Maybe Mary & Joseph Isolated Themselves

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register.

So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them. - Luke 2:1-7

In yesterday’s devotional we thought about how this passage indicates that all of Joseph’s nuclear and extended families would have been in Bethlehem as well, which means that it wasn’t strangers who put them out in the cold to have their baby in a barn… it was their family.

But maybe there’s a different way to think about it. Maybe it wasn’t family that excluded them… maybe Joseph and Mary decided not to show up to the family gatherings. Perhaps they realized that the shaming and blaming for having a child out of wedlock was not worth it, perhaps they decided that it would be better to handle the crisis along rather than having to be dependent on those who would mock or judge them. Perhaps they thought it was healthier not to show up for the holidays.

Of course, the scripture is no blueprint that answers all of these questions and it does not iron out all of the possibilities. But think of the space for interpretation here as a gift to see yourself in the story, to let your holy imagination roam where the Spirit leads so that the scripture might speak to your own world. Here is a great little blog post by Rachel Held Evans about this sort of journey with scripture.

But for today, let your heart engage the possibility of Joseph and Mary sneaking into Bethlehem and avoiding their family that was already there. What speaks to you out of that image? Are there places it connects in your own life?