Yesterday, Today, and Forever (2 page)

Chapter 1

“In Those Days”

Whenever we read the life story of one of the great ones, be it Washington, Lincoln, Napoleon, or Julius Caesar, we always find that the biographer takes pains to picture for us the time in which his hero lived, thus helping us to understand certain features of his character and certain happenings of his age. So Luke, the biographer of Christ’s childhood, does the same. “In those days,” he says, “a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled” (Luke 2:1).

“In those days.” That means the time when in Rome the nephew of the great Julius Caesar had become emperor. His real name had been Octavius, but his soldiers hailed him as “Augustus.” In those days the Roman troops had been victorious almost to the ends of the then-known world. They had invaded country after country in many bloody wars, but now the whole empire was at peace. Before Augustus came into power, terrible civil wars had raged. These and all the invasions had exhausted the finances of the empire, and so Caesar Augustus used this new peace to think of new means to fill the coffers of the state. His new idea was to get every single one of his subjects, without exception to make a contribution. To help the publicans, or tax collectors, in their business, he ordered now, like the owner of a big department store, an inventory to be made.

“In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled” (Luke 2:1).

“All the world” — what a proud phrase! But these were almost the facts. Almost all of what was then known of the world was ruled by Roman governors according to Roman law, and the Roman legions watched on the borders.

In those days one of the most important provinces was Syria, and the official in charge of the census in this province was Quirinius. Tucked away in one corner of his province was a tiny little kingdom of Judea, with Herod as its king.

When Caesar Augustus decided on the census, messengers on horseback galloped along the famous Roman highways carrying the new law north and south. At the same time, fast galleys left the Roman ports to take the message across the seas. One of them would arrive in Syria, and Quirinius would sub-delegate King Herod to carry out the census in his land. Herod, who owed his kingship to the Romans, would be only too eager to oblige.

These enrollments were usually made in the places where the people lived. But the Jews had a different custom, and it had always been the policy of the Romans to respect the local habits and customs of conquered nations. Since ancient times the Jews had been divided into tribes. To each tribe belonged a certain county of Judea/Samaria with a family headquarters.

Joseph belonged to the tribe of Judah and to the house and family of David. The place where David the king had been born and raised was Bethlehem, which later became the headquarters of the House of David. When, therefore, on a certain winter day a messenger came to Nazareth, the little town of Galilee, reading aloud to all the men the imperial decree, “all went to be enrolled, each to his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child” (Luke 2:3–5).

Chapter 2

The Holy Land in Winter

When my husband was still in the navy, he once spent some time in the Holy Land. It proved to be wonderful for us later. When, for instance, we wanted to find out about that winter journey of Mary and Joseph from Nazareth to Bethlehem, we simply said, “Tell us, what is the Holy Land like in winter?”

“Oh, well,” he used to say, “that depends upon where you are. Small as it is, the country has three distinct zones. There is that deep gully, the Jordan Valley, below the level of the Mediterranean. There it is always covered with snow. The weather there I found very much like the Alps. At the same time, there is the rather mild climate in the hill country, Galilee, Samaria, and Judea. But why do I say ‘mild’?” he corrected himself. “In the winter, that means in the rainy season, it can be simply awful. The rains start in October and last until March. ‘It never rains but it pours,’ one can really say of those tropical showers. The winds blowing down from the mountains are ice-cold.”

“It was about 30 years ago,” said my husband meditatively, “when our ship anchored in the Bay of Haifa, and all the officers were invited by some Arab sheik to make a trip on horseback throughout the country. That was before the times of modernization. No bulldozers had yet reached the Holy Land and we were assured time and again that what we saw was pretty much as it had been since time immemorial.

“We were there around Christmastime. The rainy season had been going on for almost three months, and the moment one left the highway, the horse sank in the deep mud. We were astonished to find everywhere the peasants in their fields plowing and sowing, and we asked why they didn’t wait for the dry season. But we were told that the sun bakes the earth so terribly that the primitive plows couldn’t break the hard soil. I remember we usually saw groups of plowmen working together with their tiny oxen and little plows, merely scratching furrows. We used to stop our horses and watch them for a little while. Often they were shivering in the cold. One old man I remember was holding a basket of seeds, and with tears in his eyes, complained to our interpreter about the weather. When I think of him now in his brown woolen tunic, soaked through and heavy with rain, I can imagine what Joseph must have looked like.”

From there we went on to figure it all out for ourselves: Mary and Joseph locking up their little house in Nazareth and setting out in the rain on their 80-mile trip. Mary was in no condition to travel. She expected her child any day now, but obviously the census was meant for men and women alike, and Mary, knowing that the Messiah had to be born in Bethlehem, knew she had to go. They were not rich enough to afford camels, the only convenient way of travel in those days, but they took a donkey. No saddles or stirrups were used at that time. Mary had to sit on a folded blanket laid across the sharp-pointed back of the little animal. How long would it have taken them to reach Bethlehem? From the writings of Julius Caesar, we know that the Roman soldiers were supposed to make 20 miles daily when they were not armed, and 12 miles a day under arms. But those were sturdy, strong young men, and here was a young mother expecting her first child within a few days. She surely couldn’t make more than 12 miles a day.

When we, the entire family, traveled all over South America, it also happened to be in the winter, in the rainy season. If one was caught in a tropical shower, one was drenched within a few minutes. A few short hours after Mary and Joseph had left the houses of Nazareth behind them, the rain must have soaked their woolen mantles and woolen tunics, and the hooves of the little ass spattered mud on them. The garments would never become quite dry until they had reached Bethlehem. Heavier and heavier they would hang on their shoulders, as the mud crust became thicker every day.

Such a trip was not without its dangers in those days. Only since the Crusades in the 12th century have lions become extinct in the Holy Land. Throughout Holy Scriptures we find warnings against lions, wolves, and other wild animals. Maybe Mary and Joseph did not always reach an inn, and they had to camp out one or more nights on the roadside. Then a fire had to be made and kept going throughout the night to keep the wild animals away.

There was another pest of the highway — the robbers. The country was infested with them. Large bands of them lived in the hills and threatened the travelers. When we say “inn,” we must not think of a comfortable, homey, New England cottage-like building. We mustn’t even think of a building at all. The inn by the roadside in the Holy Land consisted usually of a wall 12 to 15 feet high, surrounding a quadrangle, in the middle of which a big fire was burning. The innkeeper let the travelers in who, for a small payment, would spend the night around the fire, unmolested by robbers and wild animals. But they had to provide their own food, and the only comfort was freedom from fear.

Mary and Joseph wound their way slowly down the hills of Galilee through the plains of Estralon toward the hills of Judea. It must have been very hard for Mary to sit for hours at a time with no rest for her back, being bounced by the hard, mincing steps of the little donkey. She might lean on Joseph’s shoulder for a little while; he might help her down so she could walk a bit. But wading through the mud didn’t help much either, so she would go back to the donkey, always patient, with a weary little smile. But it must have torn Joseph’s heart to see her uncomfortable like this, and be unable to do much to help. His whole heart must have been longing for Bethlehem, his hometown, where his father’s house was still standing and his brothers and kindred were still living. If only they were safe in Bethlehem, then everything would be all right. The family would provide fresh, dry clothing, and in the privacy of her own room, Mary would quickly recover from the hardships of this trip.

These might have been the thoughts of Joseph as he was leading the donkey by the reins up and down the hills through the rain and wind for eight, nine, or maybe ten long days, while Mary’s heart repeated over again and again, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

“Pray that your flight may not be in winter” (Matt. 24:20), our Lord would admonish His listeners later. It seems that His mother must have told Him about her unforgettable trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem — in winter.

Chapter 3

Away in a Manger

“Is it true what Rupert said,” asked young Martina woefully, “that in the Holy Land around Christmas it is always warm like in summer, and roses and violets bloom in Bethlehem? On all Christmas cards Bethlehem is deeply covered with snow, and in our Christmas carols it’s always a white Christmas, and I like that much better.”

“No, it’s quite possible that the first Christmas was a white Christmas, too,” answered Father Wasner. “In the book of the Maccabees it is written, ‘But there fell a great snow and he’ — Tryphon — ‘came not into the country of Galaad’ ” (1 Mac. 13:22). Father Wasner, who had fled Austria with our family and was the conductor and composer for the Trapp Family choir, often added insight to our conversations.

“And Flavius Josephus, who was a citizen of Jerusalem one generation after our Lord, says that in Jericho down at the Jordan there is always a wonderful temperature, that the people there are only dressed in linen, ‘even when snow covers the rest of Judea,’ ” said I, who had gotten a popular edition of the works of Flavius Josephus for Christmas.

Agathe added, “ Only recently I read in a book that an officer wrote home that when he came out from midnight mass in Bethlehem, he saw snow covering the ground.”

Snow or no snow — it doesn’t seem so very important, but it certainly was a help to us in picturing Mary and Joseph traveling through the short, cold December days toward Bethlehem. Everybody likes to see his hometown again. Once, when we went back to our hometown, Salzburg, in Austria, everyone in the family afterward confessed the same thing: how his heart was beating faster as the train drew closer; how eagerly he was looking out for the first landmark, the fortress; how he was hoping to find the countryside the way we had left it years ago. And we had an American friend with us, Hester, to whom we now proudly pointed out the sights.

Once outside of Jerusalem, there were only six more miles to go, and Joseph must have glanced eagerly southward to see whether he could see the first familiar landmark, the pillar over Rachel’s sepulchre.

“Salzburg is a very old place,” we explained with pride to Hester, “fifteen hundred years old.”

The same thing Joseph could have said to his bride from the north, because Bethlehem was an old place already when, a thousand years before them, their ancestor David watched the sheep in the fields outside the little town. After five miles the road turns sharply to the east, and there they saw a brand new building towering over David’s town. It was the Herodeum, a combination of fortress and mausoleum, recently erected by Kind Herod, who was dying inch by inch on his couch of gold.

And now they had reached the end of the journey. The little town of Bethlehem lay before them, terraced on the slope surrounded by vineyards and olive groves. They entered through the city gate. How many, many times during the last days Joseph must have gazed anxiously at his young wife, who each time had smiled bravely back at him. But now all was safe, and his heart was full of thanksgiving. One could imagine that they first wound their way through the crowded streets to the publican’s office to fulfill the census which had brought them thither, and then Joseph must have said, “And now, let’s go home.”

To the Oriental, hospitality is sacred. If there was no room for Joseph in the house of his fathers, it must really have been occupied to the last square yard by relatives who had arrived for the same purpose a little earlier. If one has been in Salzburg during Festival time, or in Oberammergau when the Passion Play is on, and has seen on almost every house sign “No Room — No Room — No Room,” then one can imagine a little bit how it must have been. Joseph, pleading from door to door, worming his way through the crowds with his broad shoulders making a way for Mary, who shouldn’t be pushed like that. Only after he had tried all the houses of relatives and friends, Joseph decided with a deep sigh to go to the public inn.

Bethlehem, unlike Jerusalem, was only a small country place and didn’t have one of those larger and more comfortably equipped tourist homes. There wouldn’t be any privacy for Mary. There wouldn’t even be cleanliness with all the fresh and rotten manure around the walled-in courtyard. But there was only the choice between the protecting walls of this little inn or the dangers of the open fields, and one more look at Mary showed that she was drooping with fatigue. And then the most crushing of all blows came. There was no room at the inn. Maybe the innkeeper, whose place was overcrowded, didn’t even open the door, but through the closed door told them harshly to go away. If the onslaught of tourists becomes too great in a small town, the natives often object. If you haven’t wired ahead for reservations, well, that’s just too bad.

“He came to his own home, and his own people received him not” (John 1:11).

Joseph had been chosen by God Almighty to be the guardian of those two most precious lives — the Son of God and His mother. This was now the hour when Joseph showed that he was worthy of his high vocation. In this moment of his keenest disappointment it would have been only human and most understandable if he had lost his nerve a bit and tried once more from house to house, making a big display, imploring, threatening, crying (we are in the Orient!). No, Joseph did not leave Mary’s side. Boys growing up in country towns usually know every square foot of the surroundings for miles. He must have known those limestone caves in which his great ancestor David had hidden, and he remembered the one where there was a manger. Once more Joseph took the reins of the donkey and silently led the way toward the only shelter he could provide.

Once when we had come to that point in the Christmas story, Hedwig, who was pretty young then, exclaimed with flashing eyes, “Oh, Mother, if only we had lived in Bethlehem then! We would have taken Mary and Joseph into the big guest room with the balcony.” Her little sisters had tears in their eyes, tears of wrath against the bad people, tears of pity for the poor mother.

Many big and little children must have felt the same way, because there is an age-old folk custom called the “
Herberg suchen
” (seeking for shelter). During the last ten days before Christmas throughout the villages of Austria the people carry an image of Mary through the place. It is left in another house each day, where it is received with great solemnity, being treated as a special guest, given a place of honor, and lovingly decorated with flowers and candles. It is also done in large families, every member taking turns for one day being the special host of the exalted guest.

Our Lord himself foresaw this reaction of the human heart when He one day would say, “And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me” (Matt. 18:5; KJV). He does not say: “Whosoever receiveth one of those little ones in my name is doing something very nice and I will bless him for it.” He says, “receiveth me.” Just why don’t we take Him literally? If we did, for instance, there couldn’t possibly be any little ones left in the expanses of New York City throughout the hot summer months, playing on the streets in the blue fumes of the exhaust pipes, on the asphalt softened by the heat. The stone-hard asphalt can soften — how about human hearts?

Aren’t Mary and Joseph still going from place to place looking for shelter, and isn’t it still true that there is no room in the inn? The only change is that this time the innkeepers are we …you and I.