Flying home to see relatives…Shopping until you “drop”…
Remembering fond times of holiday’s past…
Remembering loved ones who have passed on and how you wish you would have known last season was their last…
Holiday parties…
Watching Christmas movies...
The same old Christmas songs being reinvented by the year’s newest singers…
It’s also a time when pastors and teachers at churches dust off the good ole’ Mary and Joseph story. David usually shy’s away from letting the Holiday season dictate his sermons but this year he’s been led to teach about Mary and Joseph from a different perspective, one that is foreign to a lot of people.
What happens when we read a biography about someone’s life in the Bible? We try to glean application nuggets from it and fit it into our lives here in the 21st century. Most of the time we forget or are even unaware of the importance of pausing to think and absorb the implications of what is going on in the life of the person we’re reading about. What would have been the cultural norm’s back then that would make this a tough situation? What did it feel like to be going through this? Did they have support from family and friends? What were the consequences going to be for this person actions and how would that affect other people?
The culture in which Jesus was born in to is so foreign to us here in the 21st century that it is difficult for us to really absorb what it would have been like for Mary and Joseph. Since we don’t stone people for having affairs or getting pregnant out of wedlock, it’s sometimes hard to get our minds around why this was so difficult. A lot of times we forget this fact because in today’s world it is common for young unwed girls to become pregnant and divorce is an accepted practice. Shaming one’s family is rarely put on the “con” side anymore when weighing life decisions, most of the time it’s not even a factor.
This past Sunday marked the beginning of a Christmas series about the birth of Jesus and the prophesy surrounding His birth. At the start of the study David asked each person present to put themselves into the shoes of the people in the story. We paused to perform an “example” session in which David asked a couple (who have been steadily dating for years) to act out a Mary and Joseph scene where Mary tells Joseph she is pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Afterwards we asked the audience and participants what they thought Mary and Joseph were feeling and thinking when experiencing this particular scene. At first the question was odd to them and they were confused, some said Joseph would have been happy at such a miracle, others said Mary would be proud about carrying God’s Son. It was then that David and I re-acted the same scene a bit differently and when we turned to look at our audience we seen the light bulb click on. We were attempting to show them the story from a different perspective; we were trying to force them to put aside their foreknowledge of the story with its future implications and change their mindset of what Mary and Joseph were experiencing.
With this new understanding we then acted out a scene where Mary told her mother about being pregnant. The light continued to stay on as the implications of Mary’s situation was understood in a new way. There was a bit of silence as everyone began to absorb the weight of this new found knowledge that had given them a shot of spiritual adrenaline.
We had to end the study midway through David’s outline (which is a very common experience) but there was no disappointment in doing so, as some might think if this would have been done in a regular American church setting. Everyone was excited and was giving testimonies of their own situations and how this has helped them to have a deeper appreciation for events surrounding the birth of Jesus. They saw past the “cuteness” of the manger scene and the Christmas songs and all the preconceived notions about this Holiday.
Next week as we build on this foundation we pray that this Holiday Season will take on a new meaning for everyone and will be used as a light to show others the true reason for celebrating Jesus’ birth.
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