Day 7, The Christmas Story, Humble Women

Good morning:) Yesterday, we learned a lot about Nazareth, Mary and Joseph’s hometown, and the place Jesus would be raised as a boy. Today, we are going to look more at where Mary was in terms of age, position, engagement, etc.

26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, 27 to a virgin named Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David.

In Matthew and in Luke, the lineages of Joseph and Mary are given. They are both considered to be from the lineage of David. The engagement of Mary and Joseph is not at all like our Western culture. It is actually a very interesting process. It is, of course, an arranged marriage. The usual age for betrothal (engagement) for a girl was around the age of 15, even as young as 12 or 13!!, and for a young man was around the age of 25. The bride was chosen by the groom’s parents or by a confidential friend. Upon entering into the engagement, a dowry and financial considerations were agreed upon by both sides. Betrothal was much more formal and far more binding than "engagement" is in our culture. It was considered to be the most binding part of the marriage transaction. Mary and Joseph had gone through a ceremony of betrothal, with acceptance before witnesses of the terms of the marriage as contracted for. God's blessing was then solemnly asked on the union, however, the complete union would take place after anywhere from some months to one or two years, completed by a procession where the groom took the bride into his house to live. In Mary’s case it would be in about a year. Mary then went back to her home to live with her family for this year until the groom took her into his house. We don’t know how long they had been engaged when this passage was written. The ceremony had already occurred. Joseph was working on her dowry during this time. She was living at home still with her parents. There were no sexual relations during this time. Their communication was always carried on through a friend of the bridegroom. They lived in separate houses during that time. The year of their betrothal was likely spent for Joseph in service to Mary’s family or in other ways raising money for her dowry, to purchase his wife. However, they were legally in the position of a married couple and any unfaithfulness would have been considered adultery. Unfaithfulness was punishable by death according to Jewish law. And, a groom would have the right to divorce his “wife” before he ever took her into his house, before there was ever a wedding procession.

So, Mary was a very young girl. I know in our culture, we cannot imagine this kind of occurrence in a 14 or 15-year-old girl. She was a virgin and was pure. (That one is unfortunately becoming harder to imagine today too.) And she had been legally bound to a man, Joseph, by a ceremony. She was a “wife” and yet under the authority still of her parents’ home. Mary was the last person to know of her intended marriage. It would have been Joseph’s parents or a trusted friend of the family who chose his wife. Then, they would have talked to Mary’s parents first and gained their approval. Mary would have been the last to know. Women did not have any kind of status in their culture. What is interesting about this is that Luke is careful to include women instrumental to the gospel in this book he wrote. You will find Luke including histories of the women involved in the life of Jesus, as well as the men. From his unique perspective as a non-Jew and a physician, his account is more detailed and recognizes women more than in the other gospels. First, we learn about Elizabeth, and now about Mary.

Remember at the first of Luke how it said that he had interviewed people and gotten first-hand accounts and collected all his data before writing this book? I wonder if he interviewed Mary. I wonder if she sat with him one day as an old woman, and began to recount her story to Luke, as he jotted down every detail she could tell him. Luke, being a doctor, no doubt believed in the validity of Mary’s virginity at the time of Jesus’ conception, or he in his medical profession would not have included it in his writings. I wonder if, looking back all those years, past all the things that had happened in her lifetime being the mother of Jesus, she began to recount for Luke the days when she was just a girl living at home, when she found out one day who her husband was going to be. The day she went to her betrothal ceremony to a man she hardly even knew. The day Gabriel came to her. The day he told her what God asked of her. The day she said yes. The day she felt the first faint flutter of her child moving inside of her. The aloneness she must have felt. The many times she submitted to choices made outside of her own will. Wow, haven’t we as women come so far from what Mary’s environment was? We choose who we date, who and if we marry, we choose our education, our careers, we choose when and if we want to have babies, and unfortunately, we have also been given a legal “right” to choose to terminate the babies that were not in our plans. Yes, when it says “we’ve come a long way, baby”, I wonder in which direction sometimes? One of the things I struggle with as a female is a very strong and independent spirit. Now, I believe God put in me exactly what he intended me to have in terms of my spirit and personality, just as he did all of us. But, I have a hard time not being “in the know”, not being part of any decision making that’s going on, not being considered an equal, deferring to my husband when we disagree and a final decision must be made. I am a daughter of Eve. But when I think of Mary, I think of a purity and an innocence, a submission, an availability, an openness, and a godliness, all wrapped up in the body of a young teenage girl. That in our day alone would be considered a miracle. But I also know that Mary was a strong young woman to be chosen to endure what she would over her lifetime. Just think, the day that Mary’s mother gave birth to her, she was born into this world with a purpose that would change the course of history, less than two decades down the road. Just think, Mary’s own mother was probably only in her 30s!

So, today, women, I especially ask you to consider what it is that causes you to not be in a position of purity and submission before the Lord. Think of the task God placed before Mary by the age of 15, and then think of where you are in your walk with the Lord today, at your age. Is there a place for greater devotion to him? Is there a place of more humility and less “rights”? Is there an openness in our hearts for what he wants to bring about through us, for what he wants to use us for, for what he wants to birth in us? What do you think he would have done in you and through you by now were you totally submitted and devoted to him and to his purposes? It is a hard question for me. But these women are placed throughout the story of Jesus birth for us to learn from. We will later study the last chapter of Proverbs, chapter 31, the virtuous woman. But for today, think about the virtue of the women we have met so far in this story. And remember, humility is not an absence of strength, but rather it is “strength under the control of God”.

Teresa