As Christmas approaches, embark on a profound journey with Christa, Bob, and Jeff as we reflect on the Holy Family's portrayal in art and its theological implications on our faith. Feel the weight of tradition lift as we dissect the often-imposed standards of Mary and Joseph's holiness and how it contrasts with Jesus' sinlessness, offering a fresh perspective for Christian parents striving for attainable role models. With keen insights, we navigate the historical inaccuracy of Europeanized depictions of the family, aiming to ground our understanding in scriptural truth and peel away layers of common nativity misconceptions, such as the number of Wise Men. This episode promises to shine a light on the humanity of the Holy Family, casting new understanding on their enduring significance.
The heart of Christmas beats strong in our second chapter, where we examine faith's intrinsic role in the festivities and the stark cultural shift towards a more secular celebration. Listen as we dissect the poignant lessons of trust and devotion from Mary and Joseph's story and confront the harsh reality of increased loneliness and suicide rates among the elderly during this time. Our candid conversation underscores the pivotal need to maintain Christ as the cornerstone of Christmas, encouraging listeners to weave worship into their holiday rituals. Join us in this sacred pause, a moment to realign with the spiritual core of the season and embrace the comfort and hope the story of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus extends to each of us.
As Christmas approaches, embark on a profound journey with Christa, Bob, and Jeff as we reflect on the Holy Family's portrayal in art and its theological implications on our faith. Feel the weight of tradition lift as we dissect the often-imposed standards of Mary and Joseph's holiness and how it contrasts with Jesus' sinlessness, offering a fresh perspective for Christian parents striving for attainable role models. With keen insights, we navigate the historical inaccuracy of Europeanized depictions of the family, aiming to ground our understanding in scriptural truth and peel away layers of common nativity misconceptions, such as the number of Wise Men. This episode promises to shine a light on the humanity of the Holy Family, casting new understanding on their enduring significance.
The heart of Christmas beats strong in our second chapter, where we examine faith's intrinsic role in the festivities and the stark cultural shift towards a more secular celebration. Listen as we dissect the poignant lessons of trust and devotion from Mary and Joseph's story and confront the harsh reality of increased loneliness and suicide rates among the elderly during this time. Our candid conversation underscores the pivotal need to maintain Christ as the cornerstone of Christmas, encouraging listeners to weave worship into their holiday rituals. Join us in this sacred pause, a moment to realign with the spiritual core of the season and embrace the comfort and hope the story of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus extends to each of us.
On today's episode.
Paul Snamiska:Welcome to the Life Challenges Podcast from Christian Life Resources. People today face many opportunities and struggles when it comes to issues of life and death, marriage and family, health and science. We're here to bring a fresh biblical perspective to these issues and more. Join us now for Life Challenges.
Christa Potratz:Hi and welcome back. I'm Krista Poetretz and I'm here today with pastors Bob Fleishman and Jeff Samuelson, and today we have a special episode for you. Around this Christmas time, holiday season, we're going to be talking about the Holy Family. Today, typically this time of year, people set up their nativities. We see a lot of pictures of Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus, and this does have an image in our mind, especially as Christians, of being the Holy Family. So we're going to kind of start there, you know, just talking about if that is an appropriate term and why we kind of think of that.
Jeff Samelson:Yeah, it's not the kind of thing that you could say, well, it's not appropriate or such, but it's more that it's not so much inappropriate or wrong as perhaps it's inexact and unhelpful.
Jeff Samelson:It works when you're setting apart those three Mary Joseph and Jesus from all other families, because there is something very unique about them. Yes, there is only one family ever that has had the perfect, sinless Son of God as part of it. But you can also get some inaccuracies or just plain wrong thinking if you focus too much on that idea of the Holy Family, because then you start thinking well, I guess that means that Mary and Joseph were also holy in the same way that their son was holy, or that Mary and Joseph should therefore be elevated so far above all other mothers and fathers that in a unique way, in a way that can't be approached by normal parents or anything like that, and that would be kind of discouraging, regardless of the theological rightness or wrongness of it. If Mary and Joseph are so high above all mothers and fathers, then Christian parents could find it difficult to see them as actual models, as somebody that they could actually learn something from or would be worthwhile to imitate.
Christa Potratz:A lot of. I think what maybe makes this mental picture for a lot of people with the Holy Family is just coming from art and media, and so how has that really portrayed the Holy Family?
Jeff Samelson:A lot of the more famous pictures of the Holy Family. They make it pretty literal in that they picture Jesus, mary and Joseph all with halos, which of course is a sign of being holy, of being otherworldly, really separated from all normal people. Particularly, when you're looking at older artwork, it's kind of striking how European Mary Joseph and Jesus all are in all those photos or paintings and such Not at all Jewish or even Middle Eastern or Mediterranean. But later Renaissance era was when it really became more common focus on this idea of the Holy Family. Prior to that I was reading somewhere that pretty much it was only Mary and Jesus and it was only in this later period that people started saying well maybe we should include Joseph too as a good role model.
Jeff Samelson:Apparently he was typically pictured as kind of an Ophish figure because Mary was so great. But who was Joseph? But more modern period, it's more common, to be a bit more accurate, I guess you might say, with portraying them, and the halos have generally been set aside. What do you think, Bob?
Bob Fleischmann:Well, I have always thought that the way that we look at Christmas probably is a testimony to how bumper sticker we are. In other words, scripture oftentimes paints a different picture than what you get on television, what you get in prints and artwork and so forth. For example, we talk about, we have the nativity creation. Oftentimes our nativity sets have Wiseman all around in the major setting and so forth. And of course an accurate reading of scripture shows that reality was a little bit different. But when you talk to people, oftentimes their biblical view of the Christmas story is much more accurately like a television view of the Christmas story. But it fits with the whole idea that we like to use shortcut terms. So I like the way Jeff explained the Holy Family. You say the Holy Family. We all know who we're talking about, even if it's not a really accurate or the clear term. But we're like that all the time. We talk about the nativity, we talk about the Wisemen, For example. How many Wisemen? Oh, three, why three? The Bible doesn't say there's three.
Bob Fleischmann:Because there were three gifts, Bob, Three gifts right, but that's how we think, and so all of a sudden, people have it in their mind that this is the way it had to have been. And referring to the Holy Family first of all, is the tremendous prestige and honor that came first to the Jewish nation. Out of all the nations of the earth, god chose the Jewish nation to bring the Savior. But then, secondly, mary recognized in her song that she was a uniquely blessed.
Bob Fleischmann:But where we get into trouble, of course, is when we begin to suggest that there's a difference between being uniquely blessed and then maybe being a step above all other people, and that of course, I think when we start playing in that arena, we begin to rob Jesus of his humanity, because then you really have just another supernatural story of a supernatural birth. But really, the humanity he became man, he was tempted like us. We're told in Scripture, all of that was because he became human. The child born of you was conceived of the Holy Spirit. It's this incredible, miraculous birth story. But it becomes incredible miraculous not because of Mary being a step above everybody, but because Mary was us. Mary was like us, she had the and I know this is controversial with my Catholic friends, but she had every inclination to sin, as we all did. There is nothing in Scripture that says she didn't.
Christa Potratz:Yeah, I think it's interesting to when Jeff also was talking about the portrayal of Joseph is sometimes in the Bible. We get personality from characters in the Bible.
Christa Potratz:I think of Peter there's a lot of Peter's personality that is in the Bible, maybe not so much with Joseph too, and so this idea of maybe giving him personality and things because my kids watched the movie the Star animated film about a donkey. They're too like Joseph. They've kind of made him, just given him some liberties, I think, with his personality. And then I know there's an upcoming movie, a film with a musical version of the nativity that's going to be coming out, and I know that I was seeing some Facebook posts like oh yeah, you shouldn't see it because of the way they're portraying Joseph. I think there is this idea when you adapt things to film, especially to that you need to give some character and personality and things that maybe we don't see in scripture.
Jeff Samelson:Yeah, Personally, I am deliberately not as familiar with modern video, TV movie adaptations and things like that, for precisely those reasons, because it's just we don't know that You're giving people the impression that we do know. That Just my personal choice that I avoid that stuff because people learn from this and it's not that the vast majority of people watching these things have a really strong knowledge of what the Bible actually says. And then this video portrayal is just adding more information to that. In most cases, this video thing is the only information they've got and, as I said, it's just something that, whether we're talking about the Holy Family or anything else from the Gospels just something I think we need to be very careful with.
Christa Potratz:No, I just think it's very interesting too when we talk about visual portrayals, Because I mean, I think back in the day it was art. You mentioned how Mary and Joseph were European and now it is more, I think, of the movie and the video and those other media avenues.
Bob Fleischmann:If we talk about the Holy Family, we know that we're talking about Mary Joseph and Jesus. We get so wrapped up in some of the the peripheral elements of it that we forget Holy family is also what our families should be referred to, or a holy should be describing the journey of every Christian Back in the Old Testament be holy as your Lord God is holy is the way it was put in Leviticus. New Testament is be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. We're called upon to aspire to lead a holy life. 1 Peter 3.15,. Revere Christ in your heart. That's literally in the Greek. It's basically holify, purify your heart, and this is what the Christian strives for not to earn anything, but to reflect something, to reflect an incredible blessing that came in that first Christmas. 2 Peter 3.15, revere Christ in your heart.
Christa Potratz:He really touched on the why our family should be holy. How do we do that as Christians?
Jeff Samelson:Peter 3.15, revere Christ in your heart. It seems kind of simple, but the means of grace, that's not only the best way, they're really the only way to change people, to change them from the sinful people that they are by nature into holy creatures, newly made in the likeness of God. The means of grace, the gospel. In God's word, the Bible and in the sacraments, it would be easy to say, well, you there, you're a family, you should be more holy. And if we just you know, it would be easy to just teach the children to be nicer, encourage couples to be more loving, show parents how to better care for their families and teach them effective methods of discipline and things like that. All that is helpful.
Jeff Samelson:But like every approach that's really just centered on the law, centered on good behavior, and that alone it's not actually going to change anyone. You may change behavior but you're not changing the people involved. You may get short-term results, but they generally won't last, and that's particularly true if you're taking this as a Christmas thing and you're only talking about it once a year. So to the extent that I'm giving advice, give advice to families and parents and make a conscious effort to step away from the fairy tales and all the just so stories of Christmas spirit and instead use the true story of Christmas, the story of Mary and Joseph, but even more the story of God and a sin-sick world and Jesus the Savior, the Son that he sent. Use that story to create and nurture faith, which will, in turn, make your family holier and healthier, pete.
Bob Fleischmann:Slauson. And if you think about it, what is it that makes Mary and Joseph holy? If they're the holy family, what makes them holy? Pete Slauson, jesus.
Bob Fleischmann:Well Jesus but actually it's their faith. Now I know Jeff just kind of had the knowledge. I had a professor who made the comment that he'd rather have you watch an R-rated movie than Christian movie. Because he said in an R-rated movie you're expecting to see trash and you see trash. He said, in a Christian movie you're thinking you're seeing the Gospel or you're thinking you're seeing Scripture and you're seeing trash. You're just seeing somebody trying to fill in the missing pieces.
Bob Fleischmann:But that all being said, there's a contemporary Christian artist named Mark Harris who came out with a song in which he talks from Joseph's perspective about what a strange way to save the world, and in the song he sings like he's Joseph. You know, wondering, you know of all the people, why me, of all the people, why Mary, and why in a stable, not in. But he does a fine job of pulling in various biblical truths that I think are worthy of consideration. And so I hear the song. It's on one of my Christmas playlists, and so I hear the song and it's thought-provoking. But I go back to the question what makes them holy? And playing off of what Jeff is saying about, you can do all these fine things that'll make you a little bit more socially likable, you know like teach your children, you know, with manners and stuff like that.
Bob Fleischmann:But ultimately, holiness is rooted in faith. When you take both Mary and Joseph and the dialogue that took place, you know, on the annunciation and so forth, it was faith, you know. It was like Abraham saying you know God says get up, let's time to move. And that's what it was credited to Abraham his faith. And the same thing with Mary and Joseph they believed and they believed against all odds. You know, we just got through the Thanksgiving season and I was reading Habakkuk, chapter 3, and it talks about Thanksgiving and it says you know, even though the fig tree doesn't bear fruit, it's still going to be thankful. Even though things are going bad, I'm going to be thankful.
Bob Fleischmann:And what sets a Christian apart from the rest of the world at Christmas time is his incredible, miraculous ability to believe the unbelievable. He believes that in death there's life. He believes that the creative God could be an infant lying in a manger and it's credited to them as righteousness. So we look at Mary and Joseph, the holy family, and they believed. And so when we look at what we do with our families, we work on it.
Bob Fleischmann:Now, just to tie this in, because this is CLR, to tie it into the issues that we work on. You know, one of the things that would make my job a whole lot easier when I'm counseling with a family is you walk every day of your life as a holy family. When your heart is always focused on the promises, it gets you through. It gets you through the worst times, the hardest times, the saddest times and the most illogical times of your life.
Bob Fleischmann:When you look at what Mary and Joseph, faced with an unplanned pregnancy, with this incredible story that I've spoken to by an angel, we're going to have a child. The child is going to be the son of God it's kind of like oh yeah, okay, sure, but the reality is they believed it and Scripture doesn't talk about the consequences of it for them. We kind of imagine that some of the stuff that gets filled in on a lot of these contemporary movies and songs and stuff. But I don't think it's a stretch, especially in that culture, to imagine it was not a popular thing to find yourself as an unwed mother and Joseph sticking with it Because Joseph now looked guilty by association.
Christa Potratz:When you were talking, too, about the faith aspect and everything. You really see that playing out in a lot of different ways too. Just like, all right, yeah, I guess we're going to go to Bethlehem, you know, I mean, obviously there had to be a lot of faith and just not knowing where you were going to have the baby, and then, yeah, these people are out to get us. All right, yep, all right, god, you said you're going to protect us and going off to Egypt and I don't know. I mean, there was a lot there, so I can really see that aspect.
Jeff Samelson:Yeah, and again, one of the values for us of the Holy Family and Christmas story is that okay, well, there are things we can learn. We can learn from the faith of Mary. We can learn from the faith of Joseph, as Bob was talking about. We can learn from their example, also in terms of what did they do, how did that faith express itself and how did they make sure that that faith was nurtured. What's the next story that we have in the scripture after the birth? Well, they're at the temple with the baby Jesus, and it wasn't. We don't assume that they were there just to check off the box, the spiritual equivalent of getting the birth certificate signed. No, what do you do when you're at the temple? You worship there.
Jeff Samelson:The one story we have from Jesus' childhood what is it? They go to the temple and we see it reflected even when we get to the time of Jesus' ministry. It talks about how he went to the synagogue as was his custom. That was the family thing. So this allows me an opportunity to say, at Christmas, the whole thing about making our own families more holy themselves and healthier is go to church, especially at Christmas, even if it means that you're there two or three times over two days. What are you losing by going to church? The more you join with your family of faith around the word of God, the more your family's faith will grow and the more you will grow together with both families. It's win, win, win. And yet so many Christian families say, well, this is a family day, this is a family occasion. If church enters their mind, it's just as kind of an afterthought, or oh yeah, I guess we got to do that. It should be one of the high points of your year.
Christa Potratz:Yes, I think it is important to just bring up in this episode too, just this idea in our culture today of Christmas being so family and that we're almost then kind of missing that faith aspect that you guys have both mentioned about. But our world really does hit on, oh yeah, that family dynamic, but maybe not necessarily the holy family dynamic.
Bob Fleischmann:One of the biggest problems that we have in society is Christmas and increasingly, easter. But Christmas has been so secularized and philosophized in a way because, well, just recently there was controversy in Green Bay because community organizations were invited to put up Christmas trees, this massive Christmas tree display, and the Satanic church had their own Christmas tree of upside down crosses and signs of evil and so forth, and of course the Archdiocese has come out condemning them and so forth. And then the people who are hosting this are saying, well, we're just allowing everybody to come in and make this presentation. Well, this is what happens when you reduce Christmas down to a tradition, to a family gathering and so forth.
Bob Fleischmann:I found it interesting earlier this week I read a statistic that suicides are on the increase in the United States and the highest suicidal rate right now is in 75 years and older.
Bob Fleischmann:And I'm trying to kind of extrapolate why that is, why that's getting to be so high. Well, I think part of it is because A lot of those people have lost a spouse, lost family members. All of a sudden, nothing seems the same and, of course, one of the things you get in any of us who have visited shut-ins and so forth in our parishes. Well, christmas will not be the same this year because, you know, charlie's not here. Christmas won't be the same because people have placed such a strong emphasis on family that when family members now are absent and that doesn't even mean they have to die Sometimes sometimes Charlie is serving overseas or something. But the point is, is that we begin to tie a successful holiday, a successful observance of a holy day, like Christmas, with these secular handles that don't hold up. The sadness is when the Christian community begins to act like the world around it, they can talk about the holy family, and it's Jesus, mary and Joseph and they forget that it should also be how people should talk about you and your family.
Jeff Samelson:I doubt many people really think about it this way or I've really noticed it because it's been so slow and subtle.
Jeff Samelson:But the idea that the entire family would gather to celebrate the birth of Christ, it's shifted.
Jeff Samelson:It's been replaced with the idea that the birth of Christ provides a great occasion to gather together with the family. And it's a subtle shift, but the focus has shifted a great deal. But once you do that, like what Bob was talking about, suddenly the birth of Christ is no longer the central thing, the birth of our Savior from sin, this miraculous great mystery. Well, if that's suddenly in second place, it's a lot easier to neglect the mystery of it. It's a lot easier to say, oh yeah, well, that's just a nice story that goes along with things and isn't really the most important lesson of Christmas that we just get along and that we love each other and da, da, da, da, and it's just one of those things that may be subtle but we have to be watching out for it and try to keep all elements of that that come in from the culture outside us, keep them out of our families, keep them out of our own thinking, keep them out of our churches.
Bob Fleischmann:I think one of the things that's interesting is if a family were to decide that at Christmas time, before we open the presents, before we eat all the food, that we're going to sit down and we're going to read the story of the Bethlehem birth, how would that go over in your family? That might actually be a pretty decent barometer as to what has Christmas become for your family. Now, truth be told, I'm not sure it would be a terrific thing in my family. I mean, because you do every year. You get geared up, your coordinating schedules, you're finding out. Can we celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve, christmas Day, the weekend before, the weekend after? By the time you sit there and pull all those pieces together. I think it's exactly what Jeff said. You know Jesus almost. Oh, yeah, right, oh yeah, we got a birth to talk about here.
Bob Fleischmann:It's hard. I don't think I can, in one celebration, re-centralize Christmas on Jesus. That shows how, even in my family, you get drawn away only because family is so important in my family but it has maybe become an outweighed importance and the focus needs to go back to Christ. But that's hard. But just think about it. If it's difficult to do, it might be a testimony as to what's happened with Christmas, even in your family. I mean, we can sit on our thrones and look condemning on all the people who want to say happy holidays instead of merry Christmas and all that kind of stuff. Don't be surprised if you don't find out in your own family. You, essentially, are doing the same thing. You just aren't candid enough about it.
Christa Potratz:No, I think starting off your family together time is really important, and I think if you can start these traditions and things when the kids are younger too. I know my sister-in-law had little figurines of pieces of the nativity in boxes with parts of the Christmas story like Luke 2, written out on them, and then before we'd open presents, all the kids would grab a box and then you'd open it up and then it'd have a little number, your number two, number three, and then maybe you have everybody. Of course I was one of the baby Jesus, but you'd read the little description and then you'd put your nativity piece on the nativity that they had and that was always just kind of a cute little reminder in a way, and that was always done too before we started the opening of the presents, just getting everybody focused on what it meant to open up the gifts.
Bob Fleischmann:Well, I love that.
Christa Potratz:Yeah, I liked, bob, what you were saying to just kind of bringing this to life issues as well and just how this can impact different life issues. Anything else? You know more that we can say on the life issue? Impact of the Holy Family.
Jeff Samelson:Well, there's so much there in terms of example, so much to think about. We can use the attention paid to Mary and Joseph and Jesus to get people to think deeper about these questions. You know, as Bob was talking about, the very difficult situation in any age and culture of a woman suddenly finding herself pregnant when she isn't married, you know, and the things that go with that and the choices that she makes and the choices she doesn't make. Deeper questions about life in the womb Is it a life, is it not? What are the answers to that? Questions about care for those who are vulnerable.
Jeff Samelson:Questions about God's design that every child have a married mother and father, and he arranged for that. He made sure that Mary had Joseph, you know, to be the father, the earthly father, even though it was more like a foster or an adoptive father. So all those wonderful themes that we can use to reinforce a pro-life message, a pro-family message. And there are opportunities as well just to talk about things and reinforce the good and the positive, without necessarily getting bogged down and attacking the negative.
Bob Fleischmann:And no matter how dark the cloud may look, that was hanging over them by their peers.
Bob Fleischmann:Their optimism that you see beyond that you know you get into when Mary's pregnant, and her encounter with Elizabeth and pondering things in her heart when she sees the shepherds come and so forth, it's a cut above everybody.
Bob Fleischmann:And in that way they also are an example for us that, regardless of the darkness or the challenges and so forth, you embrace what's happening around you, what people are saying, and you ponder them, you reflect on them and it gives you the incredible strength to get through all the things.
Bob Fleischmann:And the Christmas story has often been the story that we've used to talk about God's gift of life and Elizabeth and the baby leaping in a room or kicking in her womb when Mary walks into the room, and the fact that the child within you is the Savior, the words like that. It's not just a blob of tissue, it's not, you know, just a portion of the mother's body, a real person, the Savior. And so we find in the story of the Holy Family a very strong testimony to life, which is why, in order to accept the concept that you can terminate a life, you literally have to reach a point that you say some life is expendable. You'll just have to start being honest and saying that. We are just simply saying we can take some lives. If it had been in biblical times, that means Mary could have chosen to take Jesus' life.
Christa Potratz:Well, thank you both for this episode and we thank all of our listeners too, and if you have any questions, please reach out to us. You can reach us at podcast at ChristianLifeResourcescom. All of us here at the podcast, Christian Life Resources New Beginnings we wish you and your family a very Merry Christmas.
Paul Snamiska:Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Life Challenges Podcast from Christian Life Resources. Please consider subscribing to this podcast, giving us a review wherever you access it and sharing it with friends. We're sure you have questions on today's topic or other life issues. Our goal is to help you through these tough topics and we want you to know we're here to help. You can submit your questions, as well as comments or suggestions for future episodes, at lifechallengesus or email us at podcast at ChristianLifeResourcescom. In addition to the podcasts, we include other valuable information at lifechallengesus, so be sure to check it out. For more about our parent organization, please visit ChristianLifeResourcescom. May God give you wisdom, love, strength and peace in Christ for every Life Challenge.