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A Boomer’s Journal

By Tom Anselm

These days in our neighborhoods, many are wondering whose side they are on. Whose side am I on? Well this year, I am on the side of the Christmas Child. And just what does that mean this year especially, with such turmoil in our region that just does not seem to want to end?

A little over two millennia past, a baby boy was born to a young Jewish virgin. She was, by all accounts, in her early teens. She had just taken an arduous journey of 100 miles riding on the back of an donkey, over hills and rivers and desolate landscapes.

Nine months earlier, her world was turned upside down when she was visited by an angel who told her she was to be the mother of the Messiah.

Can you imagine her confusion, her fear, and since she was just recently betrothed to Joseph, her consternation. ‘How will I tell him? What will I say? This new life inside me… Lord, show me the way’, she may have said. And then there is Joseph. They are betrothed, which in those days was as good as married, without the physical part. Joseph was a tradesman, a righteous man, upstanding in the community.

Then Mary goes away, inexplicable to her family, to visit her cousin. Her thoughts were of Joseph. “He’s come to trust me. To think I am true. Don’t want to hurt him. What shall I do?” And Joseph is left wondering.

When Mary returns, she tells him what the angel said, and he is skeptical. Who can blame him? But then he considers. She could be killed for this, he thinks. He is a righteous man, and agrees to quietly divorce her, without charges of adultery. And now it is his life that is turned upside down. ‘Not what I expected. I’m so confused. Don’t want to hurt her. Lord, what shall I do,” he may have said.

And then he has a dream. “Mary don’t worry. I had a dream. The angel told me, what this all means. I’ll be his father, do what I can. We’ll raise him together… this is our plan.”

So they must go to the place of Joseph’s family origin, Bethlehem, to be counted according to Caesar’s order.

It is a time of great turmoil in the land. It is also a fulfillment of the prophecy of the Old Testament, from the book of Micah, the fifth chapter and first verse: “But you, Bethlehem-Ephrathah, too small to be among the clans of Judah. From you shall come forth for us the one who is to be ruler of Israel.” There, in a lowly stable for animals, there being nothing else available for the woman, the Christmas Child is born, fulfilling yet another prophecy, this one from Isaiah, who said in his eighth chapter and fourteenth verse “Therefore, the Lord Himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and shall call him Immanuel.” Immanuel. In Hebrew, “God is with us.”

In keeping with an event of such importance to mankind, multitudes of angels announced this coming. But to whom did they sing their songs of praise? To the rabbis who have been praying for the Messiah? To the Pharisees? To the reigning king of the land, Herod? No, these heavenly messengers came to the most humble of society, the simple shepherds. The keepers of the flock. And the symbolism begins at the child’s birth. His humility begins even as he takes his first breath.

We all know of the story from there. The Wise Men who have followed the phenomenon in the sky pay homage to The One on whom the star shines. The sheep herders, having overcome their shock of seeing the night sky completely full of angels, gather outside the shelter to see, to touch, their Deliverer.

And so begins the life of the one who will grow to lead us, as Christians, to suffer, to die, to rise. To teach the tenets of Peace.

We gather these days in our places of worship, be they of Christian, Jewish, or other faiths. We pray. And hope. Our hope is for that peace, if we are people ‘of good will,’ as the angels sang on that midnight clear so very long ago.

And so we all may find ourselves on the side of the Christmas Child.

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