Unbelief is Our Natural Predisposition

If Mary is the first disciple, Joseph is the first skeptic

In Matthew’s Gospel, Joseph is the first person to learn that Isaiah’s 800 year old promise would finally come to pass in a much less tidy and much more complicated way than Isaiah ever let on.

Joseph is the first person to hear the news that God had decided to trade in his power and might for diapers and a bottle. He’s the first person to realize that his fiance would never be able to prove how it happened exactly. He’s the first person to know that it had nothing whatsoever to do with him.

And Joseph is the first person to struggle with believing that abstinence only works 99.99999% of the time.

Matthew reports in his nativity narrative that upon hearing the news of Mary’s pregnancy “Joseph resolved to dismiss Mary quietly...” Matthew leaves it to us to imagine just how long it must’ve taken Joseph to come to that decision.

But it’s not like Joseph’s happy about it.

• The word in the next verse, where Matthew writes “But just when Joseph had considered to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream,” the word “consider” in the Greek comes from the root word thymos.

• It can mean “to ponder” as in “to consider” or it can mean “to become angry.”

• It’s the same word Matthew uses in the very next chaprter to describe King Herod’s infanticidal rage when he learns the magi have escaped and returned home by another road.

• It’s the same word Luke uses right after his nativity story when he describes how the congregation in Nazareth reacts to Jesus’ first sermon by trying to kill Jesus.

Joseph’s initial response to the annunciation is anger.

Why is he angry?