Joseph - the patience of a saint

Here's the sermon that I shared at St Andrew's Wickford this morning:

Joseph had four dreams all of which come from the period around the Nativity of Jesus and his early life, between the onset of Mary's pregnancy and the family's return from the Flight to Egypt.

In the first dream (Matthew 1:20-21), Joseph is told not be afraid to take Mary as his wife, because she has conceived by the Holy Spirit. In the second (Matthew 2:13), Joseph is warned to leave Bethlehem and flee to Egypt. In the third (Matthew 2:19-20), while in Egypt, he is told that it is safe to go back to Israel. Finally, in the fourth (Matthew 2:22), because he had been warned in a dream, he departed for the region of Galilee instead of going to Judea.

By emphasising their need for direct divine guidance, Joseph’s dreams indicate how far from normal life Mary and Joseph were asked to go by God in the Nativity of Christ. They are, therefore, a key example in scripture of people living wholly by faith with no human reference points to direct them in doing what God had asked them to do. In doing so we are also shown grace, as the Nativity and the salvation which leads from it are entirely instigated by God, Mary and Joseph lend obedient support although they don’t fully understand what God is doing.

In church tradition Joseph is a silent saint, given the noble task of caring and watching over the Virgin Mary and Jesus, who now cares for and watches over the Church and models for all the dignity of human work. The tools of his trade as a carpenter are what he uses to maintain his family. Once God has given direction, and that direction has been accepted by faith, Joseph then utilises his human skills and abilities in support of God’s plan for humanity. To adopt a phrase used by the American poet Delmore Schwartz, for Joseph, in dreams begin responsibilities.

He selflessly devotes his life to caring for God's son on earth. A carpenter by trade, he has become the patron saint of fathers and of workers. His feast days are celebrated on 19th March and 1st May, the latter feast of St. Joseph the Worker having been instituted by Pope Pius XII in 1955.

Jesus learnt the carpentry trade from Saint Joseph and spent his early adult years working side-by-side in Joseph’s carpentry shop before leaving to pursue his ministry as preacher and healer. In his encyclical Laborem Exercens, Pope John Paul II stated: “the Church considers it her task always to call attention to the dignity and rights of those who work, to condemn situations in which that dignity and those rights are violated, and to help to guide [social] changes so as to ensure authentic progress by man and society.”

Joseph is held up as a model of such work. Pius XII emphasized this when he said, “The spirit flows to you and to all men from the heart of the God-man, Saviour of the world, but certainly, no worker was ever more completely and profoundly penetrated by it than the foster father of Jesus, who lived with Him in closest intimacy and community of family life and work.”

Joseph is an example to us because his calling was to quietly support the calling of Mary – to marry her, to name the child, to raise him: ‘Joseph simply does as he was told. For him, belief is action. Quietly, Joseph cared for Mary. Quietly, he raised the child and named him Jesus. Quietly, he believed and acted.’

Joseph must have had the patience of a saint, as it must have taken an incredible amount of patience to follow God's plan, and to support his wife throughout their trials and tribulations. He was also the epitome of discretion. Despite the miraculous circumstances of Jesus' conception, he kept Mary's secret safe, showing incredible respect for her and her divine calling. He diligently provided for the physical and emotional needs of his family. He worked to ensure their safety and sustenance. He humbly accepted God's will and obediently followed His guidance, even when it meant facing challenges and uncertainties. His humility allowed him to support Mary in her unique calling without seeking recognition or glory for himself. These are all great qualities that we can take into our own experiences of supporting and caring for others.

To end, here’s a short poem by Madeleine L’Engle imagining Mary speaking about Joseph, her spouse.

It was from Joseph first I learned
of love. Like me he was dismayed.
How easily he could have turned
me from his house; but, unafraid,
he put me not away from him
(O God-sent angel, pray for him).
Thus through his love was Love obeyed.

The Child’s first cry came like a bell:
God’s Word aloud, God’s Word in deed.
The angel spoke: so it befell,
and Joseph with me in my need.
O Child whose father came from heaven,
to you another gift was given,
your earthly father chosen well.

With Joseph I was always warmed
and cherished. Even in the stable
I knew that I would not be harmed.
And, though above the angels swarmed,
man’s love it was that made me able
to bear God’s love, wild, formidable,
to bear God’s will, through me performed.

Joseph, by the work of your hands
and the sweat of your brow,
you supported Jesus and Mary,
and had the Son of God as your fellow worker.
Teach us to work as you did,
with patience and perseverance, for God and
for those whom God has given us to support.
Teach us to see in our colleagues
the Christ who desires to be in them,
that we may always be charitable and forbearing
towards all.
Amen.

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Bill Fay - Salt Of The Earth.

Lou Reed RIP

'With the Velvet Underground in the late Sixties, Reed fused street-level urgency with elements of European avant-garde music, marrying beauty and noise, while bringing a whole new lyrical honesty to rock & roll poetry. As a restlessly inventive solo artist, from the Seventies into the 2010s, he was chameleonic, thorny and unpredictable, challenging his fans at every turn. Glam, punk and alternative rock are all unthinkable without his revelatory example.' (Rolling Stone)

'No songwriter to emerge after Bob Dylan so radically expanded the territory of rock lyrics. And no band did more than the Velvet Underground to open rock music to the avant-garde — to experimental theater, art, literature and film, to William Burroughs and Kurt Weill, to John Cage and Andy Warhol, Mr. Reed’s early patron ...

he seemed to embody downtown Manhattan culture of the 1960s and ’70s — as essential a New York artist as Martin Scorsese or Woody Allen. His New York was a jaded city of drag queens, drug addicts and violence, but it was also as wondrous as any Allen comedy, with so many of Mr. Reed’s songs being explorations of right and wrong and quests for transcendence.' (Washington Post)

'As an English major at Syracuse University Reed fell under the sway of the poet Delmore Schwartz, and, as a result, his focus has frequently been more literary than musical. While most songwriters from Reed's generation were inspired by folk songs and blues music, Reed's influences were the Beat writers like Kerouac, Ginsberg and Burroughs.' (Gadfly Online)

'Reed's more profound ambition was to use rock's immediacy as a vehicle for a certain kind of literary approach. "Let's take Crime and Punishment and turn it into a rock'n'roll song," he said. As well as Dostoevsky, his heroes included Raymond Chandler, Hubert Selby Jr, William Burroughs and Edgar Allan Poe. His later career included collaborations with artists from various fields, including theatre pieces with Robert Wilson, films with Wim Wenders and works with the composer Laurie Anderson, who was his companion for the last 20 years.' (The Guardian)

'Many of the [Velvet Underground's] themes — among them love, sexual deviance, alienation, addiction, joy and spiritual transfiguration — stayed in Mr. Reed’s work through his long run of solo recordings. Among the most noteworthy of those records were “Transformer” (1972), “Berlin” (1973) and “New York” (1989) ...

“Heroin” ... treated addiction and narcotic ecstasy both critically and without moralizing, as a poet or novelist at that time might have, but not a popular songwriter.' (The New York Times)

'Quite simply, the [Velvet Underground and Nico] had no real precedent in popular music. While the most of the rock world was busy extolling the liberating possibilities of drugs and free love, Reed’s songs saw past the scene’s carefree facade to the nervous junkie waiting for his dealer on a Harlem street corner, the whip-wielding dominatrix in an underground dungeon, and the weary society girl crying alone in her room after the party had ended. The music was just as distinctive, ranging from the sweet, wistful folk-pop of “Sunday Morning” and “I’ll Be Your Mirror” to the propulsive Stonesy rock of “Run, Run, Run” and the ear-splitting dissonance of “European Son.”

... 1969’s self-titled third LP marked another abrupt shift in the group’s approach. Ballad-heavy and spare, the record was perhaps the band’s cleanest, most straightforward showcase for Reed’s strengths as a songwriter, climaxing with “Pale Blue Eyes,” a haunting, ethereal tune that ranks among Reed’s most beautiful vocal performances.' (Variety)

'The moments of brilliance were usually those most likely to lose him his following, such as a song-cycle of epic morbidity titled Berlin (1973) ... Street Hassle (1978), The Bells (1979) and The Blue Mask (1982) all contained pieces in which he stretched himself in interesting directions, but with New York (1989) and Magic and Loss (1992) he hit his full stride once more, the songs Dirty Blvd and What's Good proving his continuing ability to invest the two-chord rock'n'roll song with an irresistible freshness.' (The Guardian)

'Berlin is a song cycle that uses the decadence of its namesake and some Brecht/Weill-esque orchestrations to tell a story of two psychically damaged people and their doomed relationship ...  Far from the rock-star poses of Transformer, Berlin is lyrically and musically frank and blunt. The arrangements move from sophisticated, arch orchestration to naked-sounding acoustic sparseness, but the words are uniformly unflinching in their depiction of violence, addiction, and desperation. Not for the faint of heart, Berlin is a harrowing journey through the aforementioned tribulations, and one of Reed's most unusual, demanding, but ultimately rewarding albums.' (CD Universe)

'The Blue Mask, one of Lou Reed's bona fide masterpieces. Sparse and unflinching, the album takes on such harrowing themes as self-abuse, mental decay, powerlessness, and heroin addiction; and yet still manages to find some tranquil moments of beauty amidst the chaos.' (The Modern Word)

'Lou never got more intense and soulful than on The Blue Mask. It’s one of the toughest, truest, funniest albums about husbandhood ever made. Lou’s fallen in love, but he finds it just scares the hell out of him. As he sings, "Things are never good / Things go from bad to weird."' (Rolling Stone)

'New York (1989), Reed’s dispatch from the crumbling necropolis of the late Koch era, the city of AIDS and Howard Beach and Tawana Brawley. This is Reed as a cranky New York moralist, fulminating over his morning Times ...

My favorite Lou Reed record is Magic and Loss, the elegiac 1992 album inspired by the death of Reed’s friend, songwriter Doc Pomus. Since I heard the news about Reed this afternoon, I’ve listened several times to “Cremation,” in which Reed laments his friend’s demise and envisions his own cremation. “The coal black sea waits for me me me/The coal black sea waits forever,” Reed sings. It’s one of Reed’s loveliest songs — listen to Rob Wasserman’s moaning double-bass — and one of his saddest. But Reed allowed himself a dark chuckle in the face of death, a joke that held a hint of solace: “Since they burnt you up/Collect you in a cup/For you the coal black sea has no terror.”' (Vulture)

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Lou Reed - Caroline Says II.