Ten

Ten years ago, I was 29.  I was nervous.  I knew my life was about to change.  I had no idea how much.  My son, Jack, will turn ten tomorrow, and I will have been a father for a decade.  It's a little hard for me to wrap my mind around that, to tell you the truth, I don't remember too much about how it felt not to be a Dad, because it has become such a part of who I am now.  In preparing my sermon for Sunday on the text from Matthew's Gospel, I came across a quote from theologian Stanley Hauerwas: "You want to learn how to welcome a stranger?  Have a kid."
We like to think of parenthood as this blessed, shining thing, but the truth is, it's terrifying and messy, and you do lots of stuff wrong, and sometimes you wish it never happened... and then your child does something amazing.  The amazing thing is not about some talent they have, it's not about some funny line that they spit out without even realizing how hilarious it is.  The amazing thing is that they just look at you and call you Daddy (or Mommy), they do it with their eyes before they can even talk, they recognize that you are someone they can trust for everything.  It can seem daunting to be sure, having another person rely on you so completely, but there's something about the trust in their eyes that strengthens you for the task.
I love the story of Joseph for the same reason so many women love the magnificat and the story of Mary, because it shows me a father's place in the story of God.  Joseph doesn't get a lot of attention any other place in the story, but he has an important role in the birth of Jesus.  Let's take away all the distractions from the story and look at it in purely human terms: he's engaged to a woman, and she's pregnant, and it's not his baby.  He has every right, by the Law of Moses, to publicly accuse her and have her stoned to death, but he doesn't.  He plans to not make a fuss, break the engagement and send her home to her father, presumably clearing the way for the baby's actual father to take responsibility.  Stuff happens you know, no one needs to get killed.  Besides it may not have even been her fault, she could have been raped or abused, who knows, all Joseph knows is it's not his baby.
Until he has a dream.
It must have been some dream.
He wakes up and decides to be a father.
He decides to give Jesus a name, and a family, and security.
He decides to go beyond just not harming Mary, he decides to accept her, and her baby.
He welcomes two strangers; one being a woman who very well may have betrayed him.
He becomes the man that Jesus can call Abba, Daddy.

I feel deeply sorry for people who didn't have a Joseph in their life, that is a man who was willing to welcome them.  Sometimes things work like they should in the biological sense, it was like that for me, and I'm trying my best to make it that way for Jack.  But human beings have the potential to transcend biology, and so sometimes we get adopted, sometimes another person takes responsibility, and I think it's entirely appropriate that God included such a person in the life of Jesus.
Joseph's presence in this story is very much a part of the incarnation.  He is a very necessary component, without him Jesus would have never been able to do what he did, he would have been an utter outcast.  We talk about how he was poor, and somewhat of an outsider, but being of a low station was nothing compared with being "illegitimate."  I hesitate to even use that word, because I think it's a travesty to call a child something like that, but it is something that many children were labeled and that burden followed them through their whole lives.  In those days, it would have been a curse like almost no other.
Joseph provides legitimacy to the life of Jesus. Joseph illustrates some of the characteristics of God that are going to be revealed in the life of Jesus: welcoming the stranger, forgiving when it's really hard to forgive, accepting responsibility when he bears no fault, being convicted to follow a difficult path for the sake of love and love alone.
I know how important he was when my kids look at me.  I'm not perfect, but they trust me.  Joseph probably got tired and irritated, even with a sinless child.  But he was the one that modeled fatherhood for the man who would one day teach us to pray: "Our Father..."
He didn't have to take it on.
He could have walked away.
But he became a father, who had a son named Jesus.