Shepherds and Strangers

Oh fallen world, to you is the song—

Death holds you fast and night tarries long.

Jesus is born, your curse to destroy!

Sweet to your ears, a carol of Joy!

Eileen Berry, “Carol of Joy”

A re-reading from the first two chapters of Luke:

A woman who, by all accounts, should not have been able to be pregnant miraculously was, but as the months ticked closer to the day that she should be delivered, the conditions of her normal life changed. A new law. A census. A tax. So the great-with-child woman waddled alongside her husband to a town far removed from her family and friends, and while she was there her water broke. When she finally—bravely—pushed her son into cold light, she knew that her parents and siblings and in-laws wouldn’t get to admire his mewling, or tickle his toes, or hold him so that she and Joseph could nap. She couldn’t show off her baby and glow as her loved ones embraced him and gushed over how cute that kid was. No matron was there to encourage her as she nursed for the first tricky time. And no experienced father was there to let her espoused know that he was doing just fine.

On that first Christmas, the Holy Family was in isolation.

Until soft bleats grew louder, and figures drew close in the dark. Maybe someone knocked. Or maybe Joseph exited the stable and saw them approach. Somehow or other, shepherds walked in and loved on that tiny baby while Mary beamed.

Before the shepherds became the first Christian missionaries noising abroad about Jesus, they were strangers God mobilized to ensure that His Only Begotten and Joseph and Mary wouldn’t experience their miracle all alone.

The isolation of the Christmas story took on new meaning for me this year for some pretty big reasons. Although I’d never equate our hospital-and-midwife-and-epidural-supported birth experience with the animal cave and straw that the Holy Family endured, and although my child in his crib and the Child in His manger have different ancestry and missions—nevertheless, my husband and I welcomed a son in isolation. At the start of the lockdown we didn’t even realize I was pregnant. After all, we’d been trying for years for a baby, and knew that our chances of natural conception were lower than we could hope. But God worked a miracle. Our own little annunciation came via ClearBlue test rather than angelic visitation, but to us it was just as great a message as Gabriel himself could have brought. We took precautions, but carefully saw family twice during the summer of my pregnancy, and we hoped that by the time our boy shrieked his first breath the pandemic would have damped down quite a bit, and Mom and Dad could come see me and Nathan adopt their titles. 

But Patrick was born in late October, just as new infections surged into the thousands in the state where my folks live, and Mom texted to say that she and Dad just wouldn’t be able to make the cross-country flight. Nathan and I knew it was for the best. None of us wanted to put newborn lungs at risk. And besides, our school had policies in place that we might have violated by welcoming visitors.

All the same, though—and let’s go ahead and blame postpartum hormones for at least some of this—I cried over the fact that our miracle baby arrived when no family or friends could come see him. No one would get to enjoy his sheer tininess, or that sweet newborn smell. What if a whole year passed before he could meet his grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins? And what if Nathan and I needed support now? What if new parenthood is a difficult enough transition to make without being cooped in a tiny apartment—alone—month after month?

As if 2020 could get any lonelier.

Except, the tricky thing is that I knew we weren’t really alone. After all, our local friends and colleagues had more than proven their generosity with pandemic-adapted baby showers (one planned, one surprise), gifts, meals and GrubHub gift cards, texts, emails, MarcoPolos, and FaceTimes. One colleague from my cohort even drove our new family home from the hospital because we have no car, and she returned hours later with flowers and a casserole. Never have two such socially awkward introverts as Nathan and I had so many kind friends.

But somehow I still managed to feel lonesome. Does that make me a petty ingrate? I sure hope not. Likelier (and easier to swallow) culprits are the fact that I was used to actually, regularly seeing these friends—at church or at school instead of on screens—and, of course, those pesky hormones again. Even when I could normally reason my way through the isolation, a swift swing would leave me sobbing that it just wasn’t fair to go through this season of transition, trials, and miracles without the company and support of our loved ones.

Couldn’t we just bend some rules? I wanted to—and that’s saying something from a pathological rule-keeper. But Nathan insisted we’d be better off within the guidelines. So we huddled together for comfort and strength in an apartment that might as well have been in the little town of Bethlehem, far, far away from our family and friends.

But not, it turned out, without shepherds.

Our “shepherds” don’t keep watch on a hill; instead, they gather on the stoop outside the apartment building we all call home. We’ve been neighbors for over four years, but never really interacted beyond a “Good morning” in the main hallway, or a “Sorry, excuse us” when Nathan and I would return from evening walks and climb up the outdoor steps past their beer cans and conversations. Apart from our street address, Nathan and I don’t have much in common with these two couples. We didn’t even know most of their names—just the names of one man and the dog he shared with his boyfriend. I wasn’t kidding when I said that Nathan and I are socially awkward introverts. Maybe we should’ve stopped and chatted more, but we didn’t. For four years, we didn’t.

Then the pandemic hit. Our neighbors seem to have formed a pod, because their gatherings on the stoop increased in frequency as of April. So did the strolls Nathan and I would take in the park next to our building, and thus we passed by our neighbors more often. For most of the summer none of them noticed—or at least no one commented on—my swelling belly. But one evening in late August, as Nathan climbed and I waddled up the steps past the stoop beer party, the questions came. “When are you due?” “Boy or girl?” “Have you picked out a name?”

These folks were essentially strangers to us, but onlookers might’ve assumed we were friends, based on all the excitement and smiles. Soon the members of our neighborly quartet began opening doors for me, and they’d pull up theirs masks (which they usually hadn’t worn around the building) to ensure that I stayed healthy for the baby. One fall night Nathan and I drove up to our building in a car we had rented for leaf peeping, and one of the men not only helped me out of the car but he also bolted to the back door and threw it open.

“What! No car seat?” he moaned. 

I laughed. “Oh, no—sorry! The due date is still weeks away.”

“Aw, and here we all thought you were coming back from the hospital!”

Perhaps it was fitting, then, that this same man was the first of the neighbors to see our son after we had returned from the birth. Stumbling from sleep deprivation, Nathan and I lugged Patrick’s car seat to the front of the building to wait for a taxi to take us to our little guy’s first pediatric appointment. Just as we passed the mailboxes, so did this neighbor, and if you could have only seen the light that filled his eyes when he realized that the car seat was full. He pulled his sweater over his mouth and nose in lieu of a mask, and begged for a (distanced) peek at our boy. He praised us and called Patrick beautiful, and then ran to the other couple’s apartment exclaiming, “I just saw the baby!”

A few days later Nathan discovered a gift bag leaning against our door. Two little outfits and a plush duck were inside, along with a card welcoming Patrick.

We finally learned the names of all four of the neighbors from the signatures on the card.

Since then, their concern for—and excitement about—little Patrick has persisted, and they ask to peek into his car seat each time we cross paths. During one such passing the sole woman in the group looked at me, shaking her head, and said, “What a time to bring a child to the world. God bless you.”

Did she know? Could she tell that I struggled to make sense of why God would finally—finally—answer my pleas for a child at the once-in-a-century time when I couldn’t share the experience with so many of the people I lean on and love? I doubt it. Honestly, I sort of suspect that her invocation of God’s blessing was more of an idiom than an actual prayer.

But even if she might not have meant to, she highlighted to me something that I had overlooked. God was blessing me, my husband, and our son through the four middle-aged neighbors who had been strangers to us before the advent of a tiny boy.

Just as He had centuries earlier, God mobilized strangers to ensure that a new mom and dad didn’t have to welcome their miracle child all alone.

Each of us has suffered breathtaking losses during this year of sickness and death, and for many, connection to loved ones ranks among the achiest of costs. And although Christmas has often been a season of gathering, I wonder if isolation fits its purposes too. After all, not only was Jesus born in isolation, but He lived in it too—as a refugee in Egypt, as a “prophet [not] accepted in [H]is own country,” as a “root out of dry ground” whose appearance attracted no one. When it mattered most, He “looked and there was none to help; and [He] wondered that there was none to uphold.” Jesus knew loneliness, just as we do.

Despite the isolation that colored His life, however, Jesus ministered to and through strangers—including the fishermen He cold-called into service, the bloody woman hiding in a throng, and countless children. But perhaps more importantly, Jesus Himself was ministered to by strangers. In one instance a nameless woman showed Jesus more hospitality than even His host. And in a final instance one neighboring stranger gave Jesus His last mortal testimony.

I believe that one of the many ways Jesus keeps His promise not to “leave [us] comfortless” is through the mobilization of strangers. Shepherds came to adore Him, and my neighbors came to adore Patrick, as part of God’s promise never to leave us alone. The ministry of strangers is proof of God’s love, and it’s part of the story of Christmas.

Eileen Berry captured this truth when she wrote:

“Earth wrapped in sorrow, lift up your eyes!

Thrill to the chorus filling the skies!

Look up sad hearted—witness God’s love!

Join in the carol swelling above!

Oh friendless world, to you is the song!

All Heaven’s joy to you may belong!

You who are lonely, laden, forlorn—

Now unto you, A Saviour is born!”

The word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.