Tom Joad and the Silence of Saint Joseph
Tom Joad, Steinbeck’s hardscrabble protagonist in The Grapes of Wrath, delivers a resounding farewell speech in which he asserts that, quote, I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. That line, in particular, has always stuck with me – for its poignance, for its ability to draw me into something human, real, recognizable and beautiful -- but now that I am a father, it resonates with me even more. I delight in calling my children to dinner. They each know why I am calling up the stairs, yet they answer with a question nevertheless in a tone that can barely contain their happy anticipation. They know why I called. They just needed to hear the words, Time for dinner. Just like the kids in Tom Joad’s speech, they needed small reassurance from the grownup who provides for them.
As I get older, I am convinced that this need does not go away. In fact, I wonder if much of the world’s angst is caused by a perceived silence from the One who created all of us. We beseech. God is silent. We are hungry. The fortunate are fed. But without the words, Time for dinner, many are at a loss. Is anybody at the bottom of the stairs? I hope so. I pray so. The worry keeps me up at night.
So, too, was Saint Joseph who throughout the Gospel is silent. He heeds the advice of an angel and takes Mary as his bride, and, later, heeds the advice of another angel (or the same) and escapes to Egypt in the night to avoid Herod’s jealous bloodlust, but through it all, utters not a word. Nothing is recorded. The earthly father of Jesus Christ is mute.
Or perhaps not...
In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus warns his disciples not to judge others with the following words: Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, Let me take the speck out of your eye, when all the time there is a plank in our own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
His admonition is direct, yet it is hard not to miss two features of what He is saying: 1.) He is using wood, the raw material of a carpenter, to illustrate his point and 2.) there is a “dad joke” quality that sweetens what could have been a bitter pill to swallow.
Where does Joseph speak, in other words? He is in Jesus’s lessons. The working class imagery. Because of Joseph the carpenter who provided for the Son of God – taught Him, protected Him, laughed with Him, reflected simple decency and a strong work ethic – Jesus taught His disciples and us through scripture using a particular vocabulary of people who do – fishermen, farmers, builders in addition to woodworkers.
When it comes to the perceived silence of God, then, it comes down to how we listen and, perhaps even more importantly, how God calls to us. He knows we are hungry. He is a good Father. But the call does not come in the way we think it will come; rather, it comes in a way that is supremely more endearing, closer to the heart. Tom Joad is in the way kids laugh. Saint Joseph is in the way Jesus teaches. God is in the way we already know, sitting in our rooms, tilting our ears upward ever so slightly, that the food is ready. What are our lives but waiting to hear the call.
