A Meditation upon the Feast of St. Joseph
By Leighton Ryder
On this Tuesday after the fifth Sunday in Lent, not only do we find ourselves nearing ever closer to Holy Week and the end of Lent, but on this day we also find ourselves giving due reverence to our Lord’s earthly father, Joseph. Perhaps on St. Joseph’s feast day it is fitting that the lectionary gives us three readings concerning the relationship between father and child. In this context of Lent, where the Father “so loved the world, that he gave his only Son” (Jn. 3:16) to “save his people from their sins” (Lk 1:21), we ask, To what lengths would the Father not go to save His children?
In today’s three readings, we find our lectionary telling a story of the theophany anticipating God’s birth, while we are presently in the season of anticipating God’s death. While on the cusp of Holy Week, which is a mournful week, we are encouraged one last time to remember the vibrancy of God emerging into the world as Jesus Christ–looking back to God as an infant bearing swaddling clothes, caressed by the ever-blessed Virgin Mary–before we look ahead to God as a man bearing the sins of humanity, clenched to the cross.
Our three-act theophany begins in the concluding chapters of Isaiah’s book, where we find the prophet ending his writings by compiling the powerful themes of the book into one final section, where the kingdom of New Jerusalem is established for God’s people and justice pours out from this city over all the land. But this wonderful vision is momentarily interrupted by our first reading, from Isaiah 63:7-16; it is interrupted by a repentant petition to God from Isaiah on behalf of Israel. In this prayer of repentance, beginning in the eighth verse, Isaiah remembers the mercy the Lord had for His people of Israel; in this remembering we see how God “became their Savior” (Is. 43:3). But how is God the savior of His people? Our God is not a distant God, as some people picture him. He is not withheld from His creation nor does He withhold Himself from His creation. Instead, God is an enduring, participating, and personal God: “In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old” (Is 63:9). Yet, as a moth is enticed to fire, so is humanity enticed to rebellion. In this rebellion, Israel “grieved His Holy Spirit.” To grieve the Holy Spirit means to be without the Spirit, which is to be without God’s intimate relationship. At this grieving the Holy Spirit, we find Isaiah reminiscent, remembering the mercy of God for Israel when he asks, “Where is he who brought them up out of the sea with the shepherds of his flock? Where is he who put in the midst of them his Holy Spirit, who caused his glorious arm to go at the right hand of Moses, who divided the waters before them to make for himself an everlasting name, who led them through the depths?” (Is 63:11-13). This reminiscing leads Isaiah to petition God, asking God to once again to “look down from heaven and see, from your holy and beautiful habitation” (Is 63:15). But what is it Isaiah wants God to see? That God’s people, though rebellious children, need their Father. Finally, Isaiah pleads, “For you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us, and Israel does not acknowledge us; you, O Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name” (Is 63:16). Isaiah’s prayer invokes in us the all-too-familiar questions, where are you, Father? Why have you abandoned us? To what lengths would the Father not go to save His children?
Of course, God does reply. Isaiah’s “where are you, Father?” is answered, “here I Am,” in Zechariah’s prophecy, found in Luke 1:68-79. The birth of Zechariah’s son, John, was signaling God’s arrival to come because John’s purpose was “to turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared” (Lk 1:16-17). Thus, the birth of John the forerunner marks the fulfillment of Isaiah’s hope, “the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days” (Lk 1:73-75). The arrival of John the forerunner signifies the return of God’s mercy toward His people, the restoration of God sharing in the affliction with His people and His people’s redemption, and the moment when God’s people will no longer grieve the Holy Spirit.
Where once God’s people, in their rebellion, sat “in darkness and in the shadow of death,” there now shines a light in the sky, “a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for the glory to your people Israel” (Lk 1:79, Lk 2:32). However, that light did not remain alone suspended in the sky but brought itself down from the right hand of God to become like us in our birth and our death. To what lengths would the Father not go to save His children?
These lengths are shown in the final act of our theophany, where the incomprehensible essence of God is born into comprehensible existence. Where the immutability of God’s substance is made mutable in the soft flesh of an infant boy. Where the seat at the right hand of God the Father around whose throne is a “rainbow that had the appearance of an emerald” where “flashes of lightning and rumblings and peals of thunder” sounded with multitudes of angels and saints sang out, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come” was vacated by God the Son to lay in the still silence of a wooden feeding trough where His own created livestock ate (Rev 4:4-8). These are the lengths to which the Father would go to “save his people from their sins” (Mt 1:21). The Father spared Abraham his son by presenting the ram, though he found it necessary for our salvation to send His only begotten Lamb to be slain for us.
Here, on this Tuesday after the fifth Sunday in Lent, on the feast day of St. Joseph, we are encouraged to look back on the advent and birth of Christ, in preparation for His death and resurrection in the week to come. In this story of theophany, we remember the relationship God the Father has with His children, with us. That relationship is manifested as Immanuel, “God with us,” which is not merely an advent phrase or hymn sung once a year but is for all times and all generations. God with us, so that we are with God. For these are the lengths to which the Father would go to save His children.
Leighton Ryder is a Nashotah House “middler” from Canada, studying for the Masters of Divinity. Currently, he is a postulant for holy orders belonging to the Jurisdiction of the Armed Forces & Chaplaincy in the ACNA. Leighton’s pastoral focus is on chaplaincy and specifically, though not exclusively, for those in geriatric, dementia, and hospice care, providing sacramental benefits of the Church to those who cannot be physically present in their parish homes. The readings for the preceding devotional may be located here from Forward Movement.
