Scripture: Read Matthew 1: 1, 17-25.

The period of weeks which ushers in Christmas is called “Advent.” And today is the first [second] Sunday in Advent. It is a time when we Christians try, through (1) meditation, (2) worship, (3) repentance, (4) study, and (5) anticipation, to become prepared for the coming of the Christ child into our lives. We come to Advent each year with high hope and with great joy. It is a season that promises a rebirth of God’s spirit in our own lives. We come into the church hoping to experience, once again, the coming of Christ into a troubled and distraught world. considering the great need of the whole world, and of our own lives, for His spirit, it behooves us to seek His coming with earnest devotion.

The season is filled with plans and activity. There is a rush about it which nevertheless should not be allowed to crowd out the real meaning and possibility of this time of year for us and for all mankind. For it can also be a time of meditation and study upon, and realization of, the wonderful thing that God has done in Christ.

For centuries before the coming of the Christ, people had anticipated the birth of a Messiah, had prayed and longed for him who would take away the sins of the world. They looked for the Kingdom of Heaven to become a reality in human experience. Those people of Palestine believed that the Messiah would be culminated through the line of descent from David. They probably hoped for a new golden age such as their traditions held the time of King David and King Solomon to have been.

Prophets had been recounting for centuries what should be the expected nature of the Christ, and his work. But much of the expectation was different from the picture we have of Jesus’ arrival in the earth. Probably no one had thought the Christ could arrive in such humble circumstances as those of Jesus’ birth turned out to be. It was his later life, his teachings, his death and resurrection that were to establish him as the Christ in the minds and experience of so many.

After the passing of 19 and one-half centuries of history, we have an understanding of Christ’s mission, and a perspective on his influence, which those who walked the dusty roads of Palestine at the time of his birth could hardly have had. But one wonders whether or not we have given much thought to his forebears, his home surroundings and training which helped to mold him into the person he became.

Some will say that, since Jesus is divine, these considerations are not important. However, our Christian theology calls him both divine and human. And it may be that many of us emphasize his divinity to the neglect, or omission, of his human description. In the first chapter of Matthew, a part of which was read as our Scripture lesson this morning, the author tries to establish the human side of Jesus in his genealogy. Many of you have read through the “begats” which I omitted this morning. They appear, in differing form, in both Matthew and Luke. Each of those two authors felt it necessary to connect Jesus with the line of descent from David. And so they went to the trouble of tracing his ancestry back through David even as far back as Abraham. Matthew comes out with something like 42 generations between Abraham and Jesus. Luke makes it somewhat differently. But both took that time and trouble in an effort to get it established that Jesus was a descendant of David.

Interestingly enough, this ancestral line is traced back through Joseph, not Mary. And we have no time this morning to speculate why. But however we interpret these “begats,” this genealogy of Jesus, it is profitable to note that the line is made up of kings and prophets; of great men, and of men otherwise unknown. Christ’s kinship is with men of all stations in life.

I should like today to discuss with you the persons in Jesus’ background who knew him best as a child and a youth, namely Mary and Joseph. I think it is evident that they had a profound influence upon him, as indeed most of us parents have upon our children for better or for worse, or for some of both.

Jesus grew up in the shelter of a human home. The household was endowed with the rich heritage of Judaism, though Joseph and Mary were by no means numbered among the experts in knowledge of the faith. Their “experts” were the priests, the scribes, the Pharisees and Sadduces. The parents did, however, transmit a great deal of their knowledge to this child of their home. As Winifred Kirkland has written: [Interpreters’ Bible, volume 7, p. 169] “Twenty centuries ago, Judaism dared to have convictions and educated its children in accordance with them, and thereby obtained results in energy -- spiritualized energy. It is high tribute to the child-training which he received as a Hebrew boy, that from the first moment you meet him you can discover no deviation in the life purpose of Jesus. You cannot split his character into compartments, assuming, --- here we will study his acts, here his words, here his thoughts; for Jesus is a personality perfectly fused. In the education of Jesus, from babyhood to manhood, there was never any severance between the beautiful and the ethical, between the material and the spiritual, between the secular and the sacred. One result of this education may be seen in a character which is at the same time profoundly integrated and profoundly energized.”

And if it should seem that words like these make the life of Jesus seem too close to the way other lives unfold, we should remember that the very meaning of the Incarnation is that he who was sent to be our Savior did enter fully into the lot of our human existence. He did not float down from the sky fully grown and independently mature. He came as a baby. Like other babies, he was born, when the time came, whether his mother was at home or on a trip, on a fine bed or on a pile of hay. Jesus grew as a little boy. He followed in the footsteps of Joseph and Mary; he reached for his mother’s hand; he asked questions of the carpenter.

The memories of his mother are reflected in clear-cut parables which Jesus later framed. He may have watched, with the fascinated eyes of childhood, as his mother kneaded the bubbling, yeasty leaven into the bread dough. He saw her mending the clothes, which all too easily wore thin or became torn, until it became useless to put new patches on the threadbare cloth. He went with her to the village well where she drew the water and gave him a cool, refreshing drink. He received the cup of cold water from her hands.

He must have been thinking of her when, as a grown man, he told the parable of the lost coin and, when she had swept out all the corners of the rooms until she found it, how she called in the neighbors to rejoice. He may have been remembering both Joseph and Mary when he said, to a crowd in which there were both fathers and mothers: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him?” [Matthew 7: 11].

Jesus’ growth in “wisdom and stature” was influenced by much that he observed around him -- little things that might mean nothing, and could mean so much. Recall the wild flowers of which he later said that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these; a hen gathering her chicks under her wing; birds finding room for a nest in a bush that had grown from a tiny mustard seed; a man sowing seed in the springtime and reapers sorting out wheat from the weeds at the harvest; children playing in the market place; a sheep herder going to look for a lost lamb. All these observations and experiences of his childhood, the ordinary things of earth, had unlimited interest, because he saw them as his Father’s world.

Other things he absorbed from human nature, beginning in his home, and continuing as he met and knew fishermen, tax collectors, Pharisees; people of integrity, and people who make poor excuses; rebellious sons and lenient fathers; silly bridesmaids who dozed when they should have been filling their oil lamps; despised Samaritans, some of whom were, after all, the very milk of human kindness.

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One profound influence on his developing life is that of Joseph. We can be certain of it although we find comparatively little about Joseph in the New Testament. What we find is largely drawn from inference. But it is not too difficult to infer a great deal.

Joseph was a considerate man. The gospel writer relates that he might have had usually valid grounds for putting aside his betrothed Mary, or divorcing her, when it was known that she was with child. But, satisfied in a dream that she was the innocent and divinely chosen mother of one whom he was to call “Jesus,” Joseph took care of her; took her with him for the tax enrollment required by the government; hustled her and the newborn child into Egypt to escape the wicked Herod’s murderous design; and finally brought them back to the comparative safety of a small city up north in Galilee. Joseph was just, sympathetic and kind. He was sensitive to divine guidance. He appears to have been devoted to Mary and the children of his household.

Most revealing of Joseph’s character is the way Jesus came to refer to God as “Father.” The word “Father,” as an ascription for God, had been used in the Old Testament, but only infrequently. And in the Old Testament it had a national, perhaps more than individual, connotation. But Jesus used the word “Father” in ways most intimate. He taught us to use it in the Lord’s Prayer. All of this is partially a tribute to Joseph. It is no small matter that Jesus knew, in his childhood home, a father whose understanding ways, considerate encouragement, strong character, responsible concern for the children suggested to Jesus what the heavenly Father is like! We have all heard of some mortal fathers whose actions and attitudes could hardly be expected to suggest any such thing.

Joseph must have been devoutly religious. In a Jewish home, it was the father who passed on the faith to the sons. Joseph came of a long line of very religious men and women. He, in his turn, inspired his son by example to lead a life of integrity, truthfulness, reverence for God, love for fellow man. From the actual words of the Gospel, we know that Joseph was just. We infer, from what we see in Jesus, that Joseph was loving and merciful. Jesus seems to have deep feeling for this quiet, simple, dependable carpenter, the father of the household. How many of us fathers wish that our children could have a similar feeling toward us? More pointedly, how many of us are earning such respect?

It is true that Joseph was able to have a closer, more continuing contact with Jesus than many fathers whose work takes them away from home for long periods of time. In that small carpenter shop at home, Jesus could be in and out of it, but seldom far away from shop and carpenter. As he grew big enough, he doubtless worked along with Joseph and under his capable guidance. Jesus could watch, see the honesty of Joseph’s craftsmanship, hear him as he talked with customers; as he sold his wares. He went along as Joseph took part, among the men, at worship in the synagogue.

Joseph, the simple direct carpenter, became a great man to the boy. He must have encouraged Jesus’ education, without making impossible demands upon him. Surely he taught him to respect the healthful development of his own body. Possibly it was from him that the son learned that God provides all things good for his children. From him, Jesus learned the thanksgiving of daily prayers as the Jewish father stood at the head of the table pouring forth his heart to God before his family. Jesus was filled with that kind of tradition and grew up to realize that it is the very secret of life.

All of this went on in a time of tension. Palestine is a hot spot in today’s world. It was so then, too. Had not Jesus and the parents been refugees for a time in Egypt? Were there not plottings of revolution against the hated, tyrannical, foreign government? Did not units of an occupation army march over the road near Nazareth impressing the services of local men to carry their supplies a certain distance along the way? Were not men put to death by crucifixion for political as well as other crimes?

But a Joseph, in that day, was able by simple precept and example, sincere life and sober word, to teach the son of their household that his mind and body, his talents and possibilities, are gifts of God, and that these are sacred as the holy temple of the Most High.

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Are we fathers and mothers of this city, in the year of our Lord 1956 [1959], endeavoring to be the kind of parents Jesus knew? Do we seek or merit the confidence of our sons and daughters? Do our children come rightly to feel our confidence in their earnest sincerity; and do they have confidence in our judgment and integrity?

The Savior of mankind, Jesus Christ, came into the world as a child, in a home, to be reared and loved and trained by parents. He grew to a manhood which blessed his parents by calling God “Father.”

Is not there the goal for every father and mother, and as well for every young person who hopes one day to be blessed with parenthood? Let their estate be wholesome and holy, a blessing to God and to the children by whom our homes are blessed.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, December 2, 1956.

Also in Wisconsin Rapids, December 6, 1959.