Isaiah 7.10-16, Matthew 1.18-25
The Fourth Sunday of Advent, 18 December 2022, Clapham
Mary said yes to God’s astonishing command. Mathew’s gospel, over-concerned with genealogies and bloodlines and all the stuff of patriarchy, barely sees it; but hers was a real labour, a labour of pain like every mother’s, just as it was a real labour of love…
But Matthew does faithfully record that Joseph said yes also, yes to Mary when he might well have said no, to protect his standing in that masculine community. If Joseph had said no, his world would have carried on as before, except now he would be carrying forever a haunting ache in his heart for having rejected the young woman he loved, and the pain this would have brought her.
But Joseph did say yes. And by standing with her, supporting her, affirming and asserting her, this man acted as midwife to the birth of her child.
The storyteller Walter Wangerin takes us where we seldom go: to the moment when that birth took place; to the labour of love which it was for both of them.
Walter Wangerin, The Book of God: the Bible as a novel, Lion edition 1996 p.593-597:
Mary rode slowly toward Bethlehem. Joseph led the donkey, but Mary’s condition controlled its speed: the beast walked with a long bobbing of its head.
The enrolment had already begun before the tiny family arrived. Bethlehem’s regular activities had been drowned in the great flood of Jews. Children of David filled the village and the hillsides around about. Roman officials had established their booths on the ridge road which went north from Hebron to Jerusalem and passed directly through Bethlehem. Citizens waiting to register stood in long lines from morning till late afternoon. Then they ate and they rested. Most would return to the census takers again tomorrow. It was a monumentally slow process. The inns were crowded. Strangers slept side by side on the earthen floor, or in lofts. The owners of the inns withdrew to the smaller, private rooms built on roofs of their buildings.
It was dusk when Joseph led his donkey and his wife through the gate and into the village. Though there were few people wandering the streets, he knew immediately how burdened Bethlehem was with humanity; the very air vibrated with the breathings, the low murmurings, and the talk of ten thousand people like hornets humming inside a hive.
But Mary had begun to glisten in the moonlight. More and more she was leaning back against the ridge of her wooden saddle, grimacing. Her teeth shone white.
Just once as they approached the gate she had whispered, It’s time, Joseph. It’s time now.’ She did not have to repeat it. The word had triggered soft explosions in his brain: It’s time, Joseph.
The glistening on her brow was sweat.
For a moment the carpenter felt completely helpless.
Mary must not bear her baby in the open, in some dark corner; yet he could think of no place which could accommodate them. Every human den or nest was inhabited. The dark village was a crush of population.
Then the donkey shook its head and began moving of its own accord. It shuffled into an easy trot. Joseph called sharply, twice, for a halt. But because the beast continued trotting, he was forced to run alongside, gripping Mary’s wrists in one hand and bracing her back with the other.
Joseph, it’s time!
The donkey took a narrow street downhill. It wound around a large inn to the back, where a cave had been dug as a sort of basement in limestone. Here Joseph smelled the warm consoling odor of many beasts, the russet sting of a clean dry hay. The cave was enclosed by a rude wooden fence. The donkey stopped at a gate and waited.
Mary gasped. Joseph could hear the grinding of her teeth and a deep internal moaning: It’s time, it’s time!
He lifted the wooden bar of the gate. Immediately the donkey entered and walked to the back of the cave where several feed troughs had been carved in the virgin stone. Other beasts lying about on straw swung their heavy heads to watch this new intrusion.
Mary cried out and fell from the donkey.
Joseph caught her. Her body astonished him. It was like iron ingots, heavy and very hard, all her muscles doubled down and flexing: “Ahhh!”
With his feet Joseph kicked together a huge pile of clean straw. He laid Mary there. He laid her down in such a way that her robe became her bedding, covering all the straw beneath her.
Suddenly Mary threw back her head, bent her torso up at the belly, then crouched forward, howling; “Oh, Joseph!”
For the second time that night Joseph felt completely helpless. His face was on fire with fear and foolishness.
He was not a midwife!
But Mary reached and grabbed his big hands and pressed the palms of them to her vulva, crying, “Not yet! Not yet! Hold it in, Joseph. Hold it back till I’m ready. “Ahhh!”
He felt the baby! Joseph felt the round crown of the baby’s head, slick and warm and pulsing! Pushing out of Mary! It seemed to the carpenter that he had just fallen off the top of a high cliff and that he would soon hit stones below – but the drop between was breathless and exhilarating!
Gently he pushed back, denying the child entrance into this world.
Mary was twisting her body around, first to her left side, then over on her hands and knees. Joseph kept his hand in place, overcome by his wife’s extraordinary strength and wisdom.
“Steady me!'” she cried. “Get behind me, Joseph – please don’t let me fall!”
She rocked up on her heels. She rocked back against the huge chest of her husband. He released the infant’s head between her legs and caught the woman at the hips.
Now Mary, squatting, her knees straining apart, hunched her body down. She started to scream – but the sound was cut to solid silence by the monstrous effort she was making. Joseph trembled. His throat was raw. He smelled the mossy scent of Mary’s sweating. Her hair was a thick tangle under his face. all filled with dust and straw. Now a squeal, thin as a harp string, endlessly long, began to sing in the cave-stable: Eeeee Joseph felt the sound between his arms. It was Mary’s tiny cry, growing stronger, growing louder, never breaking for a breath, a surge of power gathering within her and driving downward, driving her baby out into the world: Now!
There was a quick slurping sound, and suddenly a baby lay on his back straw under his mother, his face confronting Mary’s face directly. She burst into tears. She fell backward against Joseph, howling in delight and relief and in pain and in great sorrow. The baby kicked and wrinkled his face and began to cry. Mary reached up and pawed the beard of her husband. Then she was pulling him down by it: “Wash him, wash him, wash my baby, wash the blood away, wash him perfectly clean, wash him and salt him, then bring me my knife.”
Joseph stood up. His muscles did not want to stretch. He walked like a drunk man to their knapsacks and found there the linen cloth that Mary had packed for the baby. Also, salt and a lantern and a knife.
When he knelt down and lit the lantern, he saw Mary in the grip of another task, bent forward, pushing against something else inside of her, as if there were another baby coming.
He also saw what a quantity of blood and water had soaked into the straw
between her legs, and he pitied his wife.
And the infant, streaked with mucus and blood: as he washed it, he watched the tiny body turn from blue to a light pink and then to a rose color as if small fires had begun to burn within him. He wiped the baby clean. The baby sighed. Joseph could not stand the glory of the moment: the baby sighed.
Mary uttered a final shout, and the afterbirth flushed out, and now she looked as wet and exhausted as gravestones after rain.
“Joseph,” she whispered, “please bring him here.’
Joseph laid the baby upon Mary’s breast.
Mary bit linen and tore off a thin strip. With this she tied a knot in the cord that had connected the holy child to her body. Then she took the knife and cut that connection forever. Both the mother and the baby cried.
“Jesus,” she whispered. She gathered him to her bosom and rocked him. “Jesus, Jesus. Little Yeshi. Here you are. And I love you, baby.’
Mary opened the linen cloth. Slowly she began to wrap it round her baby, tight enough to assure him he was still embraced as in a womb, tight enough to be her love upon him even after separation, loose enough to allow the child to live and breathe on his own.
In the lantern light Joseph saw the great beasts surrounding them. They had raised their heads, sniffing the air. Perhaps a birthing scent spoke even to them of primal matters.
“Joseph?”
“Yes?” he said.
“”Do you want to hold our baby?”
The huge man was a plain ox, thick in all his parts, a heavy ruinous creature. And the child in his arms was so light, composed of such crushable sticks. But Jesus opened his eyes and looked at the huge head and the beard above him. Little Jesus gazed at the hairy ox, and he was not afraid. Therefore Joseph, filled with the sense of his undeserving, began to weep and quickly laid the tiny boy in a feed trough for safekeeping and for sleeping.
Mary whispered, “You see? You bore the baby, too.’
Ah, Mary was generous! And beautiful. She put her swollen fingers to her
brow and wiped the sticking strands of black hair back.
“Joseph,’ she said softly, “would you come here with your clean cloths? Husband, would you darken the lantern and come and wash me, too? Would you wash me clean again?”
Music follows [click to listen]:
It was not a silent night
There was blood on the ground
You could hear a woman cry
In the alleyways that night
On the streets of David’s town
And the stable was not clean
And the cobblestones were cold
And little Mary full of grace
With the tears upon her face
Had no mother’s hand to hold
It was a labour of pain
It was a cold sky above
But for the girl on the ground in the dark
With every beat of her beautiful heart
It was a labour of love
Noble Joseph by her side
Callused hands and weary eyes
There were no midwives to be found
On the streets of David’s town
In the middle of the night
So he held her and he prayed
Shafts of moonlight on his face
But the baby in her womb
He was the maker of the moon
He was the Author of the faith
That could make the mountains move
It was a labour of pain
It was a cold sky above
But for the girl on the ground in the dark
With every beat of her beautiful heart
It was a labour of love
For little Mary full of grace
With the tears upon her face
It was a labour of love
Labor of Love; Andrew Peterson © New Spring Publishing Inc. Anglicised.
Performed by Andrew Peterson (feat. Jill Phillips) from Behold the Lamb of God, 2019
