Mary as a witness to Jesus

Peace on the earth, goodwill to all.

 Christmas is a happy time. It’s a time when I like to walk the plazas on Constant Spring Road in Kingston, Jamaica, looking to see how the place is dressed up, I drive through areas where the yards are nicely decorated and feast on the stories being told.  It’s a time I want to be with my family. A time of merry making much fun, laughter and eating.   

This Christmas Eve service we feast on the first witnesses Mary and Joseph on that first Christmas and learn from them how to be witness ourselves. We come to God, to church, to life from many different perspectives. Each of us, have many things going on in our various lives. For each of us, there is a crisis in which we ask ourselves ‘what do I do?’  We each go on the best way we know how, and that is what the persons in the Christmas story do. Live their lives the best way they know how. We come with our various struggles. For some of us, we are resentful. Others come confused or in grief. What to do? What do we do that COVID has robbed us of so much? Some have smaller incomes but the debts remain high.  How to live without a husband or wife or dear friend who has just died. 

Our Old testament (Isaiah 9:2-7) and Gospel (Luke 2:1-14) readings seem to describe similar times even while being several ages apart. Both groups of persons live in a world of hardships. Isaiah describes the situation as dark, while Luke sets a political stage of colonial masters dictating how one must act.

There is however a silver lining – a light comes to dispel the darkness, and new ruler is born who though not political changes the view of the political landscape.  It is that light, that ruler that we reflect on today.  It is the same one who still shines darkness into our lives and through whose lens we must view our world in this day and age.

Every year at this time we recount the story of Jesus being born and I dare say, we think we know the story any which way it is told. Yet each time we hear it, we should seek to understand it’s deeper meaning, by shining a light deeper into our individual and communal hearts until no darkness is left in it.  Sometimes the light wavers and so the story rekindles the light. 

A question I have always asked myself, is why did Joseph take his pregnant girlfriend with him to Bethlehem. In those days it wasn’t so important to know how many women and children existed. Very often we read the statistics in the bible specifying that women and children were not counted.  Luke tells us that it is, he Joseph who must be counted. Why did Mary have to go? The story doesn’t say how they travelled, but it certainly would not have been easy for a woman 9 months pregnant to travel. Most likely it was by donkey on a treacherous 90 mile journey with exposure to wild animals, and robbers for at least 4 days either way. Mary as a poor Jewish girl would have been no stranger to hardships. She would have been helping to care for her household maybe even working up to 10 hours a day. She probably would not have been exempt from this even though she was pregnant. I do believe that Mary still bore the scorn of her neighbors even though Joseph stood by her.  We read all the time of how unforgiving the people in the bible can be. The Jewish laws penalize those who err. Their life was governed by over 600 rules of how to live in community what and how to eat and how to relate to each other.

So, I believe she had to go because Joseph had to keep her near to him.  She had to be protected from the harshness of others. Being pregnant and unmarried was a death sentence.  May even still have been, as if I understand people, some relative of Joseph was still offended for him.  Some relative couldn’t let the supposed disgrace go. The bearer of God therefore, had to be kept as safe as it was humanly possible, until God could be made manifest.  

As persons made in the image of God, we too are God bearers. We all have a divine side to us, and we need to protect and care for it.  It is the light that dispels our own dark times, it is what rule our hearts and makes us look at the world through the lens of Jesus. We need to nurture it in the womb of our souls, give birth to it and manifest this divine side in our own lives.

#Godbearer; #MarymotherofGod; #Christmas #Luke2:1-14; #Mary1stwitnessofJesus