It is Christmas. Trees are lit, nutmeg and cinnamon scent the air, shiny wrapped boxes are piling up. It’s a season for glittering lights and possible miracles.
It’s easy to overlook the ordinary and the mundane right now. But, funnily enough, these themes are on my mind, through the character of Joseph, the carpenter from the Christmas story. Amid angels and virgin births, he is the most ordinary person in the fantastic tale we’re so used to hearing at this time of year. And I’ve been thinking about how noteworthy and beautiful his kind of ordinary might be, if we took some time to look at it.
Everything we know about Joseph comes from the writings in the gospels and the disputed apocryphal narratives. In the familiar biblical stories, he never actually says anything about Jesus’s birth. But we are told that he has dreams, feels afraid, considers things and makes decisions. And beyond the seemingly ordinary aspects of his life, he is visited by angels, acts quickly once he discerns divine guidance and migrates from place to place to protect his little family.
Perhaps by reflecting on Joseph’s life we might turn to the seemingly ordinary things in our own lives — people, relationships, situations — that are actually full of wonder and essential for our own flourishing.
Rembrandt painted the small, delicate work “Joseph’s Dream” in 1645. Now housed in the Gemaldegalerie in Berlin, it shows the holy family asleep in a dark interior. Mary and the infant are huddled at the right side of the canvas, and Joseph slumps alone to the left. One arm rests on his lap and the other is propped on his knee, his hand supporting his bowed head. The room is illuminated by a golden glow emanating from above a white-robed angel that has descended into the scene to touch Joseph gently on his shoulder.
There are beautiful and telling things that evoke a sense of appreciation for Joseph’s character, and for those who possess similar traits. Here it seems as if he’s fallen asleep while keeping watch over his family. This is one of the most consistent things about Joseph in the stories we have: that he stayed by Mary’s side through all the extraordinary, divinely ordained events, despite the likely gossip on the streets and the need to uproot his life again and again. He was committed and he was consistent. He could be relied upon.
There is nothing adventurous in those characteristics, and in a world where we are almost trained to become easily bored, to seek new thrills, I’m not sure we fully recognise and celebrate the people in our lives who display such qualities. To be able to rely on someone to show up for you through the triumphs and trials of life is one of the most meaningful, even miraculous, things you could hope for.
I also love that, as much as Joseph was a practical, hands-on carpenter, he also paid attention to his dreams. The Gospel of Matthew tells us that Joseph had four dreams, all of which changed the course of his life and the lives of the people he loved most. He didn’t seem to question the idea that God could speak to him, that there were portals of spiritual communication available in his ordinary life. Here, the angel gently rouses Joseph to offer him a word of divine guidance. He needs to take his family to Egypt, because the authorities will try to kill Jesus. We later read that King Herod had put out an order to kill all the male children under two years old.
For all the ways that we are encouraged to be grounded, rational beings, I love the idea that we are also spiritual and soulful, and we can be open to mysteries that we don’t fully understand. There is room for both ways of being in the world.
In a chapel in the basilica of San Lorenzo, Florence, there is a painting of Joseph in his carpentry workshop, with a young Jesus by his side. Created in a style reminiscent of the early Renaissance fresco masters, the work is actually a painting made in 1964, “Joseph the Worker”, by Italian artist Pietro Annigoni.
Within a contrasting palette of bright red, fire orange, earthy browns and moody greys, a beam of white light casts down from a crack in a blue partition of sky on to a room with father and his son at a work table.
Because the painting is life-size, a viewer might almost feel herself in the room with them. Joseph seems to be teaching Jesus how to use some tools of the craft, gazing down almost mournfully at the boy, one hand about to caress the top of his head. Jesus, oblivious to his father’s emotion, is lost in his task. Leaning against the table is a beam of wood which, together with the shaft of light, forms the shape of a cross, alluding to Jesus’s future.
The context of the workshop reminds us that Joseph had a skilled trade that kept him active in his community, connecting him to people’s lives and spaces. He did not hold any special or elevated position in the world, he was as next-door as they come, and yet he was chosen to be the earthly father of this incarnate God.
As a carpenter, he was used to focusing on both the big picture and the small steps needed to get there. The light filling the workshop, as well as Jesus’s presence there, is a reminder to me of the value and necessity of all forms of work, especially in a world that seems to elevate some professions over others. Here the focus is on the craftsmanship of carpentry, the art of combining beauty and function from materials we consider unspectacular, but that are also beautiful in their basic forms.
I was curious about if and how the end of Joseph’s life had been depicted in art. Nothing in scripture informs us about when or how Joseph died. But in “The Death of St Joseph” (c1712) by Giuseppe Maria Crespi, we see Joseph on his deathbed, a thin pallet mattress in a darkened room. There is such care in these, his final moments. Mary hovers on his right-hand side. Jesus supports his hand and blesses him from his left. And a group of angels gathers at his head, one of them cradling his face in their hands. By his bedside is his staff, and beneath the bed we see carpentry tools.
It is a beautiful and moving scene. Rather than being surrounded by material wealth or a room full of dignitaries, Joseph’s life is witnessed and affirmed by people who represent the most faithful and loving examples of the human and the divine. This isn’t always what comes at the end of an ordinary life committed to presence, responsibility and the use of our skills and gifts, but it’s inspiring to see it portrayed here. Joseph’s example seems an invitation to us to figure out how to be faithful to the ordinary things we are called to in our daily lives, and to appreciate the same in the lives of others.
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