The Night in Bethlehem

Up in Nazareth, in Galilee, the months went by, and the baby the messenger Gabriel had promised to Mary was growing inside her. Gabriel had told her that her son would be called the Son of the Most High, and that the Lord God would give him the throne of his father David. And then, far away in Rome, an emperor gave an order. The emperor was Caesar Augustus, and he ruled nearly the whole world. And the order said that everybody in all the lands he ruled was to be counted and written down in a register — their names, and what they owned — so that they could all be taxed. Even in the land of Israel, where Herod was king, the Romans were the real masters, and when Rome gave an order, it was obeyed. It was the first counting of its kind, and it happened in the days when a man named Quirinius was governor of Syria. And everybody went to be written down, each person to his own town — the town his family came from. So all over the country people were packing up and setting out on the roads. Joseph had to go too. He lived in Nazareth, a small town in the north, and he worked there as a carpenter. But his family went all the way back to King David, and David’s town was Bethlehem, in Judea, far away to the south. So that was where Joseph had to go to have his name written down, in the town of his fathers. It is about eighty miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem. On foot that is four or five days of walking — down through the valleys and along the dusty roads, and then, at the very end, up into the hills of Judea, where Bethlehem sits on its ridge among the olive trees and the sheep fields. And Mary went with him, the whole long way, to be written down together with him. She was engaged to be married to Joseph, and she was carrying her baby, and the baby was very nearly due. And while they were there in Bethlehem, the days were finished, and the time came for her baby to be born. And she gave birth to her firstborn son — the son Gabriel had promised her. In that country a new baby was washed, and rubbed with a little salt, and wrapped round and round in strips of cloth, snug and tight; and Mary wrapped her baby in strips of cloth. And she laid him in a feeding trough — the long box the animals ate their hay from — because there was no room for them in the lodging place, where visitors put up for the night.

It was night, and the hills around Bethlehem were dark, and above them were the stars. Out in the fields near that same town there were shepherds. They were living out in the open with their flock, keeping watch over the sheep through the night. The night was divided into watches, and the men took turns: some slept rolled up in their cloaks while the others sat up in the dark, because there were wolves in those hills, and thieves too, and a flock could never be left alone. These were the same hills where, long before, a boy named David had looked after his father’s sheep. And all at once a messenger of the Lord was standing over them, and the glory of the Lord blazed all around them, so bright that the dark was gone. And they were filled with a great fear. And the messenger said to them, “Do not be afraid. Look — I am bringing you good news, news of a great joy, and it is for all the people. Today, in the town of David, there has been born for you one who rescues. He is Christ the Lord. And this will be the sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in strips of cloth and lying in a feeding trough.” A baby lying in a feeding trough. That was the sign. There would not be many babies in Bethlehem that night sleeping in the box the animals ate from. And suddenly the messenger was not alone. With him there was a great crowd of the army of heaven, far too many to count, filling the sky over the hillside and the sheep. And they were praising God, and saying: “Glory to God in the highest heaven — and on earth, peace among the people he is pleased with!” And then the messengers went away from them, back into heaven. And it was dark and quiet again on the hillside: there were the sheep, and the smell of the grass, and a handful of shepherds standing in the night. And the shepherds said to one another, “Come on — let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, the thing the Lord has told us about.” And they went in a hurry, through the dark, and came into the town, and found Mary and Joseph — and the baby, wrapped in his strips of cloth and lying in the feeding trough, exactly as they had been told. And when they saw him, they told everything that had been said to them about this child: the messenger standing over them in the dark, and the light all around, and the good news of a great joy — that this baby was the one who rescues, Christ the Lord — and the sky full of the army of heaven praising God. And they did not keep it to themselves: they told it to other people too, and everyone who heard what the shepherds told them was amazed. But Mary kept all these words — everything the shepherds had said, every one of them — and turned them over and over in her heart. And the shepherds went back to their sheep and their fields, giving glory to God and praising him for everything they had heard and seen. It had all been just as they had been told.

When the baby was eight days old, it was time for him to be circumcised. That was the sign God had given to Abraham long ago — the sign, in a boy’s own body, that he belonged to God’s people — and every Jewish baby boy was given it on his eighth day. And on that day the child was given his name. They called him Jesus — the name the messenger had given him before he had even begun to grow inside his mother. ‘You are to call his name Jesus,’ Gabriel had said to Mary, and so they did.

Now the law of Moses said that after a mother had a baby boy, she was to wait forty days, until the days of her cleansing were finished, and only then come to the temple. And then she was to bring an offering: a young lamb, and a young pigeon or a turtledove. And if she could not afford a lamb, she could bring two turtledoves, or two young pigeons, instead. And the law said something else as well, about a first baby. Long ago God had said to Moses, ‘Set apart for me every firstborn, the first to be born among the children of Israel. It is mine.’ So the law said: Every boy who is born first is to be called holy to the Lord. A firstborn son was set apart; he belonged to God. That law went back to the night when God brought his people out of Egypt with a strong hand. That night every firstborn in the land of Egypt died, but the firstborn sons of Israel were kept safe. So when the forty days were over, Joseph and Mary carried the baby up to Jerusalem — it is only about five miles from Bethlehem — to present him to the Lord in the temple. And for the offering they brought two small birds: the offering the law allowed when a family could not afford a lamb. The priest would take the two birds and offer them to God at the altar — one to be burned up whole, and one as an offering for sin — and then the mother would be clean again. The temple in Jerusalem was the biggest building in the land: white stone and gold, with great courtyards one inside another, and long rows of pillars, and crowds of people coming and going all day long, and priests at their work, and the smoke of the offerings going up into the sky. And in all that crowd, that day, there were two people the family was about to meet. Now there was a man in Jerusalem named Simeon. He was righteous and reverent, careful to honor God, and he was waiting for the comfort of Israel — for the day when God would comfort his people. And the Holy Spirit was on him. The Holy Spirit had shown him that he would not die until he had seen, with his own eyes, the Lord’s Christ. And on that day the Spirit led him into the temple. And when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what the law said, Simeon came over to them and took the baby up in his own arms. And he blessed God, and said: “Now, Master, you are letting your servant go in peace, just as you said you would. For my eyes have seen your rescue — the rescue you have made ready in front of all the peoples: a light for the nations, to show them what was hidden, and glory for your people Israel.” And his father and his mother stood there, wondering at the things that were being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them. And he turned to Mary, the child’s mother, and said to her: “Look — this child is set here for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that people will speak against. And a sword will go through your own soul too. And so the thoughts of many hearts will be brought out into the open.” And there was a prophetess there too, named Anna. She was the daughter of a man called Phanuel, from the tribe of Asher — one of the twelve tribes of Israel, whose land was far up in the north by the sea — and she had lived a great many years. When she was young she had married, and she had lived with her husband for seven years. And then she was a widow, all the way to eighty-four years. And Anna never left the temple. Night and day she was there, serving God — going without food, and praying, and pleading with him. And at that very hour she came up to them, and she gave thanks to God. And she spoke about the child to everybody who was waiting for Jerusalem to be ransomed — bought back, and set free. There were people all over Israel waiting like that, for the day when God would set his people free. And when Joseph and Mary had done everything the law of the Lord asked, they took the child and left the temple. And in time they went back to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth, the little town in the north where Joseph had his work. And the child grew, and became strong, and was filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was on him.