Lesson 7 - Looking for Jesus - His Life and Times

The Cousins John and Jesus

Let’s sneak back in time and take a quick snapshot of how John, eventually known as John the Baptist, and Jesus are related. After all, John plays a significant part in the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. Let’s find out why that could occur.

Mary, Jesus’ mom is a cousin of Elizabeth.  Elizabeth is married to a Jewish priest who has responsibilities in the Temple of Jerusalem once a year, and only once in a lifetime may he receive the honor of going into the inner sanctum of the Temple. In Luke we are told he and Elizabeth are elderly. Well, that probably means they are in their early forties. From where I am, that still looks youngish to me.

Now, it was in the Temple during that once in a lifetime, prestigious honor, that Elizabeth’s husband learns he will become a dad. As the story goes he is actually struck dumb by this shocking news, since he and Elizabeth haven’t been blessed yet with a young’n and they are ‘so elderly’.  For a Jewish couple not to have children is seen in the community as something dishonorable. No kids? God must think you have done something really bad to deny you this gift. However, Elizabeth is indeed pregnant. Remember, though thrilling this may be, it is still an embarrassment at their advanced ages and so, six months later, we take another snapshot to see Elizabeth basically hiding out at home during her pregnancy in shame and fear.

At this point in time, a young, unmarried, teen-aged Mary comes to visit her cousin, and boy does she have news. She has become pregnant and asks her cousin for asylum. For the next three months until John is born Mary stays with Elizabeth, both of them hiding from family and friends, as the divine blessings blossom within them.

          Although the Gospels written fifty to seventy years after these events add some gloriously poetic addendums, the bottom line is that two baby boy cousins are born to moms bonded through months of dealing with judgments and snide remarks from their community. You can see why, perhaps, the details of these beginnings were prettied up during the telling over many decades.

          John, just slightly older than Jesus will be an important family member, playmate and influence on Jesus as they grow into young men. So, we will need to go back once again into the past to capture a few more snapshots to see how the teen years of angst and rebellion mold these two cousins.

. . . For now we will leave them as babies and then toddlers, and then as they slowly stretch into adolescence.

Questions for Contemplation and Discussion

1.     Review in the Bible the Gospel stories of Elizabeth’s unexpected pregnancy

and then review the story of Mary’s unexpected pregnancy?

2.     In the Gospel stories how was the news of each of these pregnancies received by family at the time?

3.     Do the modern facts discovered of Elizabeth’s and Mary’s pregnancies change how you feel about the stories as originally related through the Gospels?