Advent 2024 : 23

 

Today the weather broke, and I had reason to be out in it. Water, done now with dancing in the sky, lofty adventures, heeding the call of the ocean: come home! And though my coat kept me dry, I knew (not felt) the cool, dark water on my arms, a sea parting before me as I, too, strode home.

The biographer Luke records a registration to pay tax. The first – that is, the foremost, the most notorious – was when Quirinius was governor of Syria. But that was in 6 CE, when Jesus would have been around twelve years old, paying his first visit to the temple in Jerusalem since he was forty days old. The Roman empire taxed its provinces. It did not tax those territories nominally ruled by client kings; they raised their own taxes, and from them paid tribute to the emperor. In 4 BCE, Herod the Great died, leaving his territory partitioned between three sons in his will. This was contested – it was not his gift to give, but the emperor’s – but Augustus decided largely to uphold Herod’s wishes. But by 6 CE, Augustus had had enough of Herod Archelaus, deposed him, and made Judea and Samaria a Roman province, governed from Syria. This is the point when Quirinius enforces a census for tax purposes, and in so doing he sparks an uprising led by a Galilean. But any census at the time of Jesus’ birth would have been Herodian, perhaps seeking to win back Augustus’ favour, on which his rule depended.

Joseph, who had gone to Nazareth to negotiate marriage to Mary, returned home to Bethlehem. If Herod was following Roman models of taxation, he would tax his people an income tax based on property, and a poll tax based on dependents. So, Joseph returns to his own home (property) to register and takes his wife-to-be (family) with him.

At some point while they are there, she gives birth to a son, her firstborn, who is named Jesus.   The biographer John describes this event as his – Jesus, the Word made flesh – coming to his own. Again, like Joseph and the registration, this is a home coming. To place and to people. To a relationship with a place and a relationship with a people – however those relationships may be stretched by travel and marriage and the decisions of rulers far removed from the lives of ordinary folk.

There is a call that sounds deep within all creation – humans, water (humans are 70% water) and everything else – that calls us home. To God. To ourselves. Let the rain run to the sea. We, too, are homeward bound.