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| AN ORDINARY CHRISTMAS Don Bemis Christmas is the most extravagant holiday we celebrate. The decorations go up a little earlier each year, and no other holiday generates quite so many lawsuits. We often forget just how ordinary the first Christmas was. Rome had ruled Israel for about 70 years, so only the oldest residents could remember a time of independence. In Rome, Caesars died and were replaced, but day-to-day life in far-off Judea did not change much. Governors came and went, each with his own style, but they were more alike than not. Some were especially cruel, but even that was not unexpected. Rome permitted the continuation of Jewish religious rule by the Sanhedrin to maintain some appearance of autonomy for a subjugated but stubborn people. The first Christmas was not advertised in store windows. Only one family seemed to know that it was coming at all. An elderly couple got a hint fifteen or sixteen months in advance, a girl learned nine months before it happened, and her fiancé found out shortly after she did, but nobody else knew. To the world, everything seemed ordinary. Mary was pregnant and unmarried, a shameful but not earth-shattering situation. Her family's reaction is not recorded. Her relative Elizabeth understood and kept Mary for a while (because Mary's own family would not?), but she lived some distance away and eventually Mary returned home to Nazareth. Joseph believed Mary because he believed an angel, but maybe nobody else did. Mary probably was as uncomfortable as any other expectant mother, but with the added burden of a ruined reputation. Meanwhile another ordinary thing happened. The government announced a census and a tax. It was not unusual to link the events because taxation was more efficient if the government knew who to tax and where they were. Sometimes people would be detained at the place of census until they paid. In this particular case, people - including women over the age of twelve - were ordered to report to their communities of origin. Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem although she might give birth at any time. The comfort of pregnant women in Judea was no concern to treasurers in Rome. Even if Mary had been allowed to stay behind, she would have had been cut off from one of the very few people who understood her. So she either walked or rode ninety miles on a donkey, feeling every footstep and surrounded by crowds of other tired, dirty, and even pregnant travelers. Ordinary people on an ordinary road, all bound to pay ordinary taxes to an ordinary tyrant. No carolers or Santas. Saddlebags with cheese and a few spare clothes, but no brightly colored Christmas presents. Bladders of wine, but no eggnog. The Bible does not tell us what time of year Jesus was born, so we have no idea of the weather Mary and Joseph faced. It may have been ordinary. Let me digress a little here. I once read an article about some “experts” who claimed that Jesus was not born in a stable. The writers said that families in that area lived as clans with the extended family living together, so Joseph would have gone straight to the clan compound, not an inn. The writers reasoned that Jesus might have been born in a storeroom if the home was crowded. I am not an expert on the era and cannot refute the writers, but their theory has some problems. First, let us look at why the Bible said Joseph went to Bethlehem. It says he went because he was of the house and lineage of David. David! A king dead for a thousand years, before the Jews were ejected from Israel, dispersed to various lands, and repatriated. The Bible does not say that Joseph reported to Bethlehem because it was the home of his father or even his grandfather. Most likely it was not, because it would have been unusual for Joseph to move as far away as Nazareth. He may not have known anybody in Bethlehem, and if there was a family compound the entire clan would not have fit. David had thousands of descendants! Bethlehem was a small town. Joseph and Mary were probably strangers in Bethlehem who tried to get public lodging but could not because of all those distant relatives. They finally found a stable. If it was available to them, it may have been to others as well. The Bible does not say if Mary and Joseph had the stable to themselves. Then another ordinary thing happened. A woman had a baby. Not in the most ordinary setting perhaps, but many children have been born in unlikely places. She wrapped him in ordinary cloths and laid him in an unusual but adequate bed. Mary and Joseph named the baby Jesus as they had been commanded. This does not appear to have been a family name, but it was not unheard of. Jesus was born after sundown, as we shall see in a minute, so Mary and Joseph shared an experience common to many of us: the opportunity to lose sleep to childbirth. They had traveled for three days, barely found a place to stay, and even then could not rest. Even after Jesus was born, cleaned, nursed, and laid in the manger, they were not to get much sleep before morning. Outside of Bethlehem, ordinary shepherds watched ordinary sheep, doing a job where time is measured more by seasons than minutes. Some of these men had seen hundreds of nights like this one and hoped to see hundreds more. Their only earthly light came from campfires. Nothing changed much. The shepherds talked, made a little music, and slept, mostly alone but sensitive to intruders. They needed to know if thieves or animals were approaching their sheep. Then the ordinary fabric was broken. The shepherds were suddenly dazzled by a brighter light than they had ever seen at night. And where did that man come from? They hadn't heard him! And was he a man at all? Why here, in the middle of nowhere? The terrified shepherds were powerless in the face of this totally unexplainable intrusion. The angel (for that is who he was) first reassured the men and then gave them a totally unexpected message: that the Redeemer they hoped for had suddenly appeared, not as a general or priest, but as a baby in a stable that very night (Jews consider each day to begin at sundown, so "today" meant after sunset). He gave them instructions to the place, and suddenly he was accompanied by countless more like himself, lighting the countryside and singing triumphantly. Then the angels disappeared, and the shepherds were again alone on their quiet hillside which looked just as it had on hundreds of other nights. But the shepherds weren't the same. They believed what they had been told, perhaps because it was so unbelievable. People try to explain the unusual in the context of what they understand, which is why so few people believe in miracles. The shepherds had no experience against which to compare what they had seen, so they set forth to Bethlehem. In the meantime, Mary and Joseph were tending to their first child. The angel had said he was the Son of God, but he needed the same care as any baby. The exhausted parents may have thought they could finally get some rest because everybody who wasn't boarding at the stable would want to leave and go to bed. But no: it may have been a knock on the door, shuffling feet, or a crowd of excited voices, but whatever it was meant company. And what company! Breathless guests who smelled of sheep and campfires, who had seen far more lambs than infants, and who crowded in to see the newborn. Grubby men with tears in their eyes and an amazing tale that wanted telling at least once more. The shepherds may have been surprised when they discovered that they were the only ones who had raced to the stable. They might have assumed until then that the momentous announcement had been made to everybody. Finally they left, probably reluctantly, and made the announcement themselves to the dumfounded community. Did the people believe them? We don't know, but shepherds often came down from the hills, celebrated in town, and told loud, wild tales as they stumbled back to their sheep. Nobody seems to have considered the story important enough to pass on to Herod. Finally the sun rose as usual. Whether or not Mary and Joseph got any sleep that night, there was work to be done. Jesus would be circumcised on the eighth day, and Bethlehem was only a few miles from Jerusalem, so it made sense to stay a while longer. Besides, Mary would need some time to recover before traveling ninety more miles. The stable would be unsuitable for an extended stay, so Joseph needed to find a house. He was not a rich man and would also need to find a job. On the eighth day after Jesus' birth, he was circumcised like all other Jewish boys. His family was poor (possibly due in part to the cost of the trip), so they made the minimum permissible sacrifice of two pigeons. Then the ordinary was broken again for a few minutes. Two very old people had stayed for years at the Temple in Jerusalem in hopes of seeing the Messiah, and they separately claimed that God had told them this was the child. The Bible doesn't say how much stir this caused, but again it was not enough to attract Herod's attention. Joseph found a house for his family and took up his ordinary trade, but then another extraordinary thing happened. Oddly enough, it was not revealed to the Jewish people who continued their ordinary lives, but to foreign astrologers. These men saw a new star which they interpreted as heralding a mighty new King who, although not theirs by heritage, merited their worship. They followed the star to Israel and logically went to the royal house to ask to worship the new ruler. Herod was astonished because he had no newborn son, but he believed the astrologers' strange story because a Messiah had been prophesied centuries earlier. He was also troubled because such a thing would spell the end to his reign. It's funny how a person can believe a prophecy so strongly that he will commit murder to make it untrue. Herod asked his advisors for clarification, and they told him the event would occur in Bethlehem. He told this to the astrologers and asked them to tell him when they found the baby, ostensibly so he could also worship it but really so he could have it killed. He had killed even members of his own family to protect his rule, so a stranger's baby meant nothing to him. Until now, I have pointed out just how ordinary the first Christmas was, but here is something different. Experts have expended considerable effort explaining how this extraordinary star must have been scientifically explainable. I doubt there is a natural explanation for the star, based upon the Biblical account. The star was high enough that the astrologers could determine that it was directly above Israel. However, it would have been impossible for a supernova, planetary conjunction, or any other "normal" phenomenon to be identified as being above one house as opposed to another. The star must have traveled ahead of the men as they traveled and/or descended until it was recognizably above a single home. Here is another interesting thing. The star led the wise men to Israel, but not directly to Jesus. The men had to ask directions in Jerusalem. It was only after they had left Herod and gone toward Bethlehem that the star led them directly to the house. This abnormal behavior is not scientifically explainable but makes sense if we accept God's intervention. If Herod had seen the star, he also could have followed it and had Jesus killed immediately. The star's message was obscured for a while to protect Jesus. Instead of being a celestial phenomenon, the star may have been more closely akin to the pillar of fire and cloud that led the Israelites through the desert, the burning bush that Moses saw, and the glory of God that filled the temple at its dedication. This is not to say that the thing did not look like a star, but rather that it was a special creation by God for a specific purpose. There must have been quite a stir in Bethlehem when a richly laden foreign caravan pulled to a halt at the home of a poor carpenter, especially when the powerful men paid homage to an "ordinary" baby. They gave expensive gifts which would immediately lift the family out of poverty, and then they left. But they did not return to Herod as he expected. Furious, he demanded the murder of all males under two years old in Bethlehem in order to defeat the prophecy. This would indicate that Jesus was much younger than two at the time of the wise men's visit, quite possibly only a few weeks old. Herod would have made the cutoff age sufficiently high to ensure that the new king would not be spared by mistake. Just as God had warned the astrologers not to reveal the child to Herod, he also warned the family to flee to Egypt. Besides warning them, he had also provided enough money so they could afford the trip and an extended stay in Egypt afterward. As the first Christmas season ends, we see three ordinary tired, dusty refugees traveling from Israel to Egypt. We also see evil that has persisted unchanged to this day. But we also see the extraordinary promise that evil will eventually be totally defeated. |
