The Rev. Virginia W. Nagel
Ephphatha Parish of the Deaf
Episcopal Diocese of Central NY
One of the things that makes it hard for many people to find comfort and understanding in Scripture is the fact that the Bible leaves so much out! It makes it hard for us to connect up the things the Bible tells us and make sense of them. And, since we cannot connect these things up into what seems sensible to us, we have a hard time trying to apply the teachings of the Bible to our own lives.
We have just celebrated Christmas, and we know the outline of the story. We know God sent an angel to a young girl in the northern part of Israel, the area called Galilee. She was engaged but had not yet been married, and that tells us that she was probably not more than fourteen or fifteen herself, since at that time girls were formally engaged as soon as they were old enough to have children. We also know that the angel gave her a choice, to accept, or not to accept, God's plan, which meant that this girl, Mary, would have a child who was the Son of God, and who would be the Messiah that had been promised long ago to the Jewish people...the Messiah who would save his people. And we know that this young girl said "yes" to the angel.
What the Gospels do not tell us, but what we can figure out by reading the Old Testament books of law, is that when Mary said that "yes," she was putting her life on the line. A woman who was formally engaged or betrothed was considered to be legally a wife, and a woman who bore a child that was not her husband's could be put to death by stoning. Joseph, her promised husband, had the right to make a life-or-death decision for her. He could refuse to marry her, and give her a bill of divorce, but her shame would be known all over the region, and he would be made the butt of many nasty jokes among the men. He would also have to be the main witness in her trial for adultery, and as the chief witness he would be expected to throw the first stone at her. Or, he could go ahead with the marriage, and raise this child as his own, knowing all the while that it was not his own child. The firstborn son of a marriage inherits everything when his father dies, according to Jewish law; it would not be easy for Joseph to accept this child as his own, knowing that all his tools, property and money would go to a son not of his own blood or family. No matter what Joseph decided, we know that he must have agonized over the decision....until the angel visited him in a dream and made up his mind for him.
Fast forward, and we find Mary hurrying some 70 or 80 miles south, probably all alone, which was unheard of...young girls did not travel alone, it would be very dangerous...to visit her elderly cousin, Elizabeth, who was also pregnant in a miraculous way. She stayed there for some months, and the song that she sang when she first arrived is full of political statements that were very different from the ways of the culture in which she lived. This fourteen-year-old girl appears to have been something of a revolutionary! Of course holding such opinions would have been very dangerous, if the government had ever heard about them!
Well, eventually she seems to have gone home again, and apparently she and Joseph made their peace. And then the word from Rome came down: everyone must go to the town where their family originated, and register for the census. The Old Testament tells us that God did not want his people to hold a census; he knew how many there were, and censuses could make trouble....increase the tax rates, make for more government rules. But Rome did not care about Jewish law, and so Mary and Joseph began that long 70 or 80 mile walk from Nazareth to Bethlehem, the town where king David's family came from. Joseph was part of King David's family, so they had to go there. You might wonder how a young girl, nine months pregnant, could make such a journey. The pictures show her riding on a donkey that Joseph was leading, but actually the custom in that place at that time was that the man rode and the women walked. It would take three to five days, depending on how fast they were able to travel. No wonder she began to feel the birth pains as they entered the town of Bethlehem.
We know there was no room in any inn, and so the baby Jesus was born in a stable, heated only by the animals' body heat, with straw for a bed. Straw makes a good bed, but if you've tried to sleep on it, you know it's itchy! It pokes through your blankets. Probably Mary had more privacy for her baby's birth in a stable, because the "inns" in those times were just big courtyards with a well in the center. You could put your blankets down in the space assigned to you, and you shared your space with your horse or donkey. People crowded around, and if they had found room in the inn, Mary would have had no privacy when her baby was born. So the stable must have seemed a blessing to her, even though she had no other woman to help her with the birth.
And so the baby was born, and just as mother and child were settling down for the night, here came a bunch of dirty, smelly shepherds, waving a lantern around, asking loudly where the newborn baby was. It's amazing that either Joseph or Mary didn't get angry and throw them out, isn't it? But they graciously listened to the shepherds' story about all those angels and the light in the sky, and finally when they left, settled down to sleep at long last.
Apparently the young couple and their new baby stayed there in Bethlehem for at least a week, until the time to take Jesus to the Temple to be circumcised and to be given his name in a formal ceremony. Because he was the firstborn son, he also had to be offered to the Lord, and a ransom or redemption fee paid to the Temple. Two elderly prophets, a man and a woman, seemed to be looking for him and also seemed to know exactly who Jesus was and why he was going to grow up to be so important. I wonder what Mary and Joseph thought about their prophecies and predictions?
We don't really know what happened after that. The Gospel of Matthew tells us the story of the wise men from the East, but it seems that this must have been one or two years after Jesus was born, since King Herod ordered that all baby boys under two years old be killed. Herod wanted to be sure that there would be no new king to take his place, and he expected that Jesus would be such a king. At any rate, an angel warned Joseph that they must flee, and so they hurriedly packed up and left in
the middle of the night for Egypt. It seems that Mary and Joseph had decided to stay in Bethlehem for awhile after Jesus was born, because Matthew tells us that the wise men found him in a house, so it seems they had found a place to stay. We don't know how long they remained in Egypt, but it must have been several years. The next time we read any reference to Jesus' age, he is twelve, and has gone up to Jerusalem for the first time with his family for the Passover; so he could have lived in Egypt anywhere up to nine or ten years. But we have no way to know exactly how long they remained there.
There are so many questions we have about the Christmas story. Did the young John and the little Jesus ever play together, since they were cousins? How long was the stay in Egypt, and could Jesus speak Egyptian? Exactly what did he discuss with the rabbis in the Temple when he was twelve? When did they move to a house? Was it their own place, or were they staying with one of Joseph's relatives? And when did they go back to Nazareth after they returned from Egypt? Had the gossip about Jesus' early birth died down by that time, or did Mary and Joseph and Jesus have to listen to unkind remarks and nasty jokes all their lives? Is that why the Gospels often call Jesus "the son of Mary" instead of "the son of Joseph" as boys and men are usually described? How did the families of Mary and Joseph feel about all this? We don't know.
We don't know. We wish we did. The Christmas story, that we all think we know well, and that we all love so much, turns out to have more holes in it than facts. We wish we knew the whole story, but perhaps it is well that we don't, because not knowing makes us think about it and meditate more deeply on the parts we do know. The more we try to understand this story of Jesus' birth and the more we try to find a place for ourselves in the pictures in our minds, the closer we will come to knowing and understanding and loving our dear Lord Jesus, who came into this world and took our flesh upon himself so that we can take his heavenly nature upon ourselves and become children of God, ourselves. For this, we should give God thanks and praise, as the prophet Isaiah told us to do...for his light has come into the world with Jesus, and the more we know Jesus, the more that light and glory of God will come into our hearts and souls. Amen.
