Five Conversations on the Road to Bethlehem

Sermon at Hillside Swedenborgian Church for December 22, 2019,
by Birrell Walsh

The First Conversation

When Joseph was an old man, an old man was he
He married Virgin Mary, the queen of Galilee.

Yosep bar Yaakov sang this song wryly to himself in the last glimmers of twilight. The street children of Nazareth sang it about him. They sang to mock him, he was sure, but he did not mind.

He moved through the dusk with care for his fragile bones. His pregnant wife slept with their traveling blankets, under the Harod River sky, on the way down to the Jordan. He needed to make sure that the family’s donkey was properly fed and tethered with the caravan herd. He repeated the song’s refrain as he approached the animals, and was startled to hear a voice.

“She is pretty young to be carrying a child, isn’t she?” Yosep looked about. There was no one there except the donkeys and one lone camel from an inland trader.

He thought, “You mean, young to have a child and with such an old husband?” He did not say it aloud, but the same voice came out of the dark, “Yes, that too.” There was a pause, and the sound of hooves shuffling. Far away Yosep could hear the night birds of the Jordan Valley.

“She’s my second wife, you know” he said to his unseen conversant. “My Melcha died.” He fell silent, remembering the loud beloved mother of his six children.

“At least this coming child will have brothers and sisters,” said the voice. “Is there anything you need?”

“It is cold, going down toward the valley,” said Yosep. “We were hurrying to get south. We did not bring as many blankets as we should. Do you have any?”

“Maybe,” said the voice. From the herd of donkeys one came out. Yosep recognized his family burden-bearer, who carried wood and tools for him in Nazareth. The jack donkey (for often in caravans the burdens are carried by jennies, but this one was male, a jack) crossed the sleeping area, stepping with care around the humans who lay wrapped. Yosep followed. The jack hovered over the girl, turned to look at Yosep, then lay down perhaps six inches from her. No more words came. Yosep shook his head, pulled his cloak about him, and then lay down on the other side of Maryam. It was warmer.

In the morning the donkey was gone. Yosep hurried to the herd, and there found his burro browsing and untalkative. He pushed back his cloak to scratch his head, but quickly pulled it back over his baldness in the icy morning air.

They traveled a bit away from the caravan they had joined. Maryam was as she so often was, lost in communication with the child within her. Only the sound of hooves on stones kept them company.

“Yosep…” he heard, his stranger-wife’s voice. He turned and found her looking at him. “Your donkey, he kept us warm last night.”

“He did,” said Yosep. “It was his idea.”

Maryam leaned forward a little, one hand on her belly, to pet the burro with her other hand. “Good fellow. Thank you.”

Yosep was considering saying more, but Maryam was gone back into that inward-looking he knew so well in her.

The Second Conversation

The next night they settled into a caravan camp by the Jordan. It was on a trail more heavily traveled than the path down from Nazareth. Parthians were there, and Petraeans from the red-rock city. Their Aramaic was salted with expressions from the land of two rivers and further east. The air carried a spice that opened Yosep’s nose, but he did not recognize it. Not trusting strangers, each group held their animals close by; and no one was surprised when Yosep kept his donkey by his camp fire. Maryam said her evening prayers and quickly wrapped herself for sleep. Yosep sat with the last of his soup as the sun disappeared beneath the horizon. He heard a familiar voice.

“The child she carries,” said his donkey, “it does not smell like you.”

So much, thought Yosep, for being a good fellow. Aloud he said, “The child is not mine. The elders of the town asked me to take in this dreamy girl, as much as a ward as a wife. I would have comfort in my old age, she would have a home.”

He took a swallow of lentils.

“Then she turned up pregnant. Some fast-talking youth, I thought; but I was afraid to be a fool in the eyes of my neighbors. I was going to put her away and cancel the marriage, quietly you know.” He spit out a stone that had found its way into the soup.

Two long ears flicked in the gathering night. “Why didn’t you?”

Yosep hesitated, not wanting to seem mad. Not seem mad? I am talking with my burro. “I had a dream. An angel came and he said something about her being pregnant out of spirit. I figured that was just angel-talk. But he said not to be afraid to take her for my wife. I had to laugh — that angel was right. I wasn’t angry or righteous — I was afraid of what my neighbors would say. At my age! And so we were married, and the children mock me in the streets about the Virgin, and I don’t care.”

They were silent then, companions of the road.

The Third Conversation

A day or so later on the slow road south, the donkey paused a few paces away from the fire in the late afternoon. Yosep sought him out. He was limping. Yosep brought him near a large rock and sat down with a knife. He lifted the sore hoof, with respect because donkeys can kick sideways, and inspected. There was a small stone embedded.

With care he prized it out of the donkey’s hoof, and rubbed some traveler’s ointment into the sore spot. “I hope this will help by morning,” he said. None of the other caravanners took notice. Those who work on hooves have always talked with their charges. The sound of Greek and Aramaic came to them, and the smells of rich travelers eating meat.

“Do you wonder,” the burro replied, “what our role in all this might be? Yours and mine, I mean. It is clear your wife’s role is to be full of grace.” Yosep shook his head as he cleaned dirt and dung from his knife. Realizing that might be rude he responded in words. “No. No, I mostly think of what I make.” He held up the knife, which he had cast and hammered in the small forge of his wood-worker’s shop.

The donkey moved his head. I swear he just nodded, thought Yosep. He blinked to clear the disbelief from his practical mind. The donkey went on. “I think that it is like the acting shows the Greeks are so proud of in Caesarea on the coast. There are some performers who are in front.” With his nose the donkey pointed to Maryam, who was making chickpea stew and setting out the last of their salt fish. “And there are those like us, who are in the background. Maybe we sing on the stage. Maybe we make the things the front people wave about while they speak.” Yosep appreciated this, for the Greeks called his profession tekton, a maker. “Maybe we are never seen at all, but bring things from far off.”

The donkey now seemed to be like Maryam, staring at something Yosep could not see. “But we are all part of the drama, and the Great Mother Jenny who delivers us all out of herself and gives us life with her milk — she appreciates us. Is it not so?”

Though his feelings were deep, Yosep was a man of concrete mind. It did not preoccupy him that his donkey had such Greek and pagan thoughts, since many others in the land did. He responded, “What is so is that we are slow going south. I hope we will find lodgings when we get to the census.”

The Fourth Conversation

They traveled as fast as an old man and a pregnant girl could, but fell behind their caravan and had to join another. The donkey came and lay down nearby each evening. In the cold of the valley, heading into Jericho along the Jordan, other travelers looked surprised and then thoughtful — were their own beasts warming-pans that they were neglecting?

The next several nights passed without conversation. It was beyond Jericho, on what would hopefully be the last evening of the nine-day walk, that the burro lifted his head again. “Do you want to see how the high beings see the child your lady carries?”

Yosep was beyond startling. “Sure,” he said. The burro looked up. High, high in the sky, in the last traces of sun, was a circling eagle. Yosep looked at it. Then suddenly he was seeing as it, looking down on the south Jordan Valley, seeing the caravan around its many fires. Near the edge of the assembly place was a small fire. And beside it was a different flame: a turning, pulsing and many-colored brightness (Joseph’s coat, thought Yosep), like the sun reflected in a bronze mirror, rays flowing out. The eagle focused her eyes to see past the illumination. She could discern that the source was the womb of a young woman trying to sleep on the cold ground. The rays reached out to places neither the eagle nor Yosep knew.

He blinked once. The vision was gone. He turned to his wife and lay down beside her. The donkey settled and offered the broad warmth of his back, and the girl slept at last between her guardians.

The Fifth Conversation

As they went down into Bethlehem the following afternoon, there were crowds, the descendants of David coming to obey the Romans’ census. “Maryam is very close to her time. God grant we find a place,” said Yosep. “Please wait with my goodwife, while I try to get any room there is.”

Yosep went to all his relatives. None of them had any space, for the crowds had included many cousins and all the floorspace was taken. He went from inn to inn. The inns were full of traders and Romans and travelers. One gave him some bread and even a little cheese for his wife, but no one offered a room. Soon he was back, age and despair on his face. “All the places are taken. No one will give us shelter.” The burro regarded him for a few moments, then said, “Greeks and Jews and Romans should shelter you, because you are sojourners here. If none of your species will take you in, that is quite wrong,” the donkey said at last, “Come! You would be welcome to stay with us.”