Finding Joseph's Fatherhood: A New Idea

The Angel of the Lord Speaks to Joseph in a Dream by Arcabas

There’s a big problem with the birth story of Jesus in Matthew. Matthew insists that the Messiah is descended from David, and David’s lineage comes down through Joseph. Matthew’s story also tells us that Mary conceived Jesus apart from sexual relations as an act of the Holy Spirit. This reality was so troubling to Joseph that his first reaction was to walk away from the not-yet-consummated marriage – quietly, and without shaming Mary, yes – but walk away from it all for the sake of righteousness.

As he does four times in the story, Joseph has a dream that communicates divine guidance: 

Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.

Joseph is reminded first that he is “son of David” meaning he is of the lineage that will produce the promised Messiah – the Anointed One who fulfills the promise of a king who will rule the people with righteousness, justice, and mercy.

Joseph is told that this controversial pregnancy is, in fact, God’s controversy for good, not for shame. The child is an act of the Holy Spirit, God’s initiative to accomplish God’s goals, not just another random, happenstance pregnancy.

Joseph trusts this incomprehensible message and acts on that trust. He sticks with the plan. He becomes Jesus’ father by naming him as instructed. He welcomes his role in the new thing God is up to.

But there’s still an unresolved problem in the text. Matthew’s genealogy says that Jesus is directly descended from David, and this matters for the meaning of his birth and life. But it sounds like Jospeh is Jesus’ adoptive father, not his biological father. Can this be the same as being descended from David? Is Joseph’s acceptance of Jesus as his son enough? Many have interpreted this text this way to deal with the Davidic lineage issue. And it is an interpretation that honors adoption and fatherhood by choice as noble things. But is that right?

I have often wanted to hang on the importance of Joseph as father of Jesus, honor his work of protecting his family from the terrors of Herod and the threat of death, and emphasize his role as father in raising Jesus as a boy and possibly a young man. Joseph disappears from the story after Jesus’ birth, the flight into Egypt, and the resettlement in Nazareth, only to be mentioned indirectly later when Jesus is called “the carpenter’s son.” I like to imagine that this carpenter father raised his son to learn his trade and raised him to share his Jewish faith -- the same faith that led Joseph to listen to his dreams and trust the plan God had for Mary, Jesus, and himself.

Within Matthew’s story of Jesus’ conception as the initiative and act of the Spirit, how can Joseph still be his father? It occurs to me that any human being needs DNA from a father and a mother. We can see how Mary is Jesus genetic mother. But where did Jesus’ Y chromosome come from? Where did half of the DNA in every other chromosome come from? He still needs male DNA to be a human man, and it needs to be from Joseph for his Davidic lineage.

This makes the most sense to me: The story affirms that Jesus is born from divine activity so that his identity and purpose are assured to be from God. But his Spirit-made conception also includes Joseph DNA, not through sexual reproduction, but divine act and choice. God had to give Jesus some kind of male human DNA. Why not Josephs? Only this approach preserves both the divine act in Jesus’ conception and the human genealogy the assures Jesus is descended from David through Joseph’s lineage.

The ancient world didn’t know about DNA, of course. But they knew that conception stories proclaim the meaning and importance of the birth of great figures. They knew that those figures had both divine and human origin. Matthew knew that Jesus was both of God and Joseph and found his own way to make that make sense.

I’m celebrating that Joseph truly was Jesus’ father. Joseph accepted this, embraced it, lived it courageously and faithfully. Joseph trusted that God may have done things in a new and fantastical way, but it still included Joseph fully in the narrative. I’m celebrating that some kind of new and fantastical things God is doing might include you and me, too. We’ll have to trust that in live it as faithfully and courageously as Joseph.