Luke 2: 1-20

Fourth Week of Advent
December 18, 2005


I must provide a preface to this bit of commentary: yes, I do realize that it’s not quite Christmas yet, but, due to the fact that Christmas Day falls on a Sunday, our church community has rightly chosen to have families celebrate the birth of Christ AS a family, together in service. Thus, we will be reading through the second chapter of the book of Luke this week, as we won’t be having standard Sunday School classes next week.

Luke 2: 1-7 – I tend to think that few people actually realize the depth and extent of Caesar Augustus was actually wanting here. When he talks about trying to ascertain the population of the Roman world for tax purposes, he’s referring to most of the known world at that time. Yes, as a student of History, I am FULLY aware that there was a flourishing world in the area now known as China, not to mention all of the aboriginal peoples populating ALL of the lands not known to the Roman Empire 2000 or so years ago. However, the Roman Empire was very widespread and ruled what is now known as Europe, the Middle East, and Northern Africa, conquered by force, and dominated by rule of law.

Thus, to call for a census meant much more than asking people to answer the questions of the government employee came to their door. The Roman Empire asked everyone under their domain to return to their town of origin, not their personal birthplaces, but to where their family/clan/tribe had called their home for generations. (To be honest, I have no clue where I’d be returning to – Center, TX; Minnesota; Poland; England; Scotland; Ireland – any of those places could be my family’s place of origin.) Now, in an era without the technological advances of the telephone or the Internet, the Romans HAD to call people back to their hometowns. How else would they be able to track people down most effectively? It would greatly expedite matters for the tax collectors (why else do you take a census of your population?) to gather people back in large areas, as opposed to smaller towns and villages.

Caesar, whether he knew it or not, in his push for more taxes from his people, brought about the fulfillment of many of Isaiah’s prophecies. Here are just two of them: 1) Joseph was a descendent of David; thus, since a child’s birthright and legacy in Hebrew law came from the father’s side, Jesus was a descendent of David’s as well, fulfilling that portion of the Davidic covenant, and 2) David’s home (if you’ve ever read anything from I or II Samuel) was in Bethlehem, so Jesus was to be born there as Joseph returned for the census. There are more (specifically that virgin birth thing), but those can be discussed at a later date and by theologians (and prophecy wonks) more proficient and knowledgeable than I am.

Interesting (maybe only to me) side note here… Verse 7 tells us that Jesus was Mary’s firstborn child. The inference here is that Mary obviously had more children after Jesus, but why do we really never hear about them (outside of various deuterocanonical and pseudoepigraphal sources)? Were they not important to the story? I would claim that such stories from the childhood and adolescence of Jesus WOULD be important or at least worthy of study. So, if they have ever existed in any official context, why were they deemed NOT important or crucial to the canon? But I digress…

“While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.” (Luke 2:6-7, TNIV)

Joseph did what any father and husband would have done at this time – found a place for his wife to give birth to their son. Yes, it was in a manger. Yes, it was probably a couple of troughs set inside a carved or naturally-formed indention in the side of a rock face. No, it wasn’t a clean place whatsoever. No, there was NOT a clean trough to lay the child in once he was born, contrary to the images of every Nativity scene any of us have ever seen or constructed. But, no matter what, they had a place to rest for the night, a place with a bit of a roof, and a place where they could stay, since there were no rooms in Bethlehem for them. No matter what though, Jesus was born; the long-promised Messiah had come to Earth in the most humble way possible, in a dirty food tray that animals ate out of.

And while were at it, let’s stop blaming the innkeeper for putting Jesus in the barn. He had no way that this pregnant (most likely) teenaged girl was carrying the Messiah around in her womb. More than that, he probably had to turn LOTS of people away from his inn. It was the census! Bethlehem was most likely packed full of people with a greater social standing than a carpenter and his young wife. You can’t blame any innkeeper for doing such. If you did, it would be like an agnostic blaming a Hilton in Branson, Missouri for being full during the “Tribute to the Gaither Family” weekend.


Luke 2: 8-20: These 7 verses can be summed up by a few certain words, depending upon what choice exclamatory phrases or expletives you would use if YOU were a shepherd on that Judean hillside that night. But in another stroke of spiritual democracy (or ecumenical action) on God's part, we see the angels declaring the arrival of the Messiah to the lowest of the low in Hebrew culture. In a contemporary context, it would be like Gabriel going to an overnight stocker at Wal-Mart and saying, “Hey! Guess what!! The Saviour of the world was just born! Go say hello and give Him some praise!” God had spent centuries speaking to his people (trained priests or otherwise) about the Advent of the Messiah, but they really didn’t like to listen that well. God does sometime remarkably similar in having the astrologers (possibly Zoroastrian wise men) from the East to see the signs of His Coming, so that they could bring gifts to Jesus.

So, God chose the dirtiest, most unwashed group of people He could find to declare the Arrival of His Son. And since these shepherds were most likely rather uneducated teenagers from the lowest social stock in Israel, they were scared out of their minds. But what makes them different than any another group the angels may have visited is that the shepherds listened and obeyed. They would have received enough religious education to realize that these WERE angels and that they WERE telling the truth. The angels praised God in their presence, compelling them to find the Christ Child so that they would praise Him also. It’s always amazing to me when I see/read/hear how God chooses to do anything, since He does so in ways that I can’t even begin to imagine, fathom, or consider.

The angels then disappear and the shepherds decide to act upon what the angels told them about. They headed straight for Bethlehem where found Joseph, Mary, and Jesus, just as the angels had stated. After seeing him, these Hebraic rednecks started telling everyone about what they had seen, what they had been told, and that the Messiah had come to Israel in the form of a baby. Everyone who heard them was amazed at such words, but we’re not told if anyone believed or acted on any kind of belief, similar to that of the shepherds. I’m not sure that I would have believed them either. Would you have? Seriously now…

But Mary did, I feel. “But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.” (Luke 2:19, TNIV) Mary herself had seen an angel speak to her directly about the birth of her son, God’s Son. So, she knew that angels did communicate to the lowest of the low (of which she, as a formerly single woman, was) as opposed to the rich, powerful, and educated. God literally pays no attention to what any person or any social prejudice says about you – He takes great care in whom He talks to and what He talks about to that person.

And THAT is the beauty of the Gospel that we are celebrating this Advent season. The God of Creation doesn’t quite care about what people say we are; He’s more concerned with us believing what He has told us about ourselves. We are His children. Jesus came to save us from our sins. We don’t deserve such grace, but He offers it anyway. This baby, born in such a worthless place, to a powerless young girl without any social or religious standing, in the most backwater of all Roman provinces, came to redeem all of humanity through His perfect, holy sacrifice. The Good News that is the Gospel is that we can’t do anything to merit His grace. It is ours freely and we must live in it, as hard as that might be. And He is there to help us, always…