Sermon: Is not this the carpenter's son?

Those who compile the diaries of universities have a natural desire to keep terms and semesters at a reasonably fixed length, and so the sacred calendar with its moveable Easter. That combination means that the Annual Conference of the Society for the Study of Theology is in some years a remembrance of Christ's passion and in others, like this one, a celebration of his resurrection. The combination of fixed and moveable also brings into play the arcane rules governing the transfer of Holy Days; and so it is that we find ourselves thankfully recalling Dan Hardy - priest, teacher, friend and colleague - on the Feast of St Joseph of Nazareth.

That was not the only reason why the text ‘Is not this the carpenter's son?' suggested itself, important Joseph text though it is. To explain that particular choice I need to tell you of a conversation recently overheard - on another shore and in a greater light - between our lately departed brother and some former citizens of Nazareth. Not wasting any time on small talk, Dan greeted them thus: ‘You know, the problem with your question, ‘Is not this the carpenter's son?' is that it was altogether too simple.'

Among some of his audience this produced a rush to self-justification. ‘That's not what we actually said. What we actually said was, ‘Isn't this the carpenter, the son of Mary?' as Mark (6³) more accurately recalls.'

‘I can see', said Dan, ‘that you think that you avoid all the difficult questions by simply not mention­ing Joseph.' (He might have pointed out that although Mark doesn't mention Joseph, he does refer to Jesus' brothers and sisters, but he tactfully avoided that knowing the ecumenical difficulties that would raise.) Dan stayed with the main point: ‘The problem is that the difficult questions can't be avoided.'

‘Too right', said a third group. ‘You can't leave Joseph out, because he's what creates the real problem in what Jesus said about himself. As John recalls, in rather greater detail (6⁴²), Jesus claimed to be the bread that came down from heaven, and that precisely raised the Joseph question: what we said was, ‘Surely this is Jesus son of Joseph; we know his father and mother. How can he now say, "I have come down from heaven"?'

How indeed? As we find ourselves, as we commonly do, celebrating the life of someone we have known and care about we do so in the context of that larger celebration of those of whom we know rather little - Joseph of Nazareth is certainly one of those - except one thing: they stand for what Dan once called, in a book title, God's ways with the world; they are part of the architecture of our salvation, in Joseph's case more obviously than many others' an essential part. As we honour what Dan meant to so many of us we observe the important paradox that Joseph is a key to our salvation story first and foremost for what he is declared not to be: he is not Jesus' father. Matthew has already made that point in his genealogy; the citizens of Nazareth put it in a way that is, as Dan would have it, far too simple. Carpenter Jesus might have been; carpenter's son he was not.

But if Joseph was essential to our salvation's architecture by what he is declared not to have been, he was at the same time essential by what he is declared to have done. He is, according to Matthew, Jesus' essential protector. Like the patriarch whose name he bore, he received revealing dreams of what is to be and what must be done; he is protector at the outset of his betrothed and of her child from Herod's violence. Had that violence had its way, it would have destroyed at its outset God's gift to the world in the fullness of time. As Joseph son of Jacob is sent on ahead to Egypt to prepare a place of safety for God's people, so Joseph of Nazareth became in those earliest and critical days the saviour of the Saviour, father to the one who was not his child. Thus the citizens of Nazareth in speaking of Jesus as the carpenter's son were not saying something totally wrong; just, as Dan would have said, altogether too simple.

For God's ways with the world exhibit, so Dan would come to call it in his extraordinary response to the book of essays written in his honour, a ‘magnificent complexity'. Without complexity there could be no magnificence - for the ways of God with the world are indeed an intertwining of what is with what is not. Like Joseph's relationship to the Christ, the world is in our hands but is not ours, to foster - that's a word which can't be avoided on this of all feast days - to foster but not to own. Neither, however, is it mere complexity lacking the magnificence God gives it, for that would in another way make it a possession of another kind, a place opaque to all but the highly qualified or super-educated.

The magnificence is recognised in worship, in a place such as this in which Dan served as a priest, living out the praise in a building and community which recognises and honours God but knows it dare not shape or own God. The complexity is recognised in the careful and attentive pursuit of theological and other studies, that God may be discovered in a life-changing way of knowing. And neither in the praise nor in the study are we to be subjects possessing an object , nor experts inducting the ignorant into the secrets of their elders. Study was in that sense for Dan and needs to be for us all, a fostering activity; that two thirds of us at this year's SST conference have been before and know the Dan we honour is a source of delight; but for Dan it would have been as much a source of delight that nearly a third of us have not been before and will perhaps not have known the one we honour today - that would have been at least as much of a delight for Dan whose passion was that theology should be alive, drawing in new students embarking in their turn on new explorations.

‘Is not this the carpenter's son' - that is the far too simple question; ‘Surely this is Jesus son of Joseph; we know his father and mother. How can he now say, "I have come down from heaven"?' - there is the question more complex and more magnificent, a doorway into the poetry and the music, the conversation and the friendship, that were Dan's routes into the discovery of the mystery of God and along the way the finding of the Church, as the community in which the knowledge and praise of God were alike fostered and enjoyed.

And here is the joy that is also offered to us in a world of relationships seen in too limited a way, put, Dan would say, far too simply. Is national sovereignty sacred? Should people get what they deserve? Is the Anglican Communion too important to be divided over an issue of sexual ethics? Or, contrariwise, are there issues more important than the maintenance of communion come what may? At a time when we are urged to give ‘yes' or ‘no' answers to such questions it is an honour to remember one who could both notice his own opinions and at the same resist the simplicities of such far too simple polarities. And this is far removed from the avoidance of issues or a sitting on the fence: rather it is that Joseph leads us by his existence and by what he did into the magnificent complexity of human life under and with God. The conviction that only ownership brings responsibility is precisely contradicted by the figure of Joseph: ‘is not this the carpenter's son?' ‘Not exactly.' ‘You mean "no"'? ‘Well, not quite "no" exactly. ‘

And in the same way, ‘Human beings are in charge of creation?' ‘Not exactly "in charge" as people generally mean ‘in charge'. The contemplation of Joseph transforms ownership and possession into the service of growth and independence. It turns out to say something about a parenting that enables and about a call to foster.

And it turns out to say something very central to that for which we most want to celebrate Dan also: to the end his delight was in new theological growth, in new ways into praising and knowing God, reflected in his working with people at the start of their research career with a level of mutuality that they deeply appreciated. More intimately, Dan spoke of home and family in the same vein: to rejoice in the growth and discovery of others, old and young, friends and children, colleagues and grandchildren.

And what we learn from the Joseph stories - the one who was not the father of Christ and acted for his father in his protection and nurture - and celebrate in Dan's friendship we also learn as our own calling. For the Joseph calling is to foster the kingdom - whether as house of prayer or as community of learning, whether as theologians or priests, parents or friends: for Joseph of Nazareth is bad news for our possessiveness and for those for whom possessing is all; good news for all who have nothing; good news for openness and generosity.

We rejoice therefore in all Dan fostered in us, in the people of praise who are this Cathedral community, in the community of learning which is this Society and the theological enterprise wherever it is carried on. We rejoice with him that he has now entered more fully into the vision of praise and learning which he fostered. We rejoice that his calling is also ours, and that the promise he has inherited is to be ours also, nothing less than to see face to face the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ and with Mary, Joseph and all the saints to enter into his glory.