Mary and Joey?

This week my cousin, Eleanor, posted an absolute gem of a conversation to Facebook. The characters are Joey, her husband, and Nate, their four-and-a-half-year-old son.

Nate: Why were they talking about Joseph at pageant rehearsal?

Joey: Because Joseph was Jesus’s father.

Nate: YOU ARE?!?

Nate found this revelation surprising, but apparently believable, somewhere within the realm of possibility. For most of us, that realm of possibility shrinks as we grow up. Possibility becomes largely defined by the things we’ve learned and experienced. 

There are plenty of reasons why my cousin-in-law, Joey, couldn’t possibly be the father of Jesus. For starters, he goes by “Joey,” and that just doesn’t sound right for the father of Jesus. Mary and Joey?? No way. He was Joseph. Silly Nate.

After I had laughed long and hard over it, “liked it,” commented on it, and laughed about it some more, I was struck by the wisdom of Nate’s ignorance. The great mysteries of Christmas – the Virgin birth, the Incarnation – do not favor the advanced cognitive abilities of the adult brain.

The developing brain of the young child has the advantage on us here. Jesus really tries to tell us this. He comes to us as a baby. He says things like, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” (Mark 10:15)

We often forget Jesus’ message for the same reason that we need to remember it – it doesn’t make the most sense to our big adult brains. Fortunately, we have the little Nates of the world here to remind us.