

Point two: Joseph was a man of faith. Matthew’s genealogy, which we heard last Sunday, began with “Abraham begot Isaac.” What’s Abraham chiefly known for in the Bible? Faith. Abraham begot Isaac. And that genealogy ended with: “Jacob begot Joseph, the husband of Mary.” At the beginning and the end of the genealogy, we find men of faith.

Like Abraham, Joseph was obliged in some measure, because of faith, to wing it. I make these comments because I know that some of you are tested in the faith, not in a dogmatic sense, but tempted because you don’t see down the road very far. You’re following, day by day, obedience to God’s will, without any assurance of where it’s going to lead. Hope which is seen is not hope, says St. Paul, and that’s often the case—not always the case, but that’s often the case when we’re faithful to God, day by day, without seeing exactly where it’s going to lead, and not having many words of encouragement.

When Abraham set out to follow God, the Torah had not yet been given. He was not always sure what the rules were. In fact, the epistle to the Hebrews says he didn’t know where he was going. It says that. “A man of faith does not know where he is going.” Abraham had to follow God step by step without the ability to see very far down the road. So, too, with Joseph.

You know, Joseph’s vocation was not only difficult, it was really impossible. In a sense, Joseph had to figure it all out as he went along. Just look at the vocation of Joseph as portrayed in the gospels, and tell me where he would have found a handbook of instructions for how to do this. [Laughter] You know, when they made me a priest, they gave me a rulebook. But, see, there wasn’t any book for Joseph! There’s no book. How would you get a book for this? Joseph had to figure it out as he went along, simply following God’s call as best he could, wherever it led. He was obliged to leave the heavy lifting to God.

With so distinctive and demanding a vocation, Joseph might be excused if, on occasion—for example, the flight into Egypt—he felt anxious and insecure. The evidence, however, indicates that this was not the case. Joseph was not a person given to anxiety. He appears, rather, as a man of extraordinary serenity.

In the gospel of Matthew, Joseph appears five times—I’ve mentioned this before: Joseph appears five times in the gospel of Matthew. Let’s go through and count them. Every single time, he’s asleep. Every single time.

Point three: Joseph was a man of loyal devotion. He was very literally the adoptive father of God. Jesus was, very literally, Joseph’s adopted Son. He became the human father that Jesus never had. St. Bernard of Clairvaux, whose thought I am following here rather closely, refers to Joseph as an alter David, another David. Indeed, said Bernard, Joseph was a son of David not only in the flesh but also in faith, in holiness, in devotion.

Joseph is the biblical model of the fatherhood of God. God also is a techton, is he not? Find some other interpretation of Genesis 1; he acts as a techton. It was in Joseph that the young Jesus, in the years of his formation, experienced the fatherhood of God. The first time Jesus said, “Abba,” he was talking to Joseph. God found in Joseph—here I quote Bernard of Clairvaux—

another David, a man after his own heart, to whom he could safely commit the most secret and sacred purpose of his heart (arcanum cordis: arcanum cordis, the secret purpose of the heart—whose heart? God’s)—to whom, as to another David, he manifested the deep and concealed things of his wisdom, and whom he would not permit to be ignorant of the mystery which none of the princes of this world have known. To him it was given what many kings and prophets had longed to see but had not seen, and to hear, but had not heard. It was given not only to see and to hear but also to carry, to lead, to embrace, to kiss, to nurture, and to guard (Super Missus Est Homiliae 2.16).

Joseph is the model of what the man is in the home. He is the absolute model of that. Joseph lived out the paternal instinct that God placed in the hearts of men to support, to love, to protect, and to nurture their families. This is something young men normally learn in their homes, from observing their own fathers, and unfortunate and disadvantaged is the man who loses a father. He has to work extra hard, and must find somebody to teach him what the father is not around to teach him.

This was the case of the one whom Isaiah called “the Father of the world to come.” That’s that famous text in Isaiah: El-Gibbor: he had been called Mighty God, Father of the world to come, Prince of peace. Jesus learned all these things from a human being. It’s from a human being that he learned how to be a man, from a human being that he came to know God as his Father. Amen.