This is our 8th Epiphany as a foursome. They go
to their father’s house for Christmas, so we do our gift giving and
church service on January 6th. I love
it. It feels right to me to have a
completely different day than to have “Christmas with mom” and then “Christmas
with dad.” The meaning is lost. I prefer Christmas with dad and Epiphany with
mom.
During our Epiphany service we have a mini
pageant. I have a gut feeling it was created for my kids, who are never in town
for Nativity and I went through a phase where I cried that Kenny would never be
Joseph and woe is me some day the kid will win an Oscar but Joseph the earthly
father carpenter will never be on his resume. So another pageant was added.
The other pageant is more of a liturgical
dance interpretation of the hymn We Three
Kings. You need a Mary, a Joseph,
someone to cary the star on a stick, and as many kids as want to be wise men as
there are available.
We had a Mary, my daughter, and we had two
older boys to be the readers, and we had lots of kids begging to wear the fancy
wise man bling, but no one wanted to be Joseph.
(Ironic, I know, after I lost a lot of sleep over my kid losing the
possibility.)
During Sunday school the other mothers and I
were searching for a Joseph. We got nothing.
What to do? Should I get her other
brother to do it? No way he would go for that. All the Roblox cash in the world
wouldn’t get him to be the Joseph to his sister’s Mary. Should we start guilting moms that weren’t
there?
How can we have an Epiphany pageant without
Joseph?
I have been reading the Bible every morning
for the last two and a half years. So I
just blurted out:
“We don’t need one.”
Let me guess what you are thinking. The single mom is trying to rewrite the Bible
with some horrible feminist agenda that ruins the role of every man
everywhere. Not quite. Sorry.
“He wasn’t there. We don’t need a Joseph if we can’t find a boy
to play the part. Joseph isn’t mentioned
in the scene.”
“What?”
I realized the Bible is becoming as much a
part of my freaking instant recall ability as episodes of Little House on the
Prairie and random Harry Potter chapters, characters, and spells.
“Matthew!
Go to Matthew! It’s just Mary
with her son.”
Matthew 2:11 “On entering the house, they saw
the child with Mary his mother: and they knelt down and paid him homage.”
Joseph isn’t there! He may be in the workshop, he may be in a
different room, but he isn’t in this scene, so we don’t need him for our pageant!And this just reinforced what I already knew
about Epiphany. It’s with mommy. And the Gospel story is part of who I am and
who my children are. And who the four of us are.
I am a big Team Joseph girl. Joseph
rocked. He had no plans to embarrass
Mary when he found out she was pregnant.
When Gabriel told him it was part of a bigger plan, he married her. He raised a son that wasn’t his as his own. He was a hero and got his family to
Egypt. But he wasn’t there in that
moment. He was not involved in the gift
giving Magi moment.
But Mary was - and I knew it. And I live it. So we Sunday school moms gave up trying to
find a Joseph and let it be. With or
without him, Mary is doing just fine.