{"id":1226,"date":"2021-12-09T09:07:27","date_gmt":"2021-12-09T14:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=1226"},"modified":"2021-12-09T09:07:27","modified_gmt":"2021-12-09T14:07:27","slug":"somebodys-gotta-do-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2021\/12\/09\/somebodys-gotta-do-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Somebody’s Gotta Do It"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Throughout this season of Advent our focus is \u201cThe Story of Christmas in 20 Words.\u201d  On each of the 20 weekday mornings ending on Christmas Eve, we\u2019ll spotlight a single word from the Gospel accounts that helps us ponder more deeply the birth of Jesus.<\/em>

9. Yeshua<\/strong>

Throughout the TV series Dirty Jobs<\/em>, host Mike Rowe performed some of the strangest, messiest, and most difficult tasks in the universe of human labor.

Over the course of nine seasons, he courageously and humorously waded into the muck and mire of more than 200 wretched jobs on farms, factories, and processing plants of every kind.  As Rowe frequently quipped, \u201cSomebody\u2019s gotta do it.\u201d

Fortunately, by the time he took to the airwaves, one of history\u2019s most disagreeable jobs had already gone out of fashion. 

Mike Rowe never had to become a sin eater<\/em>. 

During the 18th<\/sup> and 19th<\/sup> centuries, grieving families in parts of England, Scotland, and Wales, while displaying the body of their loved one in public view \u2013 usually in the parlor or sitting room \u2013 would place morsels of bread on the chest of the deceased.  They cherished the belief that the sins of this family member had gone into the bread.  Someone needed to take things from there.

Enter the local professional sin eater, who would sit alongside the body and consume the bread while the family watched.  Then he would excuse himself, quietly walking away having absorbed the departed\u2019s lifetime of sin.   

Who in the world would do such a thing?

Only the very poor would dare to become sin eaters, weighing down their own souls with the misdeeds of countless men and women in their village.  Payment was usually a coin worth only four English pence \u2013 the current equivalent of a few American bucks.  Those who actually believed the theology of sin-soaked bread would have to be exceedingly hungry to risk their own spiritual security.  Richard Munson, who died in 1906, was the last known sin eater in the United Kingdom. 

Students of the New Testament, of course, would be quick to point out that the only person truly qualified to bear other people\u2019s sins died on a cross 2,000 years ago. 

That\u2019s embodied in Matthew 1:21, where an angel tells Joseph in a dream that his fianc\u00e9e Mary \u201cwill give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus [Yeshua<\/em> in Hebrew], because he will save his people from their sins.\u201d

In Bible times, naming rights were the absolute prerogative of a child\u2019s father \u2013 a sign of his leadership in the family.  The angel takes that privilege away from Joseph.  Mary\u2019s son must bear the name Yeshua.    

Ancient Hebrew names were often a shortened form of a sentence.  They frequently proclaimed something about the nature of God.  Ye-Shua means \u201cLord, save!\u201d or \u201cLord, help!\u201d  It was essentially the name \u201cJoshua,\u201d and was given to many little boys.  As historians point out, it was common for a woman in the throes of childbirth to cry out, \u201cLord, help!\u201d \u2013 and thus for the father to choose that name in gratitude for a safe delivery. 

Just how common was the name Yeshua during the first century?

In 2007, filmmakers James Cameron and Simcha Jacobovici produced a Discovery Channel documentary that suggested archeologists had found the bones of Jesus and his family.  Skeletal remains had been recovered from an ancient site just south of Jerusalem in 1980.  Among the recovered ossuaries (\u201cbone boxes\u201d) were ones that were labeled, \u201cJesus, son of Joseph,\u201d \u201cJoseph,\u201d and \u201cMaria.\u201d  Cameron, the famed creator of Avatar<\/em> and Titanic<\/em>, breathlessly reported that this might be the greatest historical discovery of all time.  Here at last was evidence that Jesus didn\u2019t rise from the dead.

Well, maybe not so much.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were extraordinarily common names in New Testament times.  It\u2019s estimated that 25% of all the women in Jerusalem were named Mary.  One in seven males were named Joseph, and one in eleven were named Jesus \/ Joshua \/ Yeshua.  Demographers tell us at least 1,000 men who lived in Jerusalem at this time would answer to \u201cJesus, son of Joseph.\u201d  The archeologist who excavated the site admitted that the likelihood of these bones belonging to Jesus of Nazareth and his family was \u201cclose to zero.\u201d

Cameron, for his part, pointed out that if you come upon the names John, Paul, and George, that wouldn\u2019t raise many eyebrows.  But if you also find Ringo, then you\u2019ve got something.  The problem, of course, is that there was no \u201cRingo\u201d \u2013 a truly special historical marker \u2013 associated with this dig. 

All of this is to say that Mary and Joseph\u2019s child was given a name that many other little boys had, too.

So what makes this Jesus<\/em> special? 

Let\u2019s go back to the words of the angel: \u201cYou are to call him Yeshua, for he will save his people from\u2026\u201d  And here the people of Jesus\u2019 time would have quickly filled in the blank with something like, \u201cthe people who hate us,\u201d or \u201cthose who hold us captive,\u201d or \u201cthe monsters who rule this world.\u201d

Throughout history, the people of Israel had cried out, \u201cLord, help!  Lord, save!\u201d  They had yearned to be saved from the Egyptians.  And then the Babylonians.  And now it was the Romans who had overrun their land and stolen their freedom.  The Messiah would save them from such sinners. 

But the Yeshua born to Mary was coming for a different purpose: to save his people from their sins<\/em>. 

Their worst enemy was not the Roman Empire.  It was the darkness within their own hearts. 

We may cry out to God to save us from COVID, from a Wall Street financial collapse, from totalitarian regimes overseas, and from corrupt politicians here at home.  But our worst threats are not external.  Even before his birth, Jesus\u2019 mission has always been to save us from our very own selfishness, unforgiveness, addictions, and despair.  Somehow these sins must be taken from our souls.

Hey, somebody\u2019s gotta do it.<\/em>

Yeshua came into the world to be that Somebody. 

And that is the very heart of Christmas. 
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Throughout this season of Advent our focus is \u201cThe Story of Christmas in 20 Words.\u201d  On each of the 20 weekday mornings ending on Christmas Eve, we\u2019ll spotlight a single word from the Gospel accounts that helps us ponder more deeply the birth of Jesus. 9. Yeshua Throughout the TV series Dirty Jobs, host Mike Rowe performed some of the… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1227,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[119,345,371],"class_list":["post-1226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-christmas","tag-salvation","tag-yeshua"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1226"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1228,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions\/1228"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}