Hospitality is prized everywhere because it overcomes fear. Typically, there are three stages of such fear and hospitality, pertaining to hospitality to friends, strangers and enemies. As Joseph’s betrothed, Mary was more than his friend. But here was something very strange. To take her into his home required much courage. We can speculate on all the reasons why courage. One, he may have wrestled with the fear that the pregnancy was illegitimate. Two, he feared that breaking of their betrothal would expose her to public shame. Three, realizing that the child was holy, made her dangerously holy in ways analogous to the ark of the covenant which David his ancestor feared to take into his home (2 Samuel 6:8,9; 1 Chronicles 13:11,12). By overcoming these fears through angelic inspiration he assumed an integral role in Jesus’ birth, name, and identity. We see from his example that fatherhood has profound spiritual dimensions.
Joseph’s fears must have had a flip-side in Mary’s. Being Joseph’s betrothed, how could she have said yes to a pregnancy in which he was not involved? Would he break off the marriage and leave her and the child exposed to public shame. And even if he were to commit as a husband and father, would not rumors that he was not the biological father get out and expose the child to shaming comments? On one such occasion, as reported in John’s Gospel, when Jesus’ adversaries accused him of being illegitimate, Jesus responded “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I proceeded and came forth from God; I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word” (John 8:41-43).
All of this took a lot of courage. It also resulted in living a life that exemplified solidarity and empathy with and for people who are stigmatized in various ways, in ways highlighted by a passage in Psalm 72: “He shall have pity for the lowly and the poor; // The lives of the poor he shall save.”
Matthew’s Gospel concludes the presentation of Jesus’ genealogy which includes many people who were lowly and poor, without whose problems the Messiah would not have been born, showing that God, by His Providence, writes straight with crooked lines.
