Reading through the nativity story recently, I found myself wondering how much Mary and Joseph changed from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Frankly, we don’t know much about Mary and Joseph before or after the birth of Jesus, but I do know how taking the first steps on a journey of faith can start a series of dominos falling that take you places you never could have imagined when you began.
When they set out on their 90 mile walk, a journey which likely took them around two weeks, like Abraham long before them and Simon Peter thirty years after them, they were walking by faith. With such an unbelievable and unprecedented event being promised, there was certainly the possibility of misunderstanding, disagreement, and doubt. Though the message was essentially the same, the method of receiving it was very different. For Mary, that message was overwhelming and undeniable. The angel Gabriel stood before her and spoke to her face to face, but Joseph heard the voice of God in a much different way. With Joseph, there was much room for doubt. Mary knew for certain that she had not been with a man, so each day as her belly grew and the baby began to move, her faith was being reinforced. But for Joseph, there was just a dream. How many times have you made a radical, life changing decision that could potentially make you a social pariah, because of something you dreamed?
I cannot help but believe that Joseph had moments where he had to wrestle with doubt. It wouldn’t make him weak if he did. Abraham himself — you know, the father of faith — had more than a couple of moments of doubt walking alongside his faith. Mary could not deny what she knew to be true, but Joseph was having to fully trust in a dream and in Mary, and he had to do it within a community that almost certainly added to those doubts. Judgmental looks, insidious whispers, open mocking, disgusted rebukes. Is it so hard to imagine there were moments on that walk where he thought to himself, “What am I doing? Can this actually be real? Can I even do this? Why me?”
Two weeks of walking is a long time to think….and doubt. But once they arrived in Bethlehem, things began to change rapidly. The seeds of faith that Joseph had sown in Nazareth were beginning to bear fruit in undeniable ways in Bethlehem. First there were the shepherds who arrived with wonder and tales of armies of angels singing. Then there were the wise and wealthy foreigners who’d come from far away lands, guided by a star and delivering precious gifts. Then there were the prophets in the temple — Anna and Simeon — who seemed to be awaiting for Him to arrive. Then came another dream, one that would literally save the life of his wife and baby boy. By the time they set out from Bethlehem to Egypt, things had changed completely. Any doubts that arose in Nazareth or along the road, were blown away life chaff in the harvest of trust that came in Bethlehem.
For me, there has been nothing as dramatic as an appearing angel, or even a dream providing direction, but I have had my own encounters with the Divine. I’ve never audibly heard the voice of God as I hear songs on the radio, but I have heard the voice of God in ways that I still struggle to understand, much less explain. Moments where I knew. I just knew. Times when logic and reason tried to dismiss what the heart could not deny. As profound and life changing as those moments were — and continue to be — there was still so much room for doubts and fears and questions. Compounding the difficulty is the fact that we don’t all experience God in the same ways, and though we may not so easily doubt God, we do doubt each other, and it’s easy to dismiss other people and their encounters with God or the path He’s set them on. Mary met an angel, Joseph had a dream, Elijah heard a still, small voice, Moses heard a mountain shaking voice from a pillar of smoke and fire. I once heard a man explain a dream he had that he attributed to God like this, “I’m not telling you to convince you, I’m just telling you to bear witness.”
In fifty years of life, and thirty-seven years of faith, I can identify four moments when I knew that God was present and pointing the way. Perhaps there have been more and my faith was too weak to listen, but on these four occasions, I did. And yet, it is only in hindsight that trust became certainty. You have to make the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem to see the Christ with your own eyes.
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