Christmas Blog: Why a Carpenter?
First, I’d like to wish everyone a most joyous Christmas season! I know that Christmas can be stressful and difficult at times, but there is also something so beautiful, even magical, about this time of year. I’ve always loved Christmas – the movies and music, the decorations and lights, the time off of work and school, the Nativity story. The vibe of Christmas is such a cool mixture of nostalgia for the Nativity Story and for the vivid memories of past Christmases with the anticipation and excitement of opening gifts this Christmas. It always makes me think about the beauty and hope of a newborn baby and the precious miracle and gift that they are to the world. Plus, this year is also going to be my son Noah’s first Christmas. So I’m stupid excited.
But I’ve been kicking around this question for the past few weeks, and I thought I’d share my thoughts about it with all of you. Here’s the question: Why did God choose for Jesus to be raised by a carpenter? Why a carpenter? Why not a priest? Why wasn’t he raised in the temple like Mary and Samuel? He worked as a carpenter. He was raised by a carpenter, to be a carpenter. It just seems a strange line of work for the Son of God?
So I did some research, and here are my conclusions. This is based on about two weeks of research, so I’m not an expert on any of these things, but it was an eye-opening process for me, nonetheless, and my hope is that you find the things that I learned to be helpful and hopeful for you as well. Anyway, here are the top lessons I think Jesus might have learned as a carpenter in first century Nazareth…
Hard Work – Jesus came to earth in part to live the human experience. And the human condition is a struggle. Being a carpenter was back-breaking work. If you were going to build a house or a table or a plow or whatever back in first century Galilee, you couldn’t just go to Home Depot and buy materials. You had to walk for miles to find the right tree (not a ton of trees around in the desert). Then, you had to chop it down with an axe that you probably fashioned yourself and spent much of the morning sharpening. Then you would lug the logs back to your workspace and cut them to rough dimensions with a saw before laboriously milling the wood with a plane or a chisel into a square piece of lumber for building. Or you would go out and chop stones out of the earth and lug those to your workstation and chisel them laboriously into the shape and size you need. Yeah. Jesus and Joseph probably also worked with stone, if not primarily with stone, since it was a vastly more abundant resource in ancient Israel than wood and most homes at that time were built from stone (though the roofs were often made from wood beams). The Greek word used in the New Testament to describe Joseph and Jesus’ profession is “tekton,” which means builder or craftsman – not necessarily wood worker. But either way, they were foraging for material and then shaping and carving the raw material into something that matches their purpose and vision. What a beautiful metaphor for God the Father shaping the world and building humanity up from dust and working to shape and form each precious, individual life into a masterpiece. I wonder if Jesus ever saw himself in the wood or stone being shaped by the Father. Or when he was shaping and forming the hearts and minds of his disciples, if he ever thought back to a chunk of wood and a chisel.
Planning and Precision – Every move a carpenter makes is measured, calculated, and part of some larger vision. A false step could undo hours and hours of work, so no detail is approached lightly. Every cut is carefully considered and is connected with the cut before it and the cut after it in a kind of unfolding story that leads to a lasting and reliable product. No wasted movements. Everything has to be part of the story that leads to the end product. In fact, carpenters were actually very respected back in the day for their wisdom. If there was a dispute in the village, and there were no priests around to mediate, people looked for a carpenter. It was well known that carpenters didn’t miss any details and never missed how those details fit into the big picture. The way carpenters saw the world was held in high esteem. This wisdom and perspective would have been important for Jesus in carrying out his ministry, where every word had to be precise for the here and now as well as for the ages to come. Every time the Pharisees came to trap him, he had to be able to see all sides of the dialogue, and his words had to speak to all of them. Every move he made, every detail of his life had to be a part of the unfolding story of the Kingdom of God.
Patience – I work with wood a little bit, a very little bit, and I’ve chosen to use hand tools almost exclusively. Let me tell you, it will mess with your head. It is incredibly satisfying in some ways. The sound of the hand plane rushing over the wood. The feel of a chisel taking precise bites. But it can also be infuriating when you have to spend hours and hours sanding or you have to stop every twenty minutes to sharpen your chisel or your plane iron. Just the repetition of the same motion over and over and over can be maddening. Now imagine the primitive tools that Jesus and Joseph must have used and the amount of time it would have taken them to get a smooth surface. And it was their livelihood, so there was pressure to get jobs done or else they didn’t get paid. At least for me, when the time suck of working with hand tools gets to me, I just literally stop and go do something else, because it’s just a hobby. But talk about a grind, if this is your livelihood. Oh man! Jesus would have been a black belt in patience, a wizard at it. This patience would have served him well in his ministry. I think there are times in the Bible when obviously the Pharisees but even his own disciples tested his patience. Think about when James and John ask him if they can sit at his right and his left hand in Heaven. Think about when Jesus is praying in the Garden of Gethsemane and sweating drops of blood, and the disciples keep falling asleep. All that patience training really paid off in those moments.
The Cost of Rules and Hypocrisy – There were religious rules that carpenters had to abide by. Here’s an example. The second commandment says “thou shalt not make any graven image.” Right? Well, the religious elite of the time applied that rule to carpenters in such a way as to limit the creativity and beauty of their work. The work of a Jewish craftsman was mostly utilitarian. Simple, plain. Get the job done type work. But I wonder if Jesus ever looked at a chunk of wood and saw something beautiful and ornate and felt stifled by the rule of law. A rule that completely missed the mark of the commandment and had nothing to do with how God desires for us to live. And I wonder if he thought about humanity’s capacity to limit the potential that God the Father created us for.
The Cost of Suffering – This is maybe the most important lesson Jesus learned as a carpenter, the one with the most profound impact on his ministry. Less than four miles from Nazareth stood an ancient city that was never mentioned in the Bible – Sepphoris. The city was perched on a mountaintop, hence the name, which means “bird.” Anyway, many scholars believe that Joseph and Jesus frequently walked to Sepphoris for work. There would have been a lot of work for skilled craftsmen in the city as opposed to a small town like Nazareth. Here’s why it was such a great source of employment for builders. Not long after Jesus was born, King Herod died. Herod’s death triggered a rebellion among the Jews. In the chaos of Herod’s death, the rebels were actually able to conquer and occupy the city of Sepphoris…until the Roman Legion showed up like the angel of death. The Romans came and slaughtered the rebels, took their families into slavery, and burned down the city. All part of their “Peace through Victory” marketing campaign. The Romans placed Herod’s son, Herod Antipas in charge of the region, and he chose to rebuild Sepphoris and make it his capital city.
Enter Jesus and Joseph, skilled builders looking for work in a city being rebuilt from rubble and ash—just an hour’s walk from their home. Were the crosses still standing, where the Romans executed the rebels , as a reminder of Roman authority? Were some of Mary and Joseph’s family members killed or taken away into slavery? Did Jesus see people begging in the streets? Did he see them weeping at mass gravesites? Did he see the arrogance and
self-importance of a Roman official or a Jewish leader? Did he see the hypocrisy of a priest
cozying up to the Romans just to gain a foothold of power? And Jesus and Joseph perhaps
made their living building a new city (a monument to the ego of Herod Antipas) upon the
ashes of the old city and the bones of their murdered neighbors and friends.
So those are some of the reasons I came up with. I’m sure there are literally thousands of other reasons. What do you guys think?
May you have love and joy and peace for you and your loved ones this Christmas! Thanks for reading!
