on the job with Jesus

St. Joseph the Carpenter
Georges de la Tour

Joseph may not have been a wealthy man, but he was a working man. The Bible just says he was a carpenter; we know nothing else. He may have been an itinerant skilled worker or may have had his own shop, or he may have had steady work along with other skilled workers working on rebuilding Sepphoris, a city only 4 miles away from Nazareth that had been the site of a Jewish uprising against Rome in 4 BC and had been completely destroyed. The rebuilding was a project that basically took place during the whole scope of Jesus’ lifetime. We don’t know how Joseph used his skills, but for Joseph, going to work was not a break from Jesus. Jesus wasn’t just staying home with Mary (and as Jesus got older, this was literally true), but the one who constructed the raw materials with which Joseph was constructing was right there with Joseph. The one who takes broken lives and makes something useful was guiding Joseph’s hands, making something useful from broken wood.

May the above painting by Georges de la Tour, St. Joseph the Carpenter, be an inspiration for you in your daily grind, whether that’s sitting in an office cubicle, putting on brake pads, teaching children, feeding children, or looking for employment. This is where God has you serving him, at least for today. And Jesus is with you. In the painting we see a tired Joseph at work, and a young Jesus accompanying him. The young Jesus is lit up, the light from the candle brightly glowing off his face and even shining through his fingers, surely yet calmly recognizing the shape of the cross through Joseph’s work.

May Jesus accompany you at work today. May he bring light to your darkness. May he be the Master and you be the apprentice, because he created this position and line of work for you (at least for today). And may his light reveal that the product of what you’re accomplishing as you work, with and for the Lord (not just human bosses), takes the cruciform shape of the redeeming and re-creating of God’s world.

- Pastor Bo Bannister