Rev. Pamela J. Tinnin
Partridge Community Church-UCC
Partridge, KS (population 250)

From: Pamela J. Tinnin <PamT481@AOL.COM>

Just a Man?
Pamela J. Tinnin

So…you want to hear the story of how it all began… Come closer… cataracts
have nearly taken my sight, and your face is in the shadows. I still have my
memory though, thanks be to God.

I was a young girl, daughter of Jonas the fisherman and Sabina, the
laundress. Even as a small child I could not understand how two honest,
decent people suffered such bad fortune—no sons in all their years of
marriage and me, a child of their old age. For a long time, their bad fortune
was passed on to me. My father died in my tenth winter, and my mother
followed him soon after. With no family, I became a child of the streets, one
of those faceless beggars people pretend they do not see.

Then Ceasar proclaimed that all those under Roman trule must travel to
the place of their ancestors to sign the tax rolls. The Romans were not ones
to miss an opportunity for gold. I did not trouble myself with the news—how
would a beggar pay taxes from the few coins that came my way? Besides, my
name would not be missed from the rolls. But the good thing was that
Bethlehem filled with people come to register—they crowded the streets, and
the inns had long ago run out of rooms. It was like festival time—peddlers
shouting that they had the best prices, acrobats tumbling about—some said
they were pickpockets. They moved so fast, who could say? In the middle of
the square a stage had been built where two men dressed in satin robes and
wearing great masks made of polished bronze told some of the old stories.
There before us, the stories came alive—Jonah and the Whale, David and
Goliath, Moses parting the waters. A wealthy woman, her face hidden behind a
black veil, tossed coins to the storytellers. I was quick and managed to pick
up the few that dropped in the dust.

Things had been hard for me in the four years since my parents’ death. Some
people were kind—I knew which ladies would slip me a piece of leftover bread,
and there was a shopkeeper who let me pick through the last of the dates and
figs.

But as I grew older, some of the men began to look at me differently. Then
came the day when Hamah, who ran the brothel called The Secret Garden,
approached me with an offer. If I went with him, I would never have to work
again. I could spend my days in silk, eating sweetmeats, and with my own
servant to fan away the heat of the long afternoons. But I was no child—I
knew what he meant, and so I stayed in the back alleys, and avoided his ugly
gaze.

The weather grew colder, and the coins fewer. Hunger was no stranger, but I
was determined that I would starve before I would sell myself to such a one.
Once Ceasar’s proclamation was heard and the city began to fill with
strangers, life became a little easier. I had made friends with an old
cripple, and at night he let me sleep in his hut. But one night, a night when
the shutters and roofs were white with frost, when I went to the hut, Hiram
was not there—two rough looking strangers were seated on his mat, gambling
with bones, passing a skin of wine between them. I knew better than to ask
questions, and when they invited me to stay, I knew well enough to run.

I wandered the streets, clutching my cloak to me. The sky above was filled
with stars but there was one so bright, so big—its light seemed to stream
down from the heavens, touching the ground near the city. I couldn’t seem to
look away from it, and found myself stumbling down a strange street,
following the light.

Against the hill, there was a crude shelter, a place for animals. The
strangest thing—that is where the star’s beams rested, bathing the hillside
in pale light. I crept towards it. When I was almost there, I heard a
noise—at first, it sounded like an animal. It came again. When I stepped
inside, I saw from where it came—there in the corner was a young girl near my
age, and in her arms, a baby, no more than a few minutes in this world, wet
and squirming and wailing with that thin new cry. There was a man, too—older
than the girl by some years, he knelt nearby, a look of such relief and love
on his face. When they did not seem to mind, I sat down in the straw,
grateful for its warmth.

Some men came in, shepherds from their rough dress, blowing on their hands to
ward off the cold. The shepherds knelt down there in the hay, bringing with
them the smell of wood smoke and wool and manure. The young girl began to
sing to the child, a song like none I had ever heard, one that she knew by
heart, for the words came easily to her. She sang about how this child, this
scrap of a baby, would one day set the world on fire—how he would send the
rich away hungry, throw down the rulers from their thrones, and exalt the
poor. I remember how I looked around in fear—those kinds of words were
dangerous then, just as they are now. As the girl sang, I thought I heard
music like a thousand bells, and the light in the stable grew even brighter.
It felt so warm and safe there, like I would never be cold again.

I fell asleep listening to that song. In my dreams that night the world was a
very different place, a place where all were fed, where each one had a place
of his own, where no one ever felt she was alone. I remember how in my
dreams, I had found the peace it seemed like I had been looking for all my
life.

But when I awoke, the world had not changed. Like every morning, the sun was
spreading light across the eastern sky. The shepherds were gone; the baby’s
father was preparing the morning meal, while his wife slept on. He invited me
to share their food, but I could tell they had little enough for themselves.
Besides, if I did not get on the steets early, how many chances for a spare
coin would pass me by?

The years went by and my fortune and life changed. I met a shoemaker, a
widower with three sons. He took me to wife. We were never rich, but he made
a living, and the boys with the dark curls and mischief in their eyes became
like my own sons. As the years passed, they have cared well for me.

I almost forgot about that other life; I almost forgot the night in the
stable, that is until some thirty years later. I began to hear of this one
they called Jesus, some said a rebel, some said the messiah, some said
nothing more than one more pretender. A story was told of how he had been
born in a stable in Bethlehem. When I heard that, I went to see him for
myself. There were thousands there that day. I kept trying to stand taller,
to look over the heads of the crowd, but I was an old woman, and people only
shoved me out of the way.

I kept looking for a warrior, a prince in shining armor, a helmet with a tall
red plume, a sword of sharpest metal. A man began to speak, so quietly, at
first no one was listening—he was certainly no warrior and there was nothing
to make me think of that baby so long ago. But as the crowd hushed, his words
became clear. "Those who would be first, shall be last," he said. "The first
and greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and
all your mind and all your strength; and the second is like unto it—love your
neighbor as yourself," he said. "When you do it for the least of these," he
said, "You do it for me."

But all that he talked of came to nothing. He was just a man—and in the end
he died like one, crucified for the whole world to see, his blood staining
the earth, his last breath a gasp of anguish. I was there, hiding in the
crowd. I could not stay away—who could say what might happen? I stayed until
the end, until there was nothing left to see.

When at last I turned to go, I saw some women in the shadows. They had
fallen to their knees, there in the mud. One of them turned to me and I saw
her face, the tears on her wrinkled cheeks, a lock of gray hair caught by the
wind. There was something so familiar—her gentle mouth, eyes as sad as any
I’d seen—and it was then I recognized the young girl who sang a song to her
firstborn in a tiny stable just outside Bethlehem.

Walking away down the rocky path, as the sky turned dark and lightning split
the clouds, I began to see the truth of it, to see that I had been wrong. The
world has seen too many kings and warriors, too much politics, too many wars
and death that change nothing. I began to think that perhaps what was needed
after all was a baby, a tiny baby, born to bring love and light and life into
the world, into my life and yours. Perhaps what was needed was a man who knew
all that it is to be human, a man who could teach us to be so much more.

So many years have passed, but I remember it all—the stable and shepherds,
the mother’s song and a star that lit up the sky, three crosses and a crown
of thorns. Just a man? No… the son of God. The very son of God.