Mary and Joseph

Let’s be absolutely clear, this Christmas, that there is no scandal around Mary being an unmarried mother. Mary and Joseph were betrothed. And in first-century Palestine, that means that they were legally married, with the rights and responsibilities that come with it. Betrothal was the legal agreement between two families, from which point a couple were married but lived in the home of the father of the bride (in this case, in Nazareth). The wedding came at a later date, at which point the groom brought his bride to his parents’ home (in this case, Bethlehem). They then lived in a small room in the home of the groom’s parents. In a patriarchal society, betrothals often happened as a girl was on the edge of becoming a woman, biologically, moving from one family to another.

Joseph and Mary are betrothed, and, when they came to Bethlehem, they are married. It does not matter that we do not read about their wedding at any point in the gospels — it is assumed — nor does it matter that a Roman census had any impact on the timing of the two parts of the process — though it does matter to the story, for reasons of fulfilling prophecy, that Jesus be born in Bethlehem.

While they were staying there — in a small room (mistranslated ‘inn’ by the King James Version, and descendant translations) in the home of Joseph’s parents, as opposed to later when they lived as refugees in Egypt, or later still when they returned to Mary’s town of Nazareth because it was safer than Joseph’s town — Mary gave birth to her son, Jesus.

Because their room was too small for her to give birth, attended by the village midwives and Joseph’s female relatives, she gave birth in the main room of the house; and her son was placed in the hollowed-out trough from which the domesticated farm animals ate at night.

If Joseph was not the biological father of Mary’s son, no-one knew that other than Mary and Joseph. No-one knew, because it was naturally assumed that Joseph was the father, of a son born in wedlock; and because Joseph was a righteous man who had not wished to bring Mary into disgrace. As such, on discovering from her that she was with child, he had decided to divorce her quietly, before being instructed by an angelic messenger not to be afraid to remain married to Mary and to raise her son as his own. That knowledge in no way changed his righteous intent not to expose Mary to disgrace; therefore, no-one would see her as an unfaithful wife, any more than they would see her as an unmarried mother.

If we see her as an unmarried mother, and assume that the couple were shunned for this, we betray our ignorance of the family customs and expectations of the time and place.

The ostracised people brought into God’s story of redemption at the nativity are not a young married couple, but the shepherds. Shepherds were as welcome in many homes then as ex-offenders, or the homeless, might be in many homes in my culture today. But they are welcomed in, with the reassuring sign that a baby who brings hope to the world might lie in an animal feeding-bowl just as much as the lambs the shepherds might feel more at home with.

This is a story of family ties, however flawed they may seem through our eyes, and of the relationship between the centre and the margin of community. This Christmas, may we see the nativity and our own homes and community through fresh eyes, and a new heart.