Week 52 2012

Tendring Topics.....on line

The Christmas Story

        Some ten years ago my wife Heather and I wrote ten monologues purporting to be the words of ten ‘witnesses’ of Jesus’ birth and its aftermath.  For this Christmas week’s blog I have chosen the account of Joseph  husband of Mary the mother of Jesus.

Heather and I

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All that we know of Joseph from the Gospels is that he was a very kindly man and that he loved Mary so much that, even when he thought that she was going to give birth to another man’s child, he didn’t want her to be punished or shamed.

 Heather and I decided that he would also have been very wise, gentle and tolerant.  Our Joseph had great love and respect for Mary’s parents but he didn’t agree with her father’s militant nationalism.  He welcomed the wise men and their caravan guide and recognised the guide as a good man despite the fact that he was a worshipper of a heathen goddess.  He made friends with the Roman frontier guards who helped Mary, himself and the baby Jesus escape into Egypt, and with the Egyptian woman who gave them shelter and who prayed for their safe return to Israel at the shrine of her goddess Isis.  He hoped that if Mary’s son really was destined to ‘change the world’ he would change it into a place where Romans, Greeks, Jews and Persians lived together in peace, and where it was recognised that those who followed the spirit within them that urged them toward love, friendship and forgiveness rather than greed, cruelty and vengeance, were serving the one true God, whatever they might call him.

    Our world would surely be a happier one if there were more people in it like ‘our’ Joseph.

We have imagined him talking to a close friend soon after returning, with Mary and Jesus, from Egypt to Palestine.

Joseph’s Story   

  ‘I have the greatest respect and admiration for my wife’s parents.  It is surely due to their upbringing that Mary has proved to be a loyal friend and a congenial companion to me, as well as a loving wife and mother.  I shall never forget either, how Joachim, Mary’s father, helped my journeyman assistant to keep the business going during the five long years that we were away, while Anne, his wife, made sure that our home would always be ready, clean and welcoming for us on our return.

   I have to say though, that I don’t share Joachim’s unthinking hatred of all things Roman or his narrow nationalism that sees all other races and traditions as being vastly inferior to our own.  After all, it wasn’t the Roman Governor but Herod – one of our own people – who killed the innocent babes of Bethlehem.

   But I’m getting ahead of myself.  You’ll have heard from Joachim about the terrible trouble that we all thought had beset us when Mary announced that she was expecting a child.  I was devastated.  No, I don’t know quite what I would have done if I hadn’t had that angelic visitation assuring me that Mary was telling the truth.  I really loved her – and I do know that I wouldn’t have let her be submitted to public shame, much less would I have let her be punished by a cruel death.

  

As you know, Mary and I were quietly married. Hardly though had we settled down in Nazareth and made our preparations for the baby’s arrival than there came this order from Rome that we all had to return to our home towns to be counted.  In my case that meant going down south to Bethlehem.

   I had hoped that it might have been possible for Mary and I to travel down there, be counted and get back to Nazareth before the baby’s arrival.  He wasn’t, when we started out – expected for several weeks.

   My hopes had been wildly over-optimistic.  Those weeks quickly passed.  Travelling through Samaria we lost our way in a blinding sandstorm and were rescued by a Samaritan woman who took us back to her home, where Mary rested till she was fit to travel again.

   That was only one of our mishaps. By the time we reached Bethlehem it was the depth of winter.  To cap it all, the only decent inn in the place was fully booked.  There wasn’t a room to be had for love nor money.  That truly was our lowest ebb.  The baby was expected any minute.  Mary was as white as a sheet and shaking with cold, fear and exhaustion.  I felt completely helpless and was blaming myself for having brought my beloved Mary into such a hopeless situation.

   I prayed – and my prayers were answered.  The innkeeper’s wife took one look at Mary and took her under her wing.  She was a great organiser.  There wasn’t a spare room but there was an empty stable that she transformed into a birth chamber with bales of hay.  She bundled me into the saloon bar with some food and a drink while she and her daughter Ruth attended to Mary.

   They called me back after about an hour.  Baby Jesus had been born.  Mary, cradling him in her arms, was radiant.  I wasn’t very pleased when, just as we were settling down to try and get some sleep, some shepherds arrived.  They had been told by an angel that the saviour of mankind had just been born and they had come to pay him homage.

   I’d have been inclined to tell them to come back in the morning but Mary, her spirits completely restored, welcomed them and showed them our lovely child. I was amazed at Mary’s self-assurance when, holding the baby in her arms, she gave the shepherds the blessing for which they asked, while they knelt humbly in the straw before her.

   We had to get used to that sort of thing.  A room became vacant in the inn and we moved into it and settled down for Mary to recover her strength.  We made our formal visit to the Temple in Jerusalem and were just preparing to return to Nazareth when a great caravan of heavily laden camels entered Bethlehem.  With it came three Magi from somewhere in the east – Persia I think – with gifts for baby Jesus, gold, frankincense and myrrh.  They claimed to be able to forecast the future by studying the stars and it was in doing so that they learned of our baby’s birth and his great destiny.

   The Magi were very awe-inspiring but I remember particularly the caravan captain who had guided them to us.  He wore round his neck an amulet that made it clear that he was a devotee of the goddess Ashtoreth, whom I had always been told was a spirit of extreme evil.  I fully expected Jesus to shrink away from it – or alternatively for it to shrivel up under his gaze.  Not a bit of it though.  He had a special smile and a gurgle for the caravan captain – and he reached out to play with the brightly coloured amulet.

   The captain was a good man – though he worshipped a cruel, heathen goddess.  He had realized that we were in deadly peril from Herod, who feared that Jesus would one day seize his throne.   He tried to warn us – a warning that was confirmed during the night when our angel again appeared to tell us to pack up and head for safety in Egypt without delay.

   Egypt was in the opposite direction from that in which we wished to go but we knew better than to ignore the angel’s message.   We set out at once and noted as we did so that the Magi’s caravan was also urgently on the move.  They too had been warned.

   We avoided the main routes into Egypt for fear of Herod’s spies.  As a result we became hopelessly lost in the wilderness of Sinai.  This time we were rescued by a Roman frontier patrol.  We were terrified as they approached us but they directed us on our way and – when they saw the baby Jesus – shared their rations with us and tried to tell us of their own wives and babies far away.

   Eventually we reached Egypt and safety.  A Greek lady, living in a villa near Heliopolis, made us welcome and gave us shelter which we thought would be just for a day or two but turned out to be nearly five years!  All of us prospered there.  There was plenty of work for a skilled carpenter.  Mary fully recovered her strength and Jesus grew from a baby into a strong, healthy little boy.

   When we heard that that wicked King Herod had died, Cleopatra, the Greek lady, urged us to stay with her and the good friends that we had made in Egypt.  We knew though that our destiny drew us back to the land of Israel.  Cleopatra wept, and the night before we departed I saw her kneeling before her shrine to the goddess Isis, burning incense and making sacrifice for our safe journey home.

   If Mary’s son is destined to change the whole world, I’d like to see him change it to a world in which Jews, Samaritans, Romans, Greeks and Persians can live together in peace.  A world in which we Israelites and those who worship the many gods of the heathen will realize that we are all serving the one true God (whatever we may call him) when we follow that instinct within ourselves that leads us away from violence, cruelty and desire for revenge and towards love, kindliness and forgiveness.

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