One Friday 1

If she’d been at home, that day would have begun like any other, but sabbath: up early, she splashed some water on her face, scattered grain for the chickens, milked Jael and Jezebel the goats, baked bread for her sons and grandsons. Twice the usual amount, the day before sabbath.

There were 16 in their families. As the oldest mother, it was up to her to get the day going.

The men had to work construction—had to, mind you—in Sepphoris, the Gentile town nearby. They would have preferred to work in Nazareth.

But jobs weren’t so easily come by in Jewish Nazareth, where most lived at or below subsistence. The prosperous and prominent shunned Mary and her brood.

It was the old story. She’d gotten so used to it by now, she hardly noticed when people snubbed her. Long ago, she had learned to go about her business and pay no attention.

But she wasn’t at home. Not today, a bad dream from which she could not awake.

This couldn’t be happening. Not to her. Not to her son.

This punishment the Romans dealt out to murderers, rebels, misfits. Her son was a gentle soul who…

When he was little, her firstborn son kept birds. You wouldn’t  find these in palaces—they were just sparrows, and the chickens she kept for eggs and the occasional feast. In his clothes she’d constantly find a bit of dry bread that he’d saved for the birds.

He never lost his love for animals. They sensed it. His hands, now big rough carpenter’s hands, always were stroking a cat or scratching an old plow horse behind the ears or gently bringing home a stray.

She saw him (must have been four), his hands barely big enough to hold his prize, his black eyes sparkling with curiosity, his hair mussed. He had found a bird’s nest containing two speckled brown eggs, and was pleading to place it in the bushes so that the mother bird could hatch them.

Then, she remembered one day years later, he asked if he would ever marry. His friends were being betrothed. But his parents had never broached the subject with him.

Not handsome, but hard working, intelligent, loyal, he would make any of the young girls of Nazareth a fine match.

There was a girl Jesus liked. He managed to be at the well every morning about the time she appeared to get the day’s water.

But, the year passed when others Jesus’ age were betrothed, and Joseph still waited.

“Wouldn’t Adonai appear to me in a dream, like before?” he insisted.

Jesus asked them both, Joseph and Mary. It was the last real conversation he had with his father.

“Will I get married?”

Joseph had learned his oldest was different. He did his chores, he learned the trade as well as any of them, but his heart was in the holy books.

He spent hours with the rabbi; and when the boy was occupied with a scroll, the old man’s face would light up with joy. Every rabbi longed for one student like Jesus in his life.

Joseph did not reply to Jesus’ question right away. With a stick he poked at the fire, which had died out. Once its flames were again snapping and popping in the green wood, he asked, “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” the boy replied. Then, he wandered off into the hills by himself. Gone a whole night and all the next day.

Then, when he was back at the crowded table with his sisters and brothers, some of them not far from marriage, Joseph looked at him, an eyebrow raised the only hint of the inquiry.

Jesus shook his head. So slight a movement, only Mary and Joseph saw it. They never spoke of marrying again.

A few months after that, a drunk Roman drove his chariot off the main road through Nazareth. The horses, struggling to keep the chariot stable, trampled Joseph, walking home late from work.

“Who can finish such detailed inlay?” Joseph’s Roman employer complained. “No one but Joseph.”

After the funeral Jesus spent the next two days in Sepphoris completing his father’s task.

The eighth day Mary and Jesus went to the cave in the hillside, where Joseph’s body had been laid. In the harsh light, Jesus’ face shone with tears.

“He wasn’t my father,” Jesus whispered, “I mean, physically?”

“No,” Mary said. Nothing more.

They never discussed such things. Besides, though he was only fourteen, both were aware that Jesus knew exactly who his Father was.

In Nazareth they called James and Joseph and Simon and Judas the sons of Joseph; but, Jesus, in ordinary conversation, the son of Mary.

Everyone in Nazareth could count.

At least she was in Jerusalem. But this year that was no comfort.

Why wasn’t Joseph here! Mary screamed at heart. She flung across the room the water dipper she was holding.

Tears of anger stung her eyes. Fear choked in her throat.

She felt abandoned by God and utterly alone.

(To be continued)