Christian Middle

Our pandemic has brought many miseries, but the biggest loss may be its loneliness. There since the beginning – along with fear, alarm, frustration, confusion, and anger – to name a few of its covid-spawned siblings – our ache from unconnectedness has formed the backdrop of our nearly year-long experience. With Christmas only days away, our hearts hurt a little more for what we’re missing. The jolly days of year end with its shortened work hours and heightened sense of congeniality are impossible to replicate in the waning weeks of 2020.

In the midst of these gloomy thoughts, a new idea occurred to me recently. The first Christmas must have been quite the lonely event.

Of course, Mary and Joseph weren’t “missing” celebrating a holiday when they made their way to Bethlehem. But certainly, they felt alone.

Consider the circumstances of their recent marriage. Though already engaged when the angel came to Mary to announce that she would bear the promised Messiah, the couple remained apart for some three months while Mary made haste to visit her elderly relative Elizabeth, then pregnant with the boy who became John, the Baptist (Luke 1:56). When Mary did return home to the small town of Nazareth, whispers that she, too, carried a child must have spread quickly, along with speculation about its sire. Matthew tells us that the news led Joseph to agonize over whether to divorce her (as was his right and obligation under the Law). Only when he, also, received a message from an angel (Matthew 1:18-20), did he make bold to take Mary into his house (with no formal wedding) – an acknowledgment, at the very least, of their impropriety, as the village gossipers would note. Moreover, they were forbidden to consummate the marriage until the babe was born (Matthew 1:25). Hardly what you would call a honeymoon.

Philip Yancey has suggested that perhaps they welcomed the Roman decree calling Joseph back to his ancestral home in Bethlehem where the baby could be born far away from the jeering neighbors, and maybe even the dubious grandparents. Still, it was no simple thing to travel the nine to ten days of the journey especially with Mary close to the term of her pregnancy. Once there, our nativity pageants make much of the “no room in the inn” (likely a mistranslation) * as a way of highlighting the irony of the new-born King’s humble beginnings. But we give little notice to the plight of Mary and Joseph who had to depend on the kindness of strangers at such a vulnerable moment in their lives. How awkward they must have felt with Mary going into labor with no mother, or sister, or familiar mid-wife to assist.

They may have even been awkward with each other.

Perhaps it was their very loneliness that glued them to each other, forming a firm foundation for a marriage that would lovingly – and courageously – foster God’s own son.

The Lord never gave Mary and Joseph a wedding celebration, or eradicated the suspicion of scandal around Jesus’ parentage, but God did send angels the night of His birth. Deprived of the warmth of family, the new parents nonetheless received the welcoming wonder of strangers – shepherds who sought out the child for whom angels sang.

In her book, The Unselfishness of God, Hannah Whittal Smith observes:

“It is no matter who starts our trial, whether man, or devil or even our own foolish selves, if God permits it to reach us, He has by this permission made the trial His own, and will turn it for us into a chariot of love which will carry our souls to a place of blessing that we could not have reached in any other way.”

Back at the start of the pandemic I declared that God would use this disaster to teach us towards some good end. The learning of this lesson has proved hard and often harsh, and I do not pretend to understand where the “silver lining” lies.

But I do not doubt that the Lord remains at the helm and never turns a deaf ear towards our pain.

Even on a lonely Christmas, angels will be proclaiming good news somewhere nearby. Let’s listen for them.

* The word Luke uses for “inn” is the same as the one used to describe the “upper room” where the Last Supper took place. Probably the young couple found lodging well enough, but it afforded no privacy, and likely they shared their quarters with animals by night.