At Home with Joseph and Mary – Part 1
People often invited Jesus into their homes, and occasionally He invited Himself. The outcome of His visit was unpredictable, and sometimes things ended with a miracle. Other times they ended with a mess. But when Jesus came in, the light came on. And the same is true for us and our lives.
Growing up, my home looked very different from many people’s homes, but I had no idea. I experienced a sheltered, busy, churchgoing, nuclear family in the 1950s and ‘60s, in a small, mountain town… prepared in some ways, but full of naivety in others.
Later as a pastor, I learned to guide people through situations involving infidelity, sexual escapades, murder, suicide, abandonment, pornography, runaway teens, domestic violence, substance abuse, intense poverty, homelessness, and more broken hearts than I had time to handle. Plus, like everyone, I began facing challenges under my own roof.
Here’s what I’ve learned over the decades. The Lord Jesus knows His way around the inside of a home and of a heart. His home was filled with people, problems, and pressures. His large family didn’t always get along, and as likely as not He was the source of the conflict.
The “Holy Family” had arguments and hurt feelings like we do, and they faced hard times. Jesus was a real child in a real home. He also encountered life as a single adult. He knew what it feels like it to be alone, unmarried, and even homeless. He once said, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20).
Imagine a Savior who left the ivory palaces of Heaven to visit the dusty, troubled lives of first-century Israelites. During His thirty-three years on earth, I imagine He entered the homes of hundreds of people, some as a child running errands, some as a teenager visiting buddies, others as a carpenter making repairs. And later as a prophet making house calls. How many doorways He darkened!
We specifically know of fifteen homes Jesus visited, and some of them have left us fascinating archaeological or historical clues as to their shape, size, and conditions.
The Lord’s personal visits to these houses are recorded for us in the Gospels, and in each place He hammed home a truth.
After all, Jesus still makes house calls, and He brings all His human experience—as well as all His divine resources—to bear in every situation committed to Him. You may face pain and problems in your family or circumstances; but you can rely on Christ to march into every room of your life with you.
Jesus of Nazareth knows how to overhaul homes, oversee lives, overwhelm enemies, and overrule circumstances. It usually takes time; we may have to wait and watch, pray and trust. But when Jesus comes in, the light comes on.
When He is Lord, He is Victor. And where He is Victor, He pivots things for our good through prayer and the provision of the Spirit of Christ Jesus (Philippians 1:19).
The overall lesson is simple: Jesus of Nazareth wants to live with you under your roof now, and He wants to make your heart His Home. When He comes in, the light comes on.
“Look!” He said, “I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends” (Revelation 3:20 NLT).
Let’s start with the home in which Jesus grew up—the house of Joseph and Mary in ancient Nazareth.
As incredible as it sounds, the foundation and the floor plan of the home of Joseph and Mary in old Nazareth still seems to be intact. We have good evidence that the original ruins of Joseph’s home have been discovered beneath the floor of the Sisters of Nazareth Convent across the street from the Church of the Annunciation in the heart of the modern Arab city of Nazareth, the hometown of Jesus.
Nazareth was undoubtedly large enough to have a synagogue, estimated by some to have about 800 people in it. As a youth, Jesus would have attended school in the synagogue, learning to read and write, studying the history of Israel, and absorbing the contents of the Scriptures that His parents also shared with Him at home.
Most people were mixed farmers, raising both livestock and crops, mainly olives, grapes, and grain. Within Nazareth, many of the houses were built into the sides of the hill, and the innermost recesses were often used to store perishables or to house livestock in bad weather. This is probably what Jesus had in mind when He said, “…when you pray, go into your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father who is in secret…” (Matthew 6:6 NASB).
We know a great deal about the homes in Nazareth because of the excavations of a British archaeologist named Dr. Ken Dark, although the story of his amazing work actually began long before his birth.
On Christmas Eve of 1881, a group of French Roman Catholic nuns purchased a large building in Nazareth for their headquarters, their convent. This building was in the heart of Nazareth, directly across the street from the massive Church of the Annunciation. In time, the women began exploring the basement and found odd caves and caverns and ruins.
In 2006, Ken Dark and his team gained permission to conduct more methodical explorations, which went on for years. He discovered the ruins of a first-century home that had been “constructed by first creating a level terrace and then cutting back the rocky hillside… to form free-standing rock-cut walls. These were high enough to support a roof above adult height and solid enough to support an upper story.”
At some point in the 300s, just after Christianity was legalized in the Roman Empire, a church was built over this specific house, and it was called the Church of the Nutrition. The word nutrition is related to the idea of nurturing or raising children. We believe family members of the descendants of Joseph and Mary lived in and near Nazareth for years afterward. Jesus was well known, and his hometown would have remembered the carpenter’s house. It became a place for worship for early Christians.
In or about the year 380, a European woman named Egeria traveled to the Holy Land as a pilgrim to see the sites of the Bible. She left a record of her travels, and she said that in Nazareth she had worshipped in the Church of the Nutrition which was where Mary and Joseph had raised their family.
A hundred years later, another Holy Land pilgrim, an Irish Christian named Adomnán, worshiped in the Church of the Nutrition on the site of the house where Jesus had been raised. He spoke of two large churches side by side—the Church of the Annunciation and the Church of the Nutrition, the latter built over the site of the house where Jesus was brought up by Joseph and Mary.
So we have the archaeological ruins of a house beneath the current site of the convent of the Sisters of Nazareth across the street from the Church of the Annunciation. The remains of the ancient Church of the Nutrition are layered over the remains of the house. Ken Dark’s research details significant remains of a first century home visible beneath that convent, which from very early centuries was said to be the home of Joseph and Mary.
In his definitive book about his excavations, Archaeology of Jesus’ Nazareth, published in 2023, Ken Dark wrote:
It is possible that the summer heat was less of a problem for the occupants of [this house beneath the] sisters of Nazareth site, because of its thick rock walls. These would have protected them very effectively against the cold and rain of winter, and required little maintenance.
[The family of Jesus and their neighbors would have enjoyed] a healthy and varied diet. They certainly had grain, grapes, and olives, olive oil and wine, but also probably other fruits and vegetables. Milk production, in addition to milk to drink and for cooking, probably provided them with cheese and yogurt. They also ate beef, and probably lamb and goat. Wheat and barley were ground for bread, and possibly other baked foods.
This all suggests that a fairly comfortable home life was possible.
The excavations indicate this house had a nice courtyard and would have been large enough for nine or ten people to eat and live and sleep comfortably.
It’s very possible, then, that beneath a convent in central Nazareth are the remains of the precise house in which Jesus grew up. I’ve described all this, not only to present plausible archaeological evidence for the Nazarene childhood of Christ, but so we can better use our imaginations to visualize our visit and get a sense of the homelife of the family of Joseph and Mary.
Jesus of Nazareth was a real person, a friendly, hardworking man who understood all the stresses and strains of family life and who knew how to enter both homes and hearts. Whatever our situation, He is ready to make a house call on our behalf.