meanderings

Christmas Story '06

Mary savored the feel of Judas suckling her breast as they walked. She walked apart from her family with the other women whose babies had been born since the last pilgrimage. They were all ritually unclean until their purification ceremony. That would be done when they reached Jerusalem. Some of the women had walking children beside them. It was unusual to make an annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem and most families waited until their third or fourth child to do so. The journey to Jerusalem was expensive and meant two to three weeks without working, but in their 13 years together, Mary and Joseph had never missed a year. Even the few years when they did not have a new baby to present at the altar, their family would make the journey to give thanks and celebrate the Passover in Jerusalem. It was a family tradition that only the very devout or affluent were able to make.
Those were good trips. Joseph would walk by her side. Sometimes they would talk, but mostly, they would just walk and relish the time together. She knew that the other women would stay away. They were envious of her husband’s unusual attention. Men in Galilee seldom spoke to their wives beyond what was necessary, treating them as the property they were. But the women did not begrudge Mary her husband’s attention. Life was hard and they did not expect such from their husbands, but it didn’t hurt to have their husbands notice Mary and Joseph’s unusual closeness. Sometimes a man would ask his wife a question out of curiosity after noting the couple’s contented smiles as they walked in the warm, Palestinian sun. Sometimes he would listen to her response.
Joseph had always been different. Even in their worst time, the first months of her pregnancy with Jesus, Joseph had not hurt her as he had every right to do. Her own father had cursed her, swearing that she should be stoned for the whore she was, proclaiming loudly to her mother who had borne her that she had given him a Jezebel. Mary had remained silent to his ranting, curving her body around her unborn son to protect him from the blows of her angry father. She held within her the image of the angel and his message to her. She retreated within herself until she could no longer hear her father’s curses.
It had been different with Joseph. No words of incrimination had come from his lips. They would have been welcome relief from the pain radiating from his eyes. His eyes had searched hers for answers she could not give. What could she tell him… that an angel of the Lord had told her that she was to bear the Messiah?! What man, no matter how devout, would believe that. She longed to tell him the truth as his eyes tormented her with their look of utter betrayal.
Mary could only bow her head and await his judgment. She did not believe he would have her stoned because the child must be born, but she resolved herself to the inevitable humiliation that would be hers. Joseph had turned and walked away from her without speaking. She could only await his decision, never expecting to see her beloved Joseph again.
Mary pressed her infant son closer and whispered a prayer of thanksgiving. God was good to give her such a man and such a life. No material sacrifice of jewelry or clothes could touch the joy of living in a family of such wonder. Joseph had not humiliated her or abandoned her. He took her humiliation on himself, allowing others to think that he had broken the vow, that her child belonged to him. The marriage had been completed when she moved into his house with her shame regulated to a mild, and for some, amused, rebuke. Joseph had waited until they were alone to tell her his own story of the angel. Her heart burned with the memory of that joy. She had been prepared to bear God’s messiah through every trial with the remembered ecstasy of the angel’s coming, but God had been merciful once again and did not leave her alone.
And she had needed Joseph. All the women said that she was the sickest woman they had ever seen in pregnancy. The first months of nausea and vomiting had not ended for her until the pregnancy was almost over, and the trip to Bethlehem had been excruciating. Even when not walking, her back had ached and throbbed from the beginning of their journey to the end, and her retching began again with the pain.
Judas had released her nipple and was snoring gently. It seems that all her pain of childbirth had been concentrated in her first born son. Judas had been born in a matter of hours. James, Joseph, Ramah and Simon had all been easy births. The women of her village remarked often on how easily she had her children. But they had not been there for the birth of Jesus. Without the comfort of the angel, she felt she might have begged for the death that often accompanied the birth of a first child.
Who was the son of hers that the angel foretold? People said that he was the spitting image of her father. He looked more like Mary than any of her other children, except perhaps Ramah. But girls often look more like their mothers. Jesus ran and played with the village boys like any other. There was nothing to distinguish him from her other children, except for the thoughtfulness. Joseph, his father, was an unusually gentle and thoughtful man. So it wasn’t unusual that his boys were perhaps more contemplative than their peers. James and Jesus were the most inclined that way, but her other boys were more serious than most as well.
But there was something else about Jesus… a quietness that fell upon him, as if he were listening to something or someone that no one else could hear, or see. Also, Jesus had this tendency to pay close attention to the most trivial of things - fish dying on the beach, women pounding grain into flour, a beggar in the street, ants crawling in and out of their mounds. And Jesus was attentive to women. He played with his sister and would watch her without complaining. He would ask a woman about her sick child or sympathize with her over a broken pot or a lost coin. Even Mary felt uncomfortable with this strange attention to the concerns of women.
But she said nothing. She could only wonder at this son who might someday lead his people from the tyranny of the Romans as the Maccabeans once succeeded over the Greeks. She did not understand how a carpenter’s son could do this, but she believed what the angel told her. She had only to close her eyes and relive that experience when her doubts grew troublesome. Doubts crept in both boldly and subtly. Faith did not come effortlessly. She had had many times to doubt during Jesus’s childhood. He was a baby prone to sickness. How often he had lain ill, some thought to the point of death. Death came so easily to the young and the old. It seemed as though the demons were battling to take her son. But he had always been protected. His life was always spared.
Mary would not see Jesus again until the Passover feast. She could not be with any of her family except Judas until then. Jesus was probably with the other boys of the pilgrimage. There were many families from other villages that they traveled with every year. Any one of them would welcome her boys to eat and even sleep with their family. Mary left Ramah with Martha who had a daughter of the same age. Martha had only two children and both had already been to Jerusalem for the ritual sacrifice so that she traveled with her husband freely. Ramah and Sarah, Martha’s daughter, often traveled together, sometimes with Mary and sometimes with Martha. Ramah loved their trips to Jerusalem as much as the boys, sharing her duties as she did with a beloved friend.
Mary looked ahead and her heart swelled with joy as she saw Jerusalem in the distance. The temple always filled her with wonder and delight. It was beautiful, of course, but it was so much more. It was the hope of her people, a physical sign that God had not forgotten them in their oppression, the promise of a day to come, a day in which her own son would someday play his part. The first prayer of Hanukkah sprang to her mind and she praised God for his mercy.

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Mary could hardly breathe. Her heart was pounding in her chest and her ears as she tried to catch her breath to speak. Joseph’s arms were strong around her as he tried to comfort her. “We will find him. You know we will find him. Yahweh will protect our son.”
She knew that. She had not panicked until this moment when she caught sight of a small boy crumpled in the corner of an alley, ignored by the people passing by. Her first thought had been Jesus. She knew the dangers of the city. Horrible things could happen to a child alone. A closer look had revealed the boy to be much younger and smaller, but the closer look had also revealed his bleeding and bruising. He was unconscious, if not dead, his tears mixed with blood and dirt in streams down his face. Joseph had not let them come close enough to become impure, but the image would stay with her forever. She had thought him to be Jesus, and the fear of that image paralyzed her. “It is not him,” Joseph whispered, betraying in his own voice how the child’s body had affected him as well. “It is not him.” His voice trailed off and she felt his body shake with hers as they both grieved for this child who was not Jesus.
Mary and Joseph remained in their tableau of grief as people hurried past. Some paused to notice the grieving couple. Fewer looked ahead to the inert child as the cause of such grief. Most of those who did distanced themselves as quickly as they could. No one wanted the impurity of contact with a dead body, even with the Passover feast completed. Most pilgrims who had not yet left Jerusalem would continue to go to the temple. Others, who lived in the city, were immune to the harshness of life for children in the city and barely noted either the couple or the boy.
Mary emerged from her paralysis of grief and fear with the sound of Joseph’s breathing. It had become rapid and labored and she saw that he held his chest as if it would burst. “Come,” said Mary, “We will go to the temple.”
“Yes,” Joseph replied as he struggled to his feet. “We must pray.”
Mary was terrified by the ashen look on his face, but as they made their slow way towards the temple, his breathing became easier and his hand left his chest. “We must pray,” he murmured as they went.
The temple was not as crowded as before. Mary waited in the court of women as Joseph went ahead where she could not follow. They had first made an offering in the shoparoth and Joseph had nodded to her and touched her shoulder as he left her, a show of affection he’d never offered her within the temple walls. She bowed her head and began her silent prayers.
The sun was beginning to fade behind the wall when she heard her husband’s voice. It was hoarse and agitated and harsh. What could have happened! And then she saw him…. with JESUS!. Joseph’s hand was holding tightly to Jesus’s arm. Jesus seemed confused but unhurt. She noticed as they approached her how he had grown level with his father. He would soon be a man. Her joy at seeing him was so fierce it left her weak. Had it been allowed, she would have embraced them both.
“He has been here the entire time,” Joseph told her. “He never even began the trip home. The men here say he has not left the temple in all these days. Not once did he think of his family!” Joseph was trembling in his anger. Mary knew that the image of the boy was still strong within him, as it was within her. He was as angry at his fear as he was with Jesus.
Jesus looked puzzled and concerned but not ashamed. His eyes held an unnatural brightness as he spoke, “But did you not know that I would be in my father’s house?” He spoke so earnestly and passionately that neither of them could speak. This was no petulant plea for understanding from a boy caught in wrongdoing. This was the voice of a man. The shock and strangeness of his words were a slap to their bone weariness from their days of searching.
“Your FATHER and mother have come to take you home!” Joseph finally managed, moving forward with his hand still firmly on Jesus’s arm. Mary followed behind understanding the confusion and hurt that Jesus’s words had caused Joseph. Joseph had been loving father to Jesus in every way. If he ever he doubted the words spoken to him in a dream, he never showed it in any way. Was Jesus now rejecting him as father?
As they left the temple grounds, Jesus seemed to emerge from his reverie and to see Joseph’s heartache. Joseph had dropped his arm and was walking resolutely ahead, setting a brisk pace that left Mary falling behind. Jesus reached out to Joseph to stop him. He lowered himself before his father in a sign of respect, bowing his head, awaiting Joseph’s touch. He did not have long to wait. As Jesus lifted his head, he saw the tears in Joseph’s eyes. Mary’s own tears ran freely as she watched the two men embrace, each giving to the other a sign of their unending love.