The stories told about Jesus’ life are just that, stories told about a person’s life.
Just like us, Jesus …
Had a family
Had to attend school
Had a social network
Had hobbies
And just like us,
He got frustrated
He made mistakes
He was tempted
He lost his cool
People, just like us, did their best to tell these stories and to put language behind his experiences. Some of them had personal knowledge of these things; some gave eyewitness accounts, while others just relayed the information, like in a game of phone tag. However it was received; the events of Jesus’ life reveal with certainty that he was a person just like any of us.
And just like us, Jesus was born.
The story we typically hear repeated goes something like this:
A couple thousand years ago, on the evening of December 25th, Mary rides into Bethlehem on a donkey, ready to pop and needing to deliver her baby. Although it’s an emergency, all the innkeepers in town turn Joseph and her away. The couple eventually finds an animal stable to settle into and Mary gives birth to a boy that she names Jesus. Afterwards, three kings bring gifts and worship the newborn child.
The problem is, this story may be almost entirely wrong. In fact, the first two chapters of Matthew and the first two of Luke contain few of the details we include in our traditional ideas of what happened. Although the particulars of this tale may be vague, what we do know is Jesus began his life being labeled as the bastard son of a poor Judean girl, whose fiancé threatened to leave her when he found out that she was pregnant. It was only after a supernatural encounter that Joseph changed his mind and decided to stick around (Mt 1:20-21).
There’s also the controversy surrounding the Hebrew idea of the word “virgin”, which Mary is said to have been when she conceived her baby boy (Mt 1:18). In biblical times, the word carried several different meanings. Including, but not limited to the idea that if one were “born of a virgin” it simply meant that your mother had become pregnant the first time she had had intercourse.
With so many uncertainties surrounding the birth of Jesus, what conclusions, if any, can be drawn during the Advent season? Is our attention during this season focused on …
How Mary and Joseph got to Bethlehem
How long they were in town before Mary gave birth
How and where Mary gave birth
How Mary became pregnant and whether or not she was a virgin
Or, is Advent about the fact that Jesus became a living human being out of a deep desire to know us and to love us?
What’s important to remember is that Jesus didn’t just become like one of us, he actually became one of us and was subjected to everything we experience in this life. Like us, he was pushed out of his mother’s womb, breathed his first breath, and became totally dependent on his parents (other human beings) to raise and nurture him. We know his story, because his story is our story.
Just like us, Jesus …
Had a family
Had to attend school
Had a social network
Had hobbies
And just like us,
He got frustrated
He made mistakes
He was tempted
He lost his cool
People, just like us, did their best to tell these stories and to put language behind his experiences. Some of them had personal knowledge of these things; some gave eyewitness accounts, while others just relayed the information, like in a game of phone tag. However it was received; the events of Jesus’ life reveal with certainty that he was a person just like any of us.
And just like us, Jesus was born.
The story we typically hear repeated goes something like this:
A couple thousand years ago, on the evening of December 25th, Mary rides into Bethlehem on a donkey, ready to pop and needing to deliver her baby. Although it’s an emergency, all the innkeepers in town turn Joseph and her away. The couple eventually finds an animal stable to settle into and Mary gives birth to a boy that she names Jesus. Afterwards, three kings bring gifts and worship the newborn child.
The problem is, this story may be almost entirely wrong. In fact, the first two chapters of Matthew and the first two of Luke contain few of the details we include in our traditional ideas of what happened. Although the particulars of this tale may be vague, what we do know is Jesus began his life being labeled as the bastard son of a poor Judean girl, whose fiancé threatened to leave her when he found out that she was pregnant. It was only after a supernatural encounter that Joseph changed his mind and decided to stick around (Mt 1:20-21).
There’s also the controversy surrounding the Hebrew idea of the word “virgin”, which Mary is said to have been when she conceived her baby boy (Mt 1:18). In biblical times, the word carried several different meanings. Including, but not limited to the idea that if one were “born of a virgin” it simply meant that your mother had become pregnant the first time she had had intercourse.
With so many uncertainties surrounding the birth of Jesus, what conclusions, if any, can be drawn during the Advent season? Is our attention during this season focused on …
How Mary and Joseph got to Bethlehem
How long they were in town before Mary gave birth
How and where Mary gave birth
How Mary became pregnant and whether or not she was a virgin
Or, is Advent about the fact that Jesus became a living human being out of a deep desire to know us and to love us?
What’s important to remember is that Jesus didn’t just become like one of us, he actually became one of us and was subjected to everything we experience in this life. Like us, he was pushed out of his mother’s womb, breathed his first breath, and became totally dependent on his parents (other human beings) to raise and nurture him. We know his story, because his story is our story.
