Ruined Reputations
Read: Luke 1:26-38 and Mathew 1:18-24
People talk. It’s a fact of life. It doesn’t matter if you are walking across the dessert with a basket on your head or pushing a cart through the local Walmart, gossip is a sin that surpasses ethnicity and geography; it has even survived the test of time. It’s easy then to understand why Mary’s pregnancy could not have remained a secret for long.
While tradition lends us to believe that Joseph was older, we don’t really know how old Mary or Joseph were at the time of their angelic visitations. Girls were considered women as soon as they were able to have children and were allowed to get married as young as 12 years and 1 day; boys only had to be 13. By our standards, Joseph and Mary could have been just kids.
In the rural town of Nazareth, population 400, the news would have been scandalous. Everyone would have known everyone else’s business on a good day. After all, most of the community worked together and often ate together. They probably knew this couple well. They were probably aware of the marriage negotiations between the two families and were looking forward to the community celebration that would be the final step before consummation of their union.
While some young people got to choose their spouses for love, Joseph and Mary’s family most likely made the marriage arrangements based on what was beneficial for both families. After the contract was signed, the couple was legally and morally bound, but there was often a period of waiting, what we would call an engagement. It was during this period of waiting, when the couple may have seen each other very little or not at all, that Mary received her news.
According to the book of Luke, she was able to keep her secret for a little while. Only a few days after she found out, she raced off to visit her cousin Elizabeth “in the hill country of Judea” (Luke 1:39). There is no indication that she talked to Joseph before she left, and we are left to wonder if she even shared the message with her parents. When she returned three months later (Luke 2:56), her condition was surely beginning to show. Can you imagine making that trip back home? Can you imagine the fear she must have felt? Joseph, of course, must have been devastated when he heard the news.
Joseph was described as being righteous. Mary was said to be “highly favored” by God. These were “good” kids; more than that, they were Godly. Marriage and raising a family were important parts of their Jewish culture, and a pregnancy outside of marriage was more than shameful. It was punishable by death.
Joseph must have been mulling it all over before he went to sleep. He finally decided that he couldn’t subject his bride to public humiliation or death. Instead, he would break the engagement (essentially divorce Mary) quietly. Perhaps, he thought that she might be able to slip away to her cousin’s house again to have the baby. An angel came to him in a dream and changed all those plans.
So, Mary and Joseph were married, but I doubt that it was the marriage they or their families had been planning. It’s unlikely that there were attendants for the bride and groom or a feast for all their family and friends. Mary probably didn’t get to adorn herself for her new husband, and there was no pronouncement of God’s blessing—at least not publicly. In fact, the young couple did not even consummate their marriage until after the baby was born.
For six more months, they lived under the noses of their neighbors who watched Mary’s expanding belly and wondered at Joseph’s agreement to take her as a wife. You know as well as I do that they were probably counting the days from the time they said their “I dos.” Can’t you just hear the whispers behind their backs? Maybe they weren’t whispering at all. The good girl and boy of Nazareth weren’t so good any more, at least not in the eyes of the general public.
Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the angelic visitations and the immaculate conception that we gloss right over it, but the fact is Mary’s pregnancy, as holy as it was, brought about a dilemma in her life, in the life of Joseph, and probably in the lives of their families as well. The Bible doesn’t tell us a lot about it, but we see hints even years later during Jesus’s ministry when skeptics sarcastically asked of Jesus, “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” (John 6:42) Wink, wink, “At least we think he’s Joseph’s son.”
It’s unlikely that many people believed the new couple was going to parent the Savior.
By all accounts, Mary and Joseph did everything right. They were humble, God-fearing people, and God blessed them by allowing them to become Jesus’s earthly parents. Still, it didn’t come without a price. Mary’s pregnancy ruined their reputations.
Sometimes in life, even when you try to do everything right (which is impossible by the way), everything still goes wrong. Sometimes, even when you are confident that you are in God’s will, things just don’t work out exactly the way you think they should. Sometimes, even when you feel God’s pleasure with you, you are surrounded by earthly problems. Sometimes, life—even life as a Christian—seems like one tough time after another. From Mary and Joseph’s experiences we can learn a few things about our own walks with the Lord.
Just because you answer the call doesn’t mean it will be convenient.
Even though you’re obedient, you still may face obstacles.
And, not everyone will accept what God asks you to do.
While Mary and Joseph may have felt all alone in that little town of Nazareth, they were not. God was with them during their crisis, and He is with us now. Trust Him.
Read Learning to Trust During Troubled Times, the first in Tricia’s Christmas blog series where she shares personal Christmas letters from years past.