"congratulations! It's A Savior!" Series

When I first proposed doing this, I know that it struck a lot of you … well, probably all of you … as something odd … out of the ordinary. When it came time, you weren’t sure what to do. Do we put up our traditional Christmas decorations? And, again, I’m sure that you found my answer a bit odd … no. We don’t put up a Christmas tree because the Christmas tree is a secular addition to this sacred celebration of the birth of Christ. If you look in the Bible and read about the incarnation of God, there is no Christmas tree, no holly, no mistletoe, no sleigh, no snow … no decorations of any kind actually. Just the opposite, in fact. His coming into this world was as plain and simple and as humble as you can get … a stable in Bethlehem.

Now, we do have the creche or nativity set up here … isn’t that a “decoration”? No. According to the good old Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a “decoration” is “something that is added to something else to make it more attractive … the act of decorating something (such as a room)” (Decoration | Definition of Decoration by Merriam-Webster) … so Christmas trees and holly and wreaths and snowmen would fit the bill, amen. The nativity scene, however … like the one we have here … is an “icon.” Again, the definition of an “icon” according to Merriam-Webster is “a representation (as in a mural, a mosaic, or a painting on wood) of sacred events or especially of a sacred individual (such as Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, or a saint) used as an object of veneration or a tool for instruction” (Icon | Definition of Icon by Merriam-Webster). According to this definition, this nativity scene is very much a representation of a sacred event … the most sacred event in the history of the world … and it contains representations of three very sacred individuals … Baby Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

During our “Advent in July,” we looked at the birth of Jesus through the eyes of the world and from Heaven’s point of view. Today we are going to look at Christmas through the eyes of Joseph and Mary.

How well do we really know Joseph and Mary?

Let’s start with Mary. When Mary was born, the golden age of Israel’s proud history was past. No one from David’s family had ruled in Jerusalem for over 500 years … but the Jewish people were still hoping and waiting for a messiah, trusting in the promises of a ruler from the line of David who would come and unite the people of people of Israel and make them a great nation again. They had God’s word on it in the Scriptures that the descendants of David would rule Israel forever and God repeated His promise through the words of His prophets.

Mary had a humble, Godly Jewish upbringing and no doubt knew about the expected hope of the Jewish people. Some scholars believe that Jesus’ family tree in Luke 3:23-38 comes from Mary’s side of the family … which would make Mary a descendant of King David through David’s son, Nathan (Who are the parents of Mary, the mother of Jesus? (ebible.com)). Given what we know of Mary in the Bible, she was raised to be a devout, God-fearing Jewish woman.

So how did this good Jewish girl meet a good Jewish man from Bethlehem? We don’t know but scholars believe that Mary’s parents … Joachim and Anne … didn’t actually live in Nazareth but in the nearby city of Sepphoris (who were mary's parents - Bing). At the time that Joseph met Mary, one of Herod’s sons, Antipas, was in the process of rebuilding what the historian Josephus called “The Jewel of Galilee.” Antipas eventually made Sepphoris his provincial capital or administrative center for his government in Galilee. The fact that Sepphoris was located at the junction between the so-call Via Maris or “Sea Road” and the highway that connected the cites of Acre and Tiberias … along with Antipas’ rebuilding project … meant that Sepphoris was a very busy boom town that employed lots of people in Jesus’ day. Excavations have revealed that Sepphoris was a cosmopolitan city of great affluence. It had a Roman theater built into the eastern side of the hill that held over 4,000 people. Today the magnificent ruins of Sepphoris include such highlights one of Herod’s palaces, an upper city and a lower city, a fortified city wall for protection, multiple synagogues, bathhouses, churches, aqueducts, a massive reservoir, a marketplace, and residential areas alongside a colonnaded stone-paved street (Sepphoris – The Forgotten City | Land of the Bible (land-of-the-bible.com). Sepphoris was only an hour’s walk … about five miles … from Nazareth, which made Nazareth an ideal place for “tektons” like Joseph who couldn’t afford to live in a city like Sepphoris.