Joseph and the Three Gifts: An Angel’s story by Brian Sibley (sample)

Joseph and the

Three Gifts

An Angel’s Story

BRIAN SIBLEY Decorations by Henry Martin

First published in 2019 by Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd 1 Spencer Court 140–142 Wandsworth High Street London SW18 4JJ Text © 2019 Brian Sibley Illustrations © 2019 Henry Martin The right of Brian Sibley to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN 978-0-232-53416-0 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Designed and produced by Judy Linard Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bell & Bain, Glasgow

Contents 1 Annunciations 2 Nativity

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3 Epiphany

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4 The First Gift

5 The Second Gift 6 The Third Gift

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Afterword

47 65 91 107

5

Joseph and the

Three Gifts

1

Annunciations

S

o, you want to know about Joseph? And why wouldn’t you? Anyone who’s heard the story knows the name; he’s there in every nativity play and present near the manger in every Christmas crib, while pictures of him and his family drop daily through your letter box every December.

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Joseph and the Three Gifts But whilst he’s to be found somewhere in thousands of artworks by centuries of painters, he is (as often as not) relegated to the background, shown half in shadow, depicted looking awestruck, or simply puzzled and patient. Or, sometimes, with an expression that is impossible to read: not so much inscrutable as undefined, as though the artist’s interests and attentions lay elsewhere, occupied with the far greater burden of depicting the Mother and Child.

Joseph might be shown returning to the stable with a bundle of new-cut firewood or, perhaps, holding up a lantern for the benefit of visiting dignitaries and farm-workers. True he does feature in a couple of ancient carols, but he has never had the prominence of kings, shepherds and, I might add, angels.

Portrayed, more often than not, as an old, white-haired man leaning on a staff; he is the perfect cipher for trust and reliability, a symbolic illustration of faithfulness and stoicism.

That, then, is Joseph: the supporting player in a monumental drama that has been so often 12

Annunciations told that the enormity of its possibilities has been reduced to the familiar – even to the commonplace.

The Church, of course, made him a Saint – hence those glowing dinner-plate halos which he sports in many representations.

There is also, it appears, a field of theological study that goes by the name of Josephology.

But, for most people he is simply a character who lives in the margin of the Christmas story.

But, if you want to know about Joseph, I can certainly tell you.

Why me? Well, I’ll come to that, soon enough. Having criticised several generations of artists, I should probably start by telling you what he looks like, but then I’m no judge of men’s outer appearances – something that will require another explanation anon.

But whether Joseph is plain-featured or once-handsome-and-now-rugged is quite unimportant to this story – and to his story.

What matters is his character, the man within; and about that I can tell you quite enough to provide an adequate introduction. So, that’s where we’ll start …

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Joseph and the Three Gifts Joseph is proud of his heritage, descended, across millennia, from (as he will readily quote) ‘the house and lineage of David’ – that, of course, is King David. He can go way back beyond David, too, as he’ll tell anyone willing to listen to the genealogical roll call. In fact, he claims to trace his family, via Jacob, Isaac and Abraham, to Adam himself – and thus to the Creator.

Despite his noble links with ancient royalty, there is nothing regal about Joseph’s life when I first encounter him. It has, however, a firm and constant foundation; for, as well as being gratified by his antecedents, he is proud, too, of his skill as a carpenter.

Actually, ‘carpenter’ is far too demeaning a term for such a craftsman with wood whose calloused hands are adept with handsaw, chisel and plane, practised at the lathe, well-used to the placing of a nail, the wielding of a hammer.

Whilst furniture purchased from Joseph’s workshop is plain, homely and functional, it has a simple grace, giving its presence in the home a certain artless beauty that sets it apart from the everyday.

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Annunciations But Joseph has his worries. He is no longer as young as he was – let say, for argument’s sake, early-to-mid-thirties – and with no children, there’s no one to carry forward those prized qualities of his life into future generations. As things stand, the reputation of Joseph the carpenter will die with him – or, indeed, long before that, as and when his eyesight and energies inevitably begin to wane and fail.

Nazareth, twelve miles southwest of the Sea of Galilee, is a village of little or no importance: if oral tradition is to be trusted, it has long been a common insult to ask whether anything good could ever come out of Nazareth. The locals including Joseph react to such slanders with indignation, as folks tend to do when others attack the place they call home. Apart from which, Nazareth is where Joseph meets Mary.

Maybe the encounter comes about through someone knowing someone else who is a cousin of a neighbour’s friend (the circumstances are actually unimportant) and, although she a good few years his junior, his 15

Joseph and the Three Gifts pulse misses a beat at her shy smile and his heart leaps and takes hope.

Perhaps it happens thus – by nature I am a romantic – but it may be that their eventual betrothal is a somewhat more practical agreement along the lines of a business transaction: an investment, by way of a dowry (carpentry provides a steady income) paid to Mary’s parents – let’s call them, in keeping with some accounts of men, Joachim and Anne – in exchange for a wife and a future mother of children.

However it comes about, they are duly betrothed. Plans are in hand for the wedding and their life together, when there falls upon this pleasant couple and their seemingly uncomplicated arrangement a mallet blow as heavy as any Joseph ever plied at his work. In the way that only a woman knows, even one who is young and innocent of much about the ways of the world, Mary knows that she is going to have a child.

And that is where I come in. Some have named me Gabriel, but the names men give us matter little. God knows who we are and 16

Annunciations that is enough. However, since Gabriel is a familiar name, I am happy to go by it for the telling of this tale.

You will understand now, perhaps, why I set little store by the outward looks of humankind: our way of looking is not yours.

You look first at the outer and, only then, at what is within. Angels have to look from the inside out.That’s how God arranged it; and, as far as I’m able to judge, it’s more of an asset than a hindrance.

But to return to Joseph and his fiancée; they are overwhelmed by the unimaginable and divided by the inexplicable. Time, then to send in the angels; after all, they have a wellchronicled history as experts in the delicate job of making known the ways of God to man.

I need not repeat the story of my visitation to Mary: it has been immortalised by the greatest artists in the world and, despite my first-hand knowledge of the meeting, I will not quibble with any of their various interpretations. All that need concern us are the simple facts: a young girl, desperately 17

Joseph and the Three Gifts fearful at first – it is not easy to accept the concept of a virgin birth, especially if you are the virgin – but then swiftly accepting, with a wisdom beyond her years, that what is to be will be; that she is to bear a son whose name has already been decreed as ‘Jesus’ and who is to be called the Son of the Most High.

No one should think that Mary’s response – ‘be it unto me according to thy word’ – is easily said or, come to that, fully understood, but faith miraculously transports the impossible into the sphere of the feasible and makes viable the seemingly absurd.

As for her betrothed, it is not so straightforward. Joseph is a good man – I should, perhaps, have mentioned that earlier, but then you may already have guessed as much for yourself. If you were looking for a word to describe Joseph, you might settle on ‘decent’, ‘honourable’ or ‘virtuous’. But, to my mind, ‘good’ is good enough, going as it does straight to the heart of the matter.

And, being a good man, he has no wish to see Mary’s young life destroyed by disgrace. The solution in Joseph’s mind is obvious, however 18

Annunciations painful: an end to their betrothal by a discreet separation.

But that is not part of the plan. So, to use an archaic word another annunciation is called for. However, to tell a man that the young woman he was intending to marry is about to conceive a child that is from God and is God, is not easy for either of us.

Joseph’s way of looking at the world is simple – do not misunderstand me, he is not simple, far from it – but he is uncomplicated, whereas my news is phenomenally complicated. His thoughts about religion are still pretty much what he had been taught as a child. His faith is humble, his expectations of God are modest and, like most people, he has zero previous experience of encountering angels.

It is recorded that I appeared to Joseph in a dream and that will do: meetings with angels are not that common – though maybe not as infrequent as you might at first suppose – and if rationalising the experience as a dream makes it seem a little less outlandish to the one visited, then where’s the harm in that?

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Joseph and the Three Gifts And, in any case, to think of Joseph as something of a dreamer only gives greater definition to his character; it suggests sensitivity and intuition, and aligns him with his ancestor and namesake whose story is told in the Book of Genesis and who was a noted dreamer of dreams.

Here I am, then, in the dream of this later Joseph, the carpenter from Nazareth ….

I have to say, for a man in a dream, he does a lot of pacing to and fro, asking questions that cannot be glibly answered, demanding explanations that require a degree more patience to understand than a man in his predicament is ready to give. It is a tussle that, for me, brings back centuries-old memories of a night of wrestling with one of his forebears, Jacob ….

Like many passionate personal discussions, it begins with the focus fixed on the pain of injustice, the wound of having been wronged, before moving on to the hurt of humiliation.

But, as I’ve said, Joseph is a good man and, eventually, he finds a way to accommodate the possibility – and then accept the truth – of 20

Annunciations what I tell him: that Mary’s child is the work of the Holy Spirit.

Naturally, he still wonders what exactly that means. Angels may understand and theologians hypothesise about the nature of such an entity, but for most people – including carpenters who are also good men – it is a real challenge.

But, by the time Joseph awakes from what he will later refer to as his dream, he has reached the conclusion that – although it is all still outside his full comprehension – he has somehow been caught up in a kind of divine intrusion into the history of the world that will reach farther than the farthest fields of Nazareth.

The outcome? Joseph will, as planned, take Mary as his wife and assume the responsibility of caring for a child he had not fathered.

In making this decision, however, he doesn’t fully reckon with the local ramifications. When the news breaks, it is beyond shocking. In a parochial little town like Nazareth, conventional to its very roots, it is the all-consuming subject of gossip and speculation. Joseph’s betrothed, young Mary, 21

Joseph and the Three Gifts unblemished child of honourable and devout parents is – to use the discreet euphemism of the biblical translators – ‘with child’: out of wedlock and out of kilter with every right and decent rule of social propriety.

The depth and degree of the shame visited on these two families is profound. One question, whispered and muttered, is on everyone’s lips. Who was responsible for this awkwardly premature pregnancy? Was it Joseph? After years of celibacy, had he too eagerly cast aside decorum and – like his ancestor, Adam – recklessly snatched what was not his to enjoy?

Or had another stolen into the heart of the garden and, with the serpent’s guile that seduced luckless Eve, plundered forbidden fruit?

But Joseph and Mary, boldly putting their faith in God and each other, get married and weather the storm; and, as is so often the way with tittle-tattling affairs, the outrage proves to be little more than a nine day’s wonder.

It’s true that, for a short while, the business of Nazareth’s premier carpenter suffers a minor setback; but human pragmatism rises above most troubles and, eventually and 22

Annunciations necessarily, the need for a new table, chair or bed overtakes the tut-tutting expressions of disapproval.

Then comes a day when Mary receives unexpected family news and goes off, alone, to the hill country of Judah to visit her cousin Elizabeth. Despite Elizabeth being well past the age for bearing children, it emerges that she is also expecting a baby: a boy who will grow up to play a significant role in this story.

Meanwhile, Joseph, marvelling at the fact that miracles do not always come singly, concentrates on his daily tasks: cutting and sawing; making sturdy joints; vigorously smoothing surfaces and chiselling simple, honest decoration.

Mary is gone for several months, and, to better focus his mind on the coming event, Joseph works into his long, lonely evenings making a cradle for his future foster-son. It is finished and ready for Mary’s inspection on her return. She gently caresses the wood and smiles her pride while Joseph glows his gratitude.

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Joseph and the Three Gifts Whilst a fine token of mutual love and trust, that cradle – with a bitter-sweet irony – is destined to never be used. Powers mightier than a humble carpenter are at work, believing (as they always do) that they are pursuing their own agenda and so miss the reality that they are, in truth, merely part of a larger plan drawn by a greater architect.

So, although his part in this narrative is brief, it is time to cue the involvement of Gaius Octavius Thurinus, more commonly known as Augustus Caesar.

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2

Nativity

‘A

nd it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.’

Doubtless that’s how you’ve heard the story and I’m not going to waste time engaging with historians who carp about the veracity of this statement – after all, human memory is 27

Joseph and the Three Gifts more transient than the life of a mayfly, as you will know if you’ve ever got to the top of a flight of stairs only to have forgotten why you climbed them.

So, to continue …

Eight months on from when we last met him, Joseph is sweeping wood-shavings and sawdust out of his workshop door. Since it is a mechanical task requiring little concentration, his thoughts are far away – well over ninety miles, or so he reckons – in Bethlehem. It is the city of his ancestor, King David, but he has never been there. Why would he? Travel ninety miles or more, for what?

But, like it or not, Bethlehem is where he now has to go, as required by Caesar Augustus, in order to be registered in a census! These Romans with all their confounded rules and regulations – and taxes!

Without realising he has done so, Joseph has stopped brushing. He can feel anxiety welling up and taking hold. It would be a bad enough journey at the best of times, but there is Mary: now in the last month of her first pregnancy.

How is he to travel ninety miles with a wife 28

Nativity who, at best, would find the journey arduous and who, at worst, might go into labour at any point along the way? Some men might have resented being in such a situation; might have asked, not unreasonably, why him? But, as you are by now aware, Joseph isn’t ‘some men’.

Instead, he seeks advice from an old woman who lives a few doors away and who took his side when the scandal first became public, solely on the principle that anyone who has everyone against them deserves at least one champion. She is a midwife and, when she was a young girl, had helped bring Joseph into the world and, years later, had done the same for Mary.

This no-nonsense, down-to-earth woman explains to this bachelor-minded married man the essential facts of life about giving birth, recommends that he ask a woman’s help and tells him those things that an expectant mother needs to hear in order to get her through the ordeal.

Sending him off to pack what is needed for the journey, she adds – as if she were confident that her observations would be duly 29

Joseph and the Three Gifts noted in high places – that if this baby really is from God, then God had better make pretty sure He is keeping an eye on things!

The house and workshop are shuttered and locked and Joseph settles Mary on the old donkey that has hitherto spent its weary life carrying the carpenter’s tables and chairs to their new homes.

Forgive the interjection, but I need to say something about the donkey. I realise that this is superfluous because for hundreds of years the presence of the donkey has been taken for granted; understandably, since this much put-upon animal has been depicted as having a humble, but significant, role in the telling of this tale. But the truth is, there’s no official basis for involving a donkey in the narrative other than a need to take a ninetymile journey. Nevertheless, I’m glad that someone decided to give Mary a donkey to ride upon, if only because, one day, her asyet-unborn son will also ride on a donkey towards his destiny.

You don’t need to know much about Joseph and Mary’s journey: the laborious daily 30