Wednesday
Wednesday
The Carpenter’s Shop
Where did this man get these things? … Isn’t this the carpenter?
Mark 6:2–3
The word carpenter occurs only twice in the Gospels, once calling Jesus “the carpenter” and on the other occasion referring to him as “the carpenter’s son.” From this we deduce that Joseph had worked as a carpenter, that Jesus had been his apprentice, and that he took over from him, perhaps at Joseph’s death.
Although the word tekt
n could be used of any artisan or craftsman, it normally denoted a worker with wood. So Jesus will doubtless have made and repaired both household furniture and agricultural implements. J. E. Millais, the Pre-Raphaelite painter in the middle of the nineteenth century, can help us to visualize the inside of the carpenter’s shop by his painting of that title. The child Jesus is at the center of the picture. He has evidently injured himself with a nail, Joseph is leaning over to examine the wound, Mary is seeking to comfort Jesus with a kiss, and the youthful John the Baptist is carrying a bowl of water with which to bathe the injury. Jesus is leaning against the workbench, which seems to symbolize the altar of sacrifice.
Some of the Christian leaders of the early British labor movement derived inspiration from Jesus, for he dignified manual labor. James Stalker in his Life of Jesus Christ (1879) wrote:
It would be difficult to exhaust the significance of the fact that God chose for his Son, when he dwelt among men, out of all possible positions in which he might have placed him, the lot of a working man. It stamped men’s common toils with everlasting honour.
For further reading: Acts 20:33–35