They were, frankly, exhausted. He’d been walking, while she rode the burro, for three days. Now their destination was in sight: Bethlehem, the home of his ancestor, the great David.

      It could not have been a worse time for this enforced trek. “Everybody to your ancestral home to be taxed,” the Romans decreed. And when the Romans said, “Up and go,” you up and went. Even when your wife was nine months pregnant and ready to give birth at any minute–as Joseph’s wife, the delicate teenager Mary, surely was.

      It had been a hard enough pregnancy already, without this wretched trip tacked onto the end. Mary hadn’t been sick a day, that was not the problem. No, Joseph thought, it had been hard in all kinds of other ways.

      They were barely betrothed, no wedding date set, when she’d come to  him, her dark blue eyes enormous in her pale little face.

      “Joseph, I have something to tell you.”

      “Tell me? What? Don’t look so worried; you can tell me anything.”

      Anything but what she told him–his inborn compassion burned instantly away by  hurt, rage, rejection. He’d been ready to disown her. Some men would have had her stoned.

      “How stupid do you think I am?” he’d stormed, when she kept saying she was pregnant by an act of the Divine.

      “The angel told me,” she’d kept saying.

      “Right, and I’m the king of Sheba.”

      Then his derision changed to wonder and even awe when the same angel walked into his room one night, lit it up like noonday by the light emanating from him, and basically told Joseph the same thing. Mary had NOT lied. She WAS pregnant by an act of the Most High. Furthermore, the baby she carried was a boy and, beyond imagining, the child was to be the Messiah, the promised Savior.

      When the angel left and Joseph picked himself off the floor where he’d fallen in fear at the angelic visitation, he could not wait for morning, for the opportunity to run to Mary at her parents’ house and apologize. Apologize and humbly accept–with her–the awesome task ahead of them: parenting the holy child.

      It seemed like a dream, as if happening to someone else, not the two of them. So he thought, playing it all endlessly over in his mind, when finally they rounded a bend in the road and he glimpsed the town of Bethlehem spread out in the valley below.

      “Look, Mary,” he said, hoping to cheer up his exhausted little bride. Mary, usually so bright and cheery, in her fatigue clung to the little beast. She looked up at him, made a wan attempt at a smile.

      “None too soon,” she said. “Joseph…” She paused.

      “Yes?”

      “I think he’s coming tonight.”

      “It’s going to be all right. We’ll get a good place to stay.  A nice, clean inn.”

      All the more reason for his mounting anxiety and frustration when they were turned away at every inn they tried.

      Desperate, he knocked on the door of the last one he could find, located on the far outer edge of town.

      “Foolish man,” growled the obviously over-worked and harried owner. “Not a bed in the place. They’re already spreading pallets on the floor. By morning,  I’ll have ’em sleepin’ on the tables.”

      Deliverance came in the form of an ample woman with a bright smile crowding into the doorway.
      “Now don’t you worry, Dearies,” she said. “My husband never was any good at problem-solving. You come with me. I’ll get you a place to stay, and it’s all going to be just fine.”

      So it was that they spent the night sleeping on a bed of sweetly-perfumed quilts from the hope chest of the innkeeper’s wife spread over piles of fresh straw and feasted on a supper dispatched to them from the kitchen by the young goat herd.

      Dark fell. Mary, comfortable as she could get, full term as she was, fell instantly asleep. Joseph sat up, watching the stars rising over the hillside, until the noise in the inn finally ceased, and one by one the lights went out.

      “Will he really come tonight?” he thought. “Is she right? Is tonight the night she’ll have the baby? The baby…” Then he, too, slept.

II

      There’s no gift like the gift of a newborn baby. Years ago, while still at my former church, I paid a newcomer call on a  young family.

      A little boy greeted me at the door. “We have a new baby,” he announced proudly. “Come here.  I’ll show you.”
      His parents were happy to introduce me to their new arrival–a plump, pink cherub sleeping soundly in his crib.

      The little big brother pointed at his minute sibling: “The baby Jesus.”
      “We’ve been teaching him the Christmas story,” said the mother.

      “No, Honey,” she said. “Not baby Jesus; baby Timmy.”
      “Baby Timmy JESUS,” he said proudly.

      For that little boy, his baby brother was a baby–and in his young mind therefore inextricably tied to the Christ Child his parents had been teaching him about.

      But isn’t it true? At one level, the birth of every baby is a miracle, and therefore closely aligned with the most miraculous birth of all. That’s one of the reasons I love baptizing babies. Look at every baby and what do you see? New life. A new beginning Opportunity. A clean slate. Purity. And, always, the hope and the promise of life renewed. The hope, the promise, the reminder that with our Creator God anything is possible.

      As we move through another season of Advent, of waiting once again for the baby to be born, it occurs to me that of all the great religions and world views and ideas that capture human hearts and minds and imaginations, ours is the only belief that has at its center, at its spiritual core, at its heart, a baby. Christians, we have the baby!

      All the great religions have many things to recommend them, but only Christians have a baby–and within the baby, the promise of the man who grew up to add miracle to miracle by also becoming God; and within the God/man, the promise of the Savior, who out of His great love for us, laid down His life for the whole world; and within the Savior, the promise of the Victor who overcame death for Himself and for us; and the promise of Jesus the ultimate Prince of Peace who will one day reign over the whole universe–seated at the right hand of the Father God–a universe where evil has been destroyed once and for all and justice, righteousness, goodness, harmony, unity, peace, and joy reign forever. We have the hope of this ultimate paradise. We have the promise. We have the baby.

      Show me all the mysteries of the universe. I’ll show you the One who spoke the universe into existence. We have the baby. Show me all the wealth of all the nations put together. I’ll show you the treasure of all treasures; the living God here with us today. We have the baby. Show me all the heinous acts evil can commit. I’ll show you the One whose love and peace will triumph in the end and overcome every evil. We have the baby.

      Joseph woke with a start. For a minute he couldn’t remember where he was. He didn’t remember what had awakened him. Then he heard it–sounding in the warm, cozy, companionable air of the stable–the unmistakable sound, the sound of hope, the sound of promise. His heart in his throat, galvanized by a soaring joy unlike anything he’d ever felt before, he leapt up and went to her. The sound he heard was the baby’s first cry.

A sermon preached on December 14, 2022, at Christ Church Greenwich, Connecticut, by Priest Associate The Reverend Terence L. Elsberry.