Imagine you’re Joseph.
Like every other teenaged Hebrew male, your
marriage has been arranged – but you feel fortunate that it was to Mary.
Besides being a well-versed Jewish girl, intelligent, a good cook and
well-trained by her mother in the finer skill of home care that she will need
as a wife, she’s also rather pretty, perhaps even beautiful. And, a virgin. Even at our ages, in a crossroads town like Nazareth, that's no given. And she's a real one, not just a
girl whose parents think she’s still a virgin, but a girl who by all
accounts has kept both body and mind pure in anticipation of her husband-to-be.
Which, needless to add, is you.
And then, out of the blue, Mary comes to you one
day and says, “um, we need to talk.”
Uh-oh. That’s
never good.
“Sure, Mary – what is it?”
Mary, usually so confident in her speech, is
staring at the ground and reluctant to say anything. So you start her off.
“Mary? Mary? Dearest, whatever it is, we can face it together, I
promise. We can –
“I’m
pregnant.”
(Pause. Jaw hits the floor.)
“Um….pregnant?
Mary, uh…”
“I swear to you, Joseph – I have not cheated on you!”
“Mary, ah,
by definition, you have, dear….”
“No, I swear
to you, by all that’s holy, I haven’t, Joseph.”
(Pause.)
“Okay -----I’m waiting.”
A smile breaks over your betrothed’s face, and she
reaches up to kiss you. “Thank
you, dear. That’s as much as I could have possibly asked for from you.”
And the tale she tells you is beyond
reasonable…but she is so earnest, so authentic in her telling of the events
of that night not that long ago, that you can’t help but believe her. Mary has never
lied to you. She has been exactly what she was purported to be when the
marriage was arranged. It would be completely out of character to make
something like this up.
Yet…it could be a cover-up for an affair.
So… what to
do? I don’t want to be cast as a cuckhold, but I will not have Mary
shunned as an adulterer – 0r worse – when I can’t be sure.
And – I trust
her.
Days later, you come up with a compromise plan: Quietly break
off the betrothal, the engagement, and do whatever needs to be done so that she
can have the child in secret without the stigma of her having the child as a
bastard. But before she can be told about his plan, you are visited by a vision
from an angel of the Lord Himself:
“Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife,
for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a
son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their
sins.”
When
he awoke, Joseph came to his fiancée and apologized for doubting her. He took
Mary into his arms and promised to stand by her, no matter what. As the angel
had told him, he refrained from relations with her until after the birth of her
son, so as to maintain her virginity as the Scriptures forecast.
In
the spring, as Mary’s pregnancy was approaching its completion, Caesar Augustus
ordered that all within the Roman Empire must go to the town of their birth for
a census.
What kind of
husband are you? This is going to
be a seventy-mile journey, mostly by foot, although Mary would have a
donkey to ride. Are
you up to this? Can you take care of her the whole trip? What if her water
breaks while we’re in the middle of nowhere? Can you handle that, ‘bridegroom’?
Lord God Almighty, I’m scared. Please be with me – with both of us – as
we journey to Bethlehem Ephrathah, home of my ancestors. Lord God Almighty,
will we be all right?
The
answer, it seems, is yes.
Joseph
and Mary travel for five days, alongside a pack of about one hundred fellow
Judeans, across treacherous territory, to reach the city of his forefathers,
tiny Bethlehem, of which the prophet Micah foretold would be the birthplace of
the “ruler of Israel, whose coming forth is from old, from ancient days.” Along
the way, as he leads the burro his wife-to-be and child-t0-be ride on, he
wonders about that prophecy, and if that’s who his betrothed is bearing.
If so, he’d best be sure to find a good place to stay when they
reach Bethlehem, because that’s where Mary will most likely give birth.
†
Imagine you’re the innkeeper who
has to turn Joseph and Mary away.
You feel terrible about it. You can see that the
young man is exhausted, having come all the way from Nazareth for the census,
and that his lovely bride is heavy with child. Your wife is nagging you
from the kitchen (what turn-of-the-millenium Jews call the kitchen, anyway) to
find a place for them somewhere.
But you know better. There is no room for them here. The
phrase “innkeeper”, to a 21st century reader, may be misleading –
the couple doesn’t run a motel or anything remotely like one. But they do have
a large home, and during Passover and other feasts, or events such as this one,
they do allow fellow Judeans from afar to use the upstairs rooms as a base of
operations and a place to sleep.
And this couple, arriving just the day before the
census begins, has come too late for any of the three rooms they can offer to
be available. And certainly, they’re not in shape to deal with the needs of a highly pregnant mother. Not to mention
the donkey would have no place to stay, either, as he gave out his last stall
with the last family who arrived.
They’re young.
They’ll manage, he hoped.
They’ll find
somewhere else in town.
†
Imagine you’re Herod.
You have Judea in the palm of your hand. The Roman
Empire has complete control of this region of the world, and Caesar Augustus
has given you complete control of Judea, as they did your father before you.
You have lived this life of power and luxury your entire life.
But now something has happened that has shook you
to your very core.
Three astrologers, wise men from far-away lands,
have in conjunction come to Bethlehem in search of a King – and they don’t
mean you. No, it seems they are of the united opinion that because of a
star planted above the town, they would find an infant born here that would
grow up to be, as they put it, “King Of The Jews”.
You call your experts – the Pharisees and scribes
of the Jewish religion. They promptly inform you, well, yeah, there is a prophecy in Scripture, specifically
something called the Book of Micah, that says,
“‘And you, O
Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
who will shepherd my people Israel.’”
Now, your policy is generally live and let live as
far as the Hebrews are concerned. As long as what they choose to do doesn’t
interfere with the Roman occupation of the land, and taxes were paid, Rome
would pay little attention to Judea, and would leave the status quo in place,
which was just fine with King Herod.
But if a “king” was to be raised from among the
rabble, then it was possible – more than possible – that this “king”
might lead a rebellion against Roman occupation. And win or lose (as unthinkable
as losing to an unarmed population
was to a Roman governor), the mere act of a rebellion would draw the ire
of Rome – and Herod might be stripped of power. That could never be
allowed to happen.
Better to nip
this in the bud.
So, you order a new policy among the Hebrew
population: the mass murder of all boys born in the last two years. (Better safe than sorry.) Eliminate all
the candidates for this “Messiah” position – eliminate the faint hope of an
uprising amongst these peasants.
Good. That’s
taken care of. Time to move on to another subject…
†
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