A Holy Birth
Stories
Object:
Contents
"A Holy Birth" by Sandra Herrmann
"Gifts from a King" by Frank Ramirez
A Holy Birth
by Sandra Herrmann
Luke 2: 1-14
Beth stood at the window, peering down the street. The wind whistled around the bay window panes, and down the chimney, even with a fire burning brightly. Every time a gust went over it, the fire would flicker wildly, reminding them that they were glad to be inside, and that their furnace was working. They weren’t entirely dependent on the woodpile outside the back door.
Jack had gone to the airport to pick up their niece and her husband. Their very pregnant niece, Beth thought to herself. Which was why Jack had gone to pick them up rather than let them take a cab, as Katie had insisted was much easier. Cars were told to “move along”, while taxis could stay in line, waiting for the next fare to exit the baggage claim. But her husband Bill agreed with Jack that cabbies would be reluctant to take her as a fare, since it was obvious she was about to deliver. No cabbie relishes the idea of delivering a baby!
“It’s ridiculous,” Beth muttered under her breath. “This entire open enrollment could have been handled via computer. Why should they have to travel back here to Wisconsin? Both Bill and Katie work in Atlanta, and it’s a long flight for a pregnant woman. Why couldn’t they make exceptions?”
“Because then they wouldn’t get the taxes on the airline tickets, of course,” her son Jay said as he came up the stairs from his basement bedroom.
“Oh, Jay, it’s no conspiracy. Please!”
“Really, Mom? The airlines are booked solid, every hotel room in town is occupied. Why do you think Katie and Bill are staying here with us?”
“Because we’re family?” Beth snipped. “Families take care of their own, Jay. In case you’ve forgotten why you’re still living here, six years after high school.” Beth regretted her snap as soon as it came out of her mouth. Not that Jay looked wounded.
“Golly, Mom, I’d never thought of it that way!” Jay grinned. “It’s not that I couldn’t find a job ? it’s that you love me, and families take care of each other.”
Beth shook her head. “You’re impossible. . .” But her attention snapped to the driveway. “Here they are, at last!”
“Mom, their plane landed just an hour ago. You know it takes time to get the baggage, have it inspected and get their travel papers stamped. And it’s nearly a half hour to the airport. Chill!”
The back door opened, and there were Katie, Bill and Jack, stomping their feet and shaking the cold out of their coats, stuffing their mittens in their pockets and shuffling luggage into the dining room. Beth rushed at them, her arms wide.
“Katie! How was the flight? Are your legs all swollen? Let’s get you into a recliner so we can get them up.” She took her niece’s hand and guided her into the living room. Katie let herself be led, even as Jay was telling his mother to quit babying his cousin.
Bill looked a little worried. “She started having some back pain just before the plane descended. It’s good to get her in a comfortable chair. The planes these days are so small, it was all she could do to sit!”
Beth looked at Katie worriedly. “Back pains? Cramps, too?”
“Yeah,” Kate answered. “Feels like I’m getting my period.”
Beth and Jack looked at each other. They knew what this could mean. Jack started to the kitchen. “Think I’ll get us all some coffee.”
But Katie hadn’t drunk coffee the whole time she had known she was pregnant. “Just some water for me, Uncle Jack,” she called out to him. To her aunt, she said, “I’m feeling like I want to throw up.”
“Uh-oh!” Beth said. “Sounds like you’re going to have a baby.” She smiled, but it was getting close to curfew, and if Katie went into full labor at this hour, they’d have to call an ambulance, since private cars weren’t allowed to be on the streets, and they would surely be stopped somewhere between home and the hospital.
By midnight, Katie was indeed in labor. And things were moving quickly. They had called the hospital and were told they had no birthing rooms available. Jack called three other hospitals, each a bit farther away, only to be told the same thing. He turned to Beth, visibly enraged and said, “What do they expect us to do? No one will take her in!”
Katie shouted around the corner, “It’s O.K.! We’ve been to all the prenatal classes, and the doctor says everything is normal. If we must, we can do this ourselves.” The men all looked at each other, and it was clear that none of them were happy about the idea of a home birth. But, Jack and Bill went into the guest room and pulled back the lovely quilt and the soft blanket and folded them and laid them on a chair. They covered the bed with a vinyl tablecloth and some old clean towels. While the men gathered several pillows to help prop her up, Beth helped Katie undress and put on a large, soft nightgown and get into bed.
Hours later, Katie was groaning with every breath. Finally, with a huge yell, Katie pushed hard, and Beth saw the top of the baby’s head. “Here she comes! O.K., now push!” And a normal, healthy baby girl slid right into Bill’s hands.
“Oh, my God,” Bill said softly. He looked up at Beth and smiled, his face as red and sweaty as Katie’s. He turned to Katie and said, “Way to go, Sweetie. You did it!”
Just then, the doorbell rang. They all looked quizzically at each other as Jay headed for the door.
“Hi, guys!” they heard him say. “Come on in.”
Beth was busy drying off the baby and cleaning out her mouth. “Who’s there?” she asked, irritably. Jack walked out and came back smiling. “We have company.” Bill quickly pulled a sheet up over mother and baby as four gigantic men walked into the room.
Jay said, “These are some friends of mine from down at the fire station. Greg and Mark are EMTs and have training in helping with childbirth. Matt and Reuben are firemen, and are also trained. They were all on tonight, so when I called to see if they could help if we needed them, they said they’d be right over.” He was grinning from ear to ear. This was the kind of job he wanted to find, if he could, but no one nearby was hiring. He’d taken to hanging out at the fire station a lot.
The four men smiled and nodded. “You’d be surprised how many babies slip in unannounced,” Matt said laughing. “Is it all right for us to see her?”
Beth announced that they hadn’t needed any help, but wrapped a baby blanket around the baby and held her so they all could see.
Matt reached out and picked her up, cradling her against his elbow. The other two guys smiled and made googling noises. Reuben touched her nose and said, “She sure is cute! What a tiny button nose. My first was nowhere near this cute.”
“You have children?” Beth asked. He seemed too young to have family responsibilities as far as she was concerned.
“Oh, yeah! Two boys. We’re hoping for a girl the next time. Girls are easier.”
“Oh, no they’re not!” exclaimed Jack. “They still wake up every two or three hours, and they still spit up, and their diapers still smell.”
Everyone laughed at that, including Katie, who was visibly exhausted. But they all had surrounded her and the baby with love and care, so she was ready to sleep, knowing she was safe and warm. As she slipped into sleep, she could see a single star shining through the bare tree branches in the backyard.
Sandra Herrmann is pastor of Memorial United Methodist Church in Greenfield, Wisconsin. In 1980, she was in the first class ordained by Bishop Marjorie Matthews (the first female United Methodist bishop). Herrmann is the author of Ambassadors of Hope (CSS); her articles and sermons have also appeared in Emphasis and The Circuit Rider, and her poetry has been published in Alive Now and So's Your Old Lady. She has trained lay speakers and led workshops and Bible studies throughout Wisconsin, Iowa, and Indiana. Sandra's favorite pastime is reading with her two dogs piled on her.
* * *
Gifts from a King
by Frank Ramirez
Titus 2:11-14
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly....(Titus 2:11-12)
In the year 301 AD, on the 26th of Choiak, which corresponds to December 22, the Emperor Diocletian was in Alexandria, Egypt, visiting his subjects. This same Diocletian unleashed one of the last and one of the worst persecutions of Christians during his reign from 284 to 305 AD.
While Diocletian was in Egypt, an athlete named Dios (which means Zeus) wrote back to his sister Sophrone (her name means Virtue) to ask why she hadn’t written him recently, and to tell her that he’d been unable to meet up with the person he was looking for. However, because he and some other athletes were in town they were asked to perform for the Emperor, and he’d been able to earn prize money as a result.
That athletes were in Egypt at that time was not a surprise. Athletes of all kinds traveled across the empire in a four-year cycle that began and ended with the Olympic games. In between they made their way to specified cities for other contests that were held at their appointed time in the cycle.
In his letter Dios wrote:
(The Emperor) called on athletes to compete at the Campus, and thanks to some luck I and five others were matched up in pairs for the Pankration. But I don’t know how to play Pankration so I wasn’t lucky and I was (thrown) for a fall. (There’s a gap in the letter here). But then I challenged the five to Pammakhon, and the king wanted to know if I could immediately compete with the other five one after the other. I’d already seen the crowd throw filth on the other five so I challenged them to the Pammakhon. The prize was a robe and a gold coin. The tunic wasn’t very valuable. (There’s a gap in the letter here). I won the gold coin and the other five got the tunic! That was on the twenty-somethingth (letters missing) of Choiak (corresponds roughtly to December). (There is a missing gap here). And on the 26th of the same month during the festival we met at the Lagaion and I got a prize of silver and a tunic and money.
(translation of this portion of SB 3.62222 by the author)
The Pankration was an ancient sport that combined wrestling and boxing, and didn’t have many rules. You weren’t allowed to bite, nor gouge out your opponent’s eyes, and that was about it. The fight continued until one opponent slapped his hand on the ground and surrendered. The name itself could be translated “All of might” or maybe “No Holds Barred!”
Pammakhon was a new sport at that time. The word might be translated “Everything goes!” The scholar Sofie Remijsen suggests that Pammakhon was an unsophisticated street-fighting version of Pankration.
Basically it seems that the Emperor Diocletian wanted to see a no-holds barred match, and when the chance came to see a form of fighting that was even more brutal than the Pankration he jumped at the chance.
The festival mentioned is probably associated with the time of celebration that most cultures observe near the shortest day of the year. The Emperor gave gifts to athletes who entertained him with brutal contests. It should not be overlooked that Christians had come by that time to celebrate the birth of a different ruler, the eternal king, at that same time of the year. And that ruler, though only an infant delighted to receive shepherds, and later, as a child received gifts from the wise. What gift do you bring to that king?
(Want to know more? Read “Pammachon, A New Sport,” by Sofie Remijsen, from the Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists, volume 47 (2010), 185-204.
Frank Ramirez is a native of Southern California and is the senior pastor of the Union Center Church of the Brethren near Nappanee, Indiana. Frank has served congregations in Los Angeles, California; Elkhart, Indiana; and Everett, Pennsylvania. He and his wife Jennie share three adult children, all married, and three grandchildren. He enjoys writing, reading, exercise, and theater.
*****************************************
StoryShare, December 25, 2016, issue.
Copyright 2016 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
"A Holy Birth" by Sandra Herrmann
"Gifts from a King" by Frank Ramirez
A Holy Birth
by Sandra Herrmann
Luke 2: 1-14
Beth stood at the window, peering down the street. The wind whistled around the bay window panes, and down the chimney, even with a fire burning brightly. Every time a gust went over it, the fire would flicker wildly, reminding them that they were glad to be inside, and that their furnace was working. They weren’t entirely dependent on the woodpile outside the back door.
Jack had gone to the airport to pick up their niece and her husband. Their very pregnant niece, Beth thought to herself. Which was why Jack had gone to pick them up rather than let them take a cab, as Katie had insisted was much easier. Cars were told to “move along”, while taxis could stay in line, waiting for the next fare to exit the baggage claim. But her husband Bill agreed with Jack that cabbies would be reluctant to take her as a fare, since it was obvious she was about to deliver. No cabbie relishes the idea of delivering a baby!
“It’s ridiculous,” Beth muttered under her breath. “This entire open enrollment could have been handled via computer. Why should they have to travel back here to Wisconsin? Both Bill and Katie work in Atlanta, and it’s a long flight for a pregnant woman. Why couldn’t they make exceptions?”
“Because then they wouldn’t get the taxes on the airline tickets, of course,” her son Jay said as he came up the stairs from his basement bedroom.
“Oh, Jay, it’s no conspiracy. Please!”
“Really, Mom? The airlines are booked solid, every hotel room in town is occupied. Why do you think Katie and Bill are staying here with us?”
“Because we’re family?” Beth snipped. “Families take care of their own, Jay. In case you’ve forgotten why you’re still living here, six years after high school.” Beth regretted her snap as soon as it came out of her mouth. Not that Jay looked wounded.
“Golly, Mom, I’d never thought of it that way!” Jay grinned. “It’s not that I couldn’t find a job ? it’s that you love me, and families take care of each other.”
Beth shook her head. “You’re impossible. . .” But her attention snapped to the driveway. “Here they are, at last!”
“Mom, their plane landed just an hour ago. You know it takes time to get the baggage, have it inspected and get their travel papers stamped. And it’s nearly a half hour to the airport. Chill!”
The back door opened, and there were Katie, Bill and Jack, stomping their feet and shaking the cold out of their coats, stuffing their mittens in their pockets and shuffling luggage into the dining room. Beth rushed at them, her arms wide.
“Katie! How was the flight? Are your legs all swollen? Let’s get you into a recliner so we can get them up.” She took her niece’s hand and guided her into the living room. Katie let herself be led, even as Jay was telling his mother to quit babying his cousin.
Bill looked a little worried. “She started having some back pain just before the plane descended. It’s good to get her in a comfortable chair. The planes these days are so small, it was all she could do to sit!”
Beth looked at Katie worriedly. “Back pains? Cramps, too?”
“Yeah,” Kate answered. “Feels like I’m getting my period.”
Beth and Jack looked at each other. They knew what this could mean. Jack started to the kitchen. “Think I’ll get us all some coffee.”
But Katie hadn’t drunk coffee the whole time she had known she was pregnant. “Just some water for me, Uncle Jack,” she called out to him. To her aunt, she said, “I’m feeling like I want to throw up.”
“Uh-oh!” Beth said. “Sounds like you’re going to have a baby.” She smiled, but it was getting close to curfew, and if Katie went into full labor at this hour, they’d have to call an ambulance, since private cars weren’t allowed to be on the streets, and they would surely be stopped somewhere between home and the hospital.
By midnight, Katie was indeed in labor. And things were moving quickly. They had called the hospital and were told they had no birthing rooms available. Jack called three other hospitals, each a bit farther away, only to be told the same thing. He turned to Beth, visibly enraged and said, “What do they expect us to do? No one will take her in!”
Katie shouted around the corner, “It’s O.K.! We’ve been to all the prenatal classes, and the doctor says everything is normal. If we must, we can do this ourselves.” The men all looked at each other, and it was clear that none of them were happy about the idea of a home birth. But, Jack and Bill went into the guest room and pulled back the lovely quilt and the soft blanket and folded them and laid them on a chair. They covered the bed with a vinyl tablecloth and some old clean towels. While the men gathered several pillows to help prop her up, Beth helped Katie undress and put on a large, soft nightgown and get into bed.
Hours later, Katie was groaning with every breath. Finally, with a huge yell, Katie pushed hard, and Beth saw the top of the baby’s head. “Here she comes! O.K., now push!” And a normal, healthy baby girl slid right into Bill’s hands.
“Oh, my God,” Bill said softly. He looked up at Beth and smiled, his face as red and sweaty as Katie’s. He turned to Katie and said, “Way to go, Sweetie. You did it!”
Just then, the doorbell rang. They all looked quizzically at each other as Jay headed for the door.
“Hi, guys!” they heard him say. “Come on in.”
Beth was busy drying off the baby and cleaning out her mouth. “Who’s there?” she asked, irritably. Jack walked out and came back smiling. “We have company.” Bill quickly pulled a sheet up over mother and baby as four gigantic men walked into the room.
Jay said, “These are some friends of mine from down at the fire station. Greg and Mark are EMTs and have training in helping with childbirth. Matt and Reuben are firemen, and are also trained. They were all on tonight, so when I called to see if they could help if we needed them, they said they’d be right over.” He was grinning from ear to ear. This was the kind of job he wanted to find, if he could, but no one nearby was hiring. He’d taken to hanging out at the fire station a lot.
The four men smiled and nodded. “You’d be surprised how many babies slip in unannounced,” Matt said laughing. “Is it all right for us to see her?”
Beth announced that they hadn’t needed any help, but wrapped a baby blanket around the baby and held her so they all could see.
Matt reached out and picked her up, cradling her against his elbow. The other two guys smiled and made googling noises. Reuben touched her nose and said, “She sure is cute! What a tiny button nose. My first was nowhere near this cute.”
“You have children?” Beth asked. He seemed too young to have family responsibilities as far as she was concerned.
“Oh, yeah! Two boys. We’re hoping for a girl the next time. Girls are easier.”
“Oh, no they’re not!” exclaimed Jack. “They still wake up every two or three hours, and they still spit up, and their diapers still smell.”
Everyone laughed at that, including Katie, who was visibly exhausted. But they all had surrounded her and the baby with love and care, so she was ready to sleep, knowing she was safe and warm. As she slipped into sleep, she could see a single star shining through the bare tree branches in the backyard.
Sandra Herrmann is pastor of Memorial United Methodist Church in Greenfield, Wisconsin. In 1980, she was in the first class ordained by Bishop Marjorie Matthews (the first female United Methodist bishop). Herrmann is the author of Ambassadors of Hope (CSS); her articles and sermons have also appeared in Emphasis and The Circuit Rider, and her poetry has been published in Alive Now and So's Your Old Lady. She has trained lay speakers and led workshops and Bible studies throughout Wisconsin, Iowa, and Indiana. Sandra's favorite pastime is reading with her two dogs piled on her.
* * *
Gifts from a King
by Frank Ramirez
Titus 2:11-14
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly....(Titus 2:11-12)
In the year 301 AD, on the 26th of Choiak, which corresponds to December 22, the Emperor Diocletian was in Alexandria, Egypt, visiting his subjects. This same Diocletian unleashed one of the last and one of the worst persecutions of Christians during his reign from 284 to 305 AD.
While Diocletian was in Egypt, an athlete named Dios (which means Zeus) wrote back to his sister Sophrone (her name means Virtue) to ask why she hadn’t written him recently, and to tell her that he’d been unable to meet up with the person he was looking for. However, because he and some other athletes were in town they were asked to perform for the Emperor, and he’d been able to earn prize money as a result.
That athletes were in Egypt at that time was not a surprise. Athletes of all kinds traveled across the empire in a four-year cycle that began and ended with the Olympic games. In between they made their way to specified cities for other contests that were held at their appointed time in the cycle.
In his letter Dios wrote:
(The Emperor) called on athletes to compete at the Campus, and thanks to some luck I and five others were matched up in pairs for the Pankration. But I don’t know how to play Pankration so I wasn’t lucky and I was (thrown) for a fall. (There’s a gap in the letter here). But then I challenged the five to Pammakhon, and the king wanted to know if I could immediately compete with the other five one after the other. I’d already seen the crowd throw filth on the other five so I challenged them to the Pammakhon. The prize was a robe and a gold coin. The tunic wasn’t very valuable. (There’s a gap in the letter here). I won the gold coin and the other five got the tunic! That was on the twenty-somethingth (letters missing) of Choiak (corresponds roughtly to December). (There is a missing gap here). And on the 26th of the same month during the festival we met at the Lagaion and I got a prize of silver and a tunic and money.
(translation of this portion of SB 3.62222 by the author)
The Pankration was an ancient sport that combined wrestling and boxing, and didn’t have many rules. You weren’t allowed to bite, nor gouge out your opponent’s eyes, and that was about it. The fight continued until one opponent slapped his hand on the ground and surrendered. The name itself could be translated “All of might” or maybe “No Holds Barred!”
Pammakhon was a new sport at that time. The word might be translated “Everything goes!” The scholar Sofie Remijsen suggests that Pammakhon was an unsophisticated street-fighting version of Pankration.
Basically it seems that the Emperor Diocletian wanted to see a no-holds barred match, and when the chance came to see a form of fighting that was even more brutal than the Pankration he jumped at the chance.
The festival mentioned is probably associated with the time of celebration that most cultures observe near the shortest day of the year. The Emperor gave gifts to athletes who entertained him with brutal contests. It should not be overlooked that Christians had come by that time to celebrate the birth of a different ruler, the eternal king, at that same time of the year. And that ruler, though only an infant delighted to receive shepherds, and later, as a child received gifts from the wise. What gift do you bring to that king?
(Want to know more? Read “Pammachon, A New Sport,” by Sofie Remijsen, from the Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists, volume 47 (2010), 185-204.
Frank Ramirez is a native of Southern California and is the senior pastor of the Union Center Church of the Brethren near Nappanee, Indiana. Frank has served congregations in Los Angeles, California; Elkhart, Indiana; and Everett, Pennsylvania. He and his wife Jennie share three adult children, all married, and three grandchildren. He enjoys writing, reading, exercise, and theater.
*****************************************
StoryShare, December 25, 2016, issue.
Copyright 2016 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
