We always think that Advent and Christmas is a wonderful time of the year. But we aren’t 14 and pregnant. We aren’t engaged to a carpenter, who has been having a bit of trouble with the whole “engaged but not married”. Yet he seems to going to do the right thing, but we never hear about them getting married. We don’t have a cousin just up the road is who is barren. To make things worse, she is old and she has just reported an angel told her she is indeed pregnant. Sounds a bit like dementia, and you are going to go take care of her. And she is old.
To make it worse, Mary and Joseph live about 90 miles away from their ancestral home of Bethlehem, but in Nazareth and because they are betrothed, it is registration time. You know, the government wants more income – that is taxes. So, you are nearly 9 months pregnant and they expect you to walk 90 miles south to Jerusalem and cross country to Bethlehem! And heaven forfend, everybody else is going home to register. Think about the dust and lack of good hotels.
Even though it is the city of David, and they are family, and by this time probably married, but no Inn with an upper room, and besides where are they going to get the money for a bed and she is pregnant…
So, someone following mosaic law and they provide shelter for a woman. Most of us would think that shelter means a basement room or by our standards, a garage. But a garage then might be a barn for a donkey, an ox and a cow and maybe a lamb and a ewe or a ram, certainly no pigs. Certainly not sanitary and no way to to wash according to kosher law. But what can you do? At least it has some straw to lay down in.
But that is where everything changes. Some shepherds tending the sheep and goats at night outside of Bethlehem hear Angels singing about the Glory of God and peace on earth and a baby born in a stable. Sounds like they were tasting some fermented sheep’s milk because they left their charges and went to town. And there the child and his parents were, just as they were told.
Now this is where we see just how God was changing things, because if the flocks were not theirs’s and some were lost, they could have lost their lives. But what did they do? They told everybody. And that’s the advent that we tell. Yes, we tell! We tell that God came to the poor to change their lives. We tell of the gift who is God. We sing the names of the Messiah.
We don’t hear about the return home. We hear of the circumcision that marks Jesus a child of Israel at 8 days and the washing and blessing of the family at 40 days, another sign of Mary and Joseph being married. The stars speak of Jesus, but it takes nearly two years before we hear of new witnesses. But power fears love and life and martyrs every male child under two. And Joseph, Mary and Jesus don’t go home, but to Egypt to tell the story as a family. And the Magi? They go home another way and tell the story.
This Advent will be the coming revelation. See them journey from comfort to disdain to bearing hope. See this season as time where we see once again how God in his Son our Christ changes and breaks into our life.
Journey well through Advent into the Mass of Christmas telling the story.
Pastor Don Lemke