Another member of the congregation has put in a request to me, this time for a sermon on S Joseph; this is rather a challenge, not being a subject I would have chosen myself. Although in the twentieth century the Roman Church made efforts to improve his reputation as a patron of skilled workmen, over the centuries the cult of Mary has inevitably led to Joseph’s being neglected. Indeed, as we saw in the Miracle Plays last year, in medieval times he was largely a figure of fun, as is traditional in the case of men whose children are of doubtful paternity.
The authors of the first and third Gospels were anxious to demonstrate the birth of Christ from a Virgin. They were equally anxious to assert that Joseph was a descendant of David and that therefore Jesus was also such a descendant, though they did not agree on their genealogies. No explanations are offered of the contradictions in these matters. I do not myself find such traditions interesting or compelling. So I do not propose to urge you to attach importance to them. Nor am I concerned that tradition represents Joseph as elderly, indeed, dead by the time Jesus reached adult age. I do find it more difficult to accept the orthodox tradition that Jesus had no brothers or sisters, because of the alleged perpetual virginity of Mary, even though the Bible speaks of them several times, but I am not going to argue about it.
It seems to me that the only thing of importance that we learn from the traditions about Joseph is somewhat oblique. It is that Jesus, whether as a child or a man, regarded God primarily as his Father, and loved him for it. It seems to me that this speaks a great deal for Joseph, who gave Jesus, whatever their blood relationship, the only direct experience he ever had of an earthly father. It was thus Joseph who taught Jesus to love and to revere the Fatherhood of God. Luke’s story of the boy Jesus in the Temple talking to the scholars in the Temple and telling his parents: ‘Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’ suggests that this was an early lesson.
Just as our attitudes to the Mother of Jesus are clearly linked to our obsessions about our own mothers, so our concept of the Fatherhood of God is bound, for each of us, to be dependant on our own experience of our fathers. Those who expect us all to think alike are ignoring the way in which our emotions, particularly as regards our family, affect our intellects. But the image of God as our Father is much more ancient than Christianity, particularly among the Indo-European peoples from whom, unlike Jesus, we are descended. The supreme god in Sanskrit was called Dyaus Patër, which is the same as Jupiter, and means Zeus Father. In Judaism, it was not Jesus who started calling God Father; there are also several references to the Fatherhood of God in the Old Testament. Thus, although Christianity has propagated confused attitudes to sex, at least it has inherited an inspiring archetype of male parenthood to balance that of the Virgin Mother.
For Christians, the classic text is the prayer which Jesus taught and which springs automatically to our lips. The simple words ‘Our Father’ bring to mind the whole content of the prayer, so that we associate with God both his supremacy and his care, including provision for our needs. It is worth remarking, however, that the prayer contains nothing about love, which would be felt essential in any address to a twenty-first century father. Indeed the synoptic gospels do not teach that God loves us, as distinct from caring for us. In the time of Jesus, fathers were not expected to be demonstrative to their children, and I think we are inclined to read back our own social conventions and prejudices into the record. The gospel of John, of course, records that God so loved the world, but I do not think that is a quotation from Jesus; John also speaks a good deal about the love between the Father and the Son in his meditations on the gospel story. Gradually Christians came to see mutual love as a fundamental element in the relationship between the disciple and the Godhead, and this is a central message of the First Epistle of John, but Paul says little of the love of the Father. It seems to me that it is largely as family relationships have changed over the centuries that the love of the Father for Christians in general has received greater emphasis, as distinct from the love of the Father for the Son. The later Middle Ages encouraged an emotional approach to religious experience which was taken up and elaborated after the Reformation by both Catholics and Protestants. Today the idea that God is a loving Father to us is a central concept for all Christians. While few in the prosperous West think of him any more as providing our daily bread, many imagine, mistakenly, that God will give us anything we ask for. We do not learn from experience, or even accept that discipline is part of a father’s duty.
I read in the press that there is an emotional crisis among fathers, who are uncertain of their self-image in the face of feminism. I do not observe this in myself or in the fathers of my grandchildren. But I would say that there are great cultural differences between my performance as a father, and what I imagine to have been that of a first-, or even a nineteenth-century father. I have tried to treat my children with respect, as my friends rather than as inferiors, and we are still friends, loving, polite and considerate to one another, because I do not expect them to be subject to my interests. God, my loving Father, has treated me with generosity, and we can equally enjoy a friendship based on mutual love and respect, despite his grandeur and authority. It is in these terms that I value the Fatherhood of God and honour S Joseph. Amen
Alan Goodison