Today we celebrate the fourth Sunday in Advent! The Sunday before Christmas day. And how glorious this year to have a whole week before Christmas to prepare for Christ’s coming! Remember as you bustle around to tend to all the things not yet done, don’t to forget to steal time from the world to give to God as you and God together celebrate the victory of His coming earth to save the earth!
As I committed at the beginning of Advent, I have offered to those who have been here for The Journey, geographic archeology and Biblical scholarship to help you to see fresh the story of the Christ birth and the power of redemption as he is wrapped not so much in swaddling clothes but in the skin of humanity. The story began 9 months before when Mary, from a town that was not even a dot on the map at the time. She had a visit from Gabriel telling her that she was with child, Son of God. And her response, “I am the Lord’s Servant may it be to me as you have said!” And Joseph, his worth summed up in a toolbox. In a dream he had his world turned upside down doing the right thing despite the law. He was the most important male in history. Last week we learned that Elizabeth and Zechariah lived in Ein Karem a village 4 miles from Bethlehem. And how God provided Elizabeth to comfort and affirm Mary. And so we come to the fourth Sunday in Advent. Today, I warn you, we will be taking a journey that we don’t want to take!
Joseph finds out that Mary is with child. As I ponder the scriptures and my own imagination. It seems logical that if Mary was in Ein Karem just 4 miles from Bethlehem, Joseph’s home for 3 months with Elizabeth and Zachariah Joseph would have visited. It was then that he would have heard from Mary that she was with Child through the Holy Spirit. On his way back home, Joseph would have had time to think: I could divorce her quietly. And when he laid his head to rest, the angel of the Lord came in the dream. Take Mary to be your wife. He easily could have gone back to Ein Karem to tell Mary. Luke says they waited until the engagement was over, Matthew says that they married right away. I believe that Matthew’s account is more accurate, if Mary had come to term that may cause even more controversy. And so with that in mind, they had to plan a “hurry-up wedding!” In the 1st century wedding scheduled because of a pregnancy caused a touch of shame that we do not experience often today. After John was born, Joseph and Mary headed back to Nazareth.
Now this was not the custom. Typically, the bride would make her way to Bethlehem so that after the wedding they would move in with Joseph’s parents. Joseph was likely in trade with his dad and already had a customer base. Plus if they could not yet afford a home of their own, Joseph’s parents would just add on. But Mary being with child would want to go back to her own town; be near her mother and the family mid wife. Think of it, just finishing her first trimester and having to travel, plan a wedding and face the people she knew and loved, this must have been a journey that she would not have wanted to take. I certainly would not have wanted!
And so they have this “hurry up wedding!” How far along was Mary at this point? We know that Mary was with Elizabeth for three months and it likely took 6 – 8 weeks to plan the wedding. Mary would have been 4-5 months with child. Now that the wedding is over, Mary and Joseph could settle in and prepare for the baby’s birth. Joseph could have gotten on with another carpenter. They are thinking about the birth. Remember there were no OBGYN’s to interview, there were no birthing rooms that look like the Hilton; there were no “nonorganic” options for drugs to ease the pain. Dads did not learn to be coaches or to find their “happy place.” Their role was much different. We also have to remember that looming in their minds is the reality that many women died in child birth. And what of Mary in that second and third trimester; Mothers do you remember: tired, nausea, listless, itching, hands and feet resembling Shrieks’? Maybe, just maybe a little bit moody. I don’t think that just because Mary was carrying the Christ Child that physiologically things would be different with her!
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