Innocence – A Christmas Story – part 2

But that wasn’t the only strange thing that happened in those few days. As is our custom Mary and Joseph went on the eighth day to Jerusalem to have Jesus circumcised, according to the law. After Mary’s purification they took him to the Temple to present him, before returning back to us. It is only a half day’s walk to Jerusalem from Bethlehem. I think they were going to stay just another two or thee days to make sure Jesus was still well enough to travel, then they were to return home. Then star appeared that night over the stable again. Father noticed it on his final round of the walls. By this time most people had set off to return to their own homes, so the caravanserai felt very empty. Mary and Joseph had remained in the stable as it was quieter for the baby. But the star reappearing had father worried that the shepherds would appear again, so he set an extra watchman on the walls that night. What trotted past our walls was not a whole lot of drunken shepherds, but some rich travellers on camels. Like the shepherds they seemed to know where they were going. Straight to see the baby in the stable under the star. This time I went with father and mother and a few of our men, well armed with knives. The sight that met our eyes was extraordinary. Outside our little stable were three exotic men obviously from the East, keeping watch over six camels. They pulled out great knives as we approached, and I thought that there was going to be a battle, but at a call from one of the men, Joseph came out with a richly dressed man, and thanked father and the men for coming again, but everything was alright. These men had seen the star in the east and had followed it here, to come and worship at the feet of a new powerful king. They had not expected to find a baby, but this baby was what they had come all this way to see. Father sent the men back to watch the caravanserai, and he, mother, I and my older brother entered and sat, at the request of the eastern travellers. At the feet of the baby lying in his cradle were ornate carved wooden boxes, open to show their contents, gold, more than I had seen before or since, frankincense and myrrh, which we saw a lot of being carried by passing traders, and fabulously expensive, here overflowing on to the floor.

And then in my innocence I asked those questions no adult can ask.
‘Why have these men come to see this baby? My baby brother looks better than he does, and he has one tooth.’
There was a silence in the stable, then the mother, Mary, spoke up.
‘Do you listen when you go to Synagogue to the readings from Torah and the Prophets? Well, if you do, you will know that every so often the prophets tell us that a Messiah is coming. The prophets are people who have come close to Yahweh. They didn’t know exactly what was going to happen, and neither do I. I do know that an angel called Gabriel came to me and asked me to be the mother of Yahweh’s son.’ (At this point all the adults took a deep breath in, apart from Mary’s husband who was nodding his head gently as she told her story) ‘I didn’t have much time to think about my answer.’ she continued ‘I was only betrothed to Joseph then, so I didn’t know how Yahweh would accomplish it. I thought about the shame I would bring to my parents, (Lots of adult nodding of heads here) about how much I would hurt Joseph (Here he held out his hand and caught hers in his large calloused one) and whether I would be stoned to death for adultery.’
‘What is adultery?’ I asked
But my mother shushed me. I opened my mouth to ask why they wouldn’t answer my question, but mother gave me one of her looks which promised a smack if I kept on about it, so I turned to listen to the story again.
‘I thought about what the angel said. Thought about how much I love Yahweh, so then I said ‘Yes’ to him. I would have Yahweh’s baby. I had heard, as you have heard, that the prophets tell us that the Messiah is going to be born in Bethlehem. The angel never said that we had to go to Bethlehem. Neither did Yahweh say that to Joseph when he met him in a dream when he assured him that I was carrying his baby and had not committed adultery.’
I opened my mouth again, but mother fixed her steely eye on me and I shut it. I would have to ask later when nobody was around.
Mary continued
‘I had no idea that this baby might be Yahweh’s promised Messiah, just his son. Then came the news of the census, and Joseph told me that we would have to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem. So I began to wonder. It is not a good thing to have to make a long journey when you are pregnant. You remember how big your mother was when she was expecting your baby brother? So I walked until my feet ached and my ankles swelled up, then I sat on the donkey until I couldn’t cope with being kicked by the baby and jogged by the donkey, so I would walk again. I walked and rode, and rode and walked for five days to get here. We didn’t think we would get here in time, as it was we only just made it to Bethlehem before it was dark. You remember that by the time we knocked on your father’s gate, it was very late indeed, and this was because we could find nowhere else in the whole of the town to stay. You have heard the story of the shepherds and the story of these wise men. The rest you know, because you have been here, you have seen with your own eyes.’
‘What is going to happen now?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know’ Mary replied. ‘Yahweh is only gradually revealing his plans to us all, as the days pass. I expect I shall find out soon enough what he wants next. I am slowly learning what it is that Yahweh wants from me. I am sure that it will take a lifetime to learn. I think it is time now for you to go to bed. I need to clean up baby Jesus, he has got rather smelly while we have been talking.’
‘You mean he has shit himself,’ I said ‘My brother does that as well’.
At which point my mother leapt up, grabbed my arm and began to pull me out of the stable all the time hissing at me in a loud whisper
‘You shouldn’t say things like that’
‘Why not?’ I said ‘It is true!’
‘Yes, but you don’t talk about it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I said so’.
And as this was the final answer to any argument between us, I had to let it go. I would go back in the morning and talk to Mary. Maybe she would give me a straight answer. She had so far. But when I went back in the morning, Mary, Joseph, Baby Jesus and the Kings, their camels and servants had all gone, slipped away in the night, leaving just a small pile of gold in payment, which I took to my father.

Mother Mary – part 2

Mary and baby Jesus

In the time we were away my father had died, and my mother had become older. We had been able to send the odd message back with various travellers, to say we were alive and well, so mother had kept our house and let a cousin live in it. We moved back in with them still there. It was a bit cramped with his family and animals as well as us. When Joseph had got his business going again, everyone set to, to find some land and build the cousin his own house, and then we were finally back in our own place again, on our own.

Joseph and I picked up the old life, that we had so briefly lived before having to go to Bethlehem. Our relationship had been forged through trial and tribulation. In Egypt, Joseph and I had only had each other to rely on to share the burden of Jesus care. Now we had a whole town, even if they didn’t know or understand who they had in their midst. In Egypt I had grown wary of people. We never knew quite who might be reporting what back to Herod. Now I had to get used to everyone knowing everything, well at least a lot about our lives. Jesus thrived in the company of his new friends, many of whom he was related to. They tumbled and ran and learned and worked in the fields and vineyards together, sharing the trials of growing up. My mother thrived again in his company. She of course was the only other person who knew who he was, although we never spoke about it. She and Jesus became very close. It was good to see.

When Jesus was twelve we decided that we would make another journey together, this time to take our Bar Mitzvah boy on pilgrimage, to the centre of the world, to Jerusalem, for the Passover. A group from Nazareth was going, so we packed up our donkey with food for the first few days, our cloaks to sleep in and Joseph’s tools, of course. On this journey Jesus was with a group of friends his own age, and they walked together talking and laughing and enjoying the unexpected release from the daily grind of work. We made good time, sleeping one night beside the road. On another we found a place in the courtyard of a caravansary. One village we passed allowed us to sleep in their synagogue, and they gave us bread for our pilgrimage journey.

At last we arrived in Jerusalem. Jesus was absolutely awestruck by the city. He could not remember Alexandria, and this was the largest city in our land. There are so many stone buildings, but particularly imposing are the Antonia Fortress, Herod’s Palace and of course the Temple. On the day of passover, the 14th day of Nissan, Joseph and Jesus went with the other men of the village to the Temple, one of them carrying the goat we had brought with us to be sacrificed and eaten that first night. I, with the other women, stayed behind to prepare the unleavened bread and bitter herbs which we would eat with the goat. The men were back in good time with the goat, and set about roasting it whole as the law proscribed. In the evening we gathered around the fire wearing our cloaks, with our staffs to hand and we sat and ate, consuming the whole goat before morning. In the morning the unbroken bones were taken to a pit dug in readiness by the city leaders, and thrown in to be buried. Each day for the next six days we all went to the Temple. One one day we took our offering of the first cut of our barley harvest and gave it to the Priests as a ritual offering. Joseph would take Jesus into the court of the Israelites, while I stayed in the Court of the Women with the women and young boys of our group. Jesus really entered into everything he saw, and asked us so many questions, many of which we could not answer. Then after seven days it was all over, and we had to return to Nazareth and reality again. Several people wanted to buy a few last minute items to take home, so we agreed to meet up at the Essene Gate a couple of hours after dawn.

We set off as a group, Joseph leading our donkey and us chatting with neighbours and friends as we walked. We thought that Jesus was with his friends at the front of the group, but when we stopped for the night, and we called for him to come and eat, he did not come. We questioned his friends, but no one had seen him all day. We questioned everyone, and no one had seen him since we had stepped outside the city gate. Joseph and I were paralysed with fear. This was our worst nightmare. We gathered up our belongings, packed up the bemused donkey and by the light of the moon and stars headed back to Jerusalem. We had absolutely no idea what could have happened to him. We thought he must have been injured, or arrested or kidnapped. When we got back we spent the next two days knocking on every door that we could see, asking if they had seen anything of Jesus. In desperation we eventually knocked on the door of the Antonia Fortress and were sent away with a flea in our ears. We enquired carefully at the kitchens of Herod’s Palace, but no one had seen him.

It never occurred to us in all that time to ask at the Temple, because we assumed that he had been forcibly taken or in an acident. Eventually when we could think of nothing else to do, we went to the Temple to pray and lay our failures before Yahweh, even though we knew he would already know that we had miserably failed him. And there Jesus was sitting on the steps of the colonnades in the Court of the Gentiles, with a group of learned men around him, talking and listening to what they had to say. Joseph and I ran up to where he was. Jesus lifted his head and saw us, and a big smile lit his face ‘Oh good, you have come at last. Is it time to go home then?’ We just looked at each other in total astonishment, after all the anguish we had been through.

I don’t think that Jesus ever fully realised what he had put us through those three days when we thought that we had lost him, lost Yahweh’s son. We tried talking to Jesus but all he kept saying was ‘Surely you must have known I would be in my Father’s house?’ And we just said no, we didn’t. We had begun to think by the end that he must surely be dead, but we held on to the feeling that this couldn’t be Yahweh’s purpose for him, to die unknown. But the sheer terror of failure weighed on us. I was reminded of the time when we presented Jesus in the Temple, when he was just a few days old. Simeon, an old man who lived in the Temple, blessed us, and prophesied that Jesus would be destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel. Just as he was about to turn away he looked me hard in the eyes and just said ‘And a sword will pierce your heart also’. If this was the sword then it is hard, but I think that this was just a test for us, for me.

Mother Mary – part 1

Mary and baby Jesus

I fell in love for the first time when Joseph handed Jesus to me, and I cradled him in my arms. I had not imagined that I could feel this way. The pregnancy and the birth had been so beset by problems, that I thought I might resent him. It was almost as if when I finally looked down at him, that we had already been on a journey together and had won through.

I had become pregnant after being visited by an angel, but Joseph, to whom I was already betrothed, knew it was not his. He told me later that it had been in his mind to set aside our betrothal, but he had been visited by an angel in a dream and had had his mind changed. Soon after this, I left Joseph for a while when I went to visit my cousin Elizabeth, only to discover that in her old age she too was expecting a baby, a baby promised by Yahweh. When I returned, Joseph and I were married quietly and we settled down to married life, only to have our preparations for the baby’s birth brutally interrupted by the calling of a census. This required everyone, no exceptions allowed, to return to their home town, which for us, as Joseph is of the house and lineage of the great King David, meant a long walk to the tiny town of Bethlehem in Judea. We made it, and there in a stable, as there was no room for us at the Inn, Jesus was born with help from the local midwife, watched over by our donkey and several cattle, sheep and goats.

But along with the love came a deep fear. I know from talking to other women that it is scary being presented with a tiny helpless baby, to look after and care for. Most of us have our mothers or other friends around to give help and advice, but neither Joseph nor I knew anyone in Bethlehem. I had to take what was told to me on trust, or had to just use instinct. Jesus seemed to know what he was doing, and mostly managed to latch on to feed without too much help. I was shown how to clean and change his swaddling clothes and how to rub him all over with olive oil and salt to keep him healthy, and I seemed to be able to keep him fed and comfortable. He was a very contented baby. But when I stopped doing the practical things and just sat there looking at him sleeping peacefully, then the real deep seated fear came upon me. I was looking after Yahweh’s child, I had been entrusted to keep him alive and safe. What would happen to me, to us, to Israel, if I failed. Sometimes the responsibility overwhelmed me.

I didn’t have long to just sit and worry, as a real threat presented itself in the form of King Herod. He tolerated no opposition to his rule, not even from his own sons. Anyone he even suspected of treachery towards him he had killed. We were visited by some very kindly wise men when we were still in Bethlehem. When they had admired Jesus, given him gifts, and had eaten and drunk with us, they told us that they had inadvertently told King Herod about Jesus. Now they had been warned in a dream to leave and return to their own country by another route. By the way, we should leave as soon as possible as well. As soon as they had gone to find beds for the night in a nearby Inn, Joseph and I had a quick conversation. When they returned in the morning to take their leave of us, we asked whether we could travel with them for a while. There is always safety in numbers, and they had armed servants with them in case of robbers on the roads. We parted with them when we met the main highway travelling south towards Egypt. Joseph had been told that there was a Jewish community in a place called Alexandria. We hoped we could find some shelter there among people who spoke our language.

Joseph always travelled with his basic carpentry tools, the ones he and his father had made together when he began to help in his father’s workshop. He was able to earn enough to support us through those years, and we were able to live in a house owned by a member of the Jewish community, in exchange for Joseph repairing it and keeping it in good shape. It came with a little land, so that we could grow at least some of our own food, rather than having to rely completely on exchanging Joseph’s labour for the basics of olives, dates, wheat or corn and the occasional beast for meat. Jesus grew up among the refugees and exiles of Israel. I kept hoping that this was the right thing for Yahweh’s son.

Then Herod died and it seemed right to return to Israel to my home town of Nazareth. If you have ever travelled with a small child you will know how wearing it is on the patience. He wanted to walk; he didn’t want to walk. He got quickly bored, hungry, thirsty. He wanted to sit on the donkey; it hurt sitting on the donkey and why couldn’t he go back and play with his friends again? We had several weeks on the road, travelling as quickly as we dared, picking up groups of travellers to share the journey with. Some of them were kind to us, and put Jesus up on their camels or horses to help move the pace along. Some tried to rob us, except that we only had Joseph’s tools, which weren’t of much use to them. The gifts the wise men had given us were long gone by then. Finally we recognised the turning off the road, and headed down the track to Nazareth, not knowing what our reception would be.