“…She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger…” Luke 2:7 // The Birth of Jesus

Intermission.

Let’s take a break from our series on Faith and talk this week about the birth of the Christ child.  I cannot imagine anyone who doesn’t know the story, but let’s take a look at the event from a slightly different perspective.  When we do, I think the story will take on new and important meaning.

A fun fact.

I find it interesting that the story of Jesus’ birth is not fully recounted in any of the Gospels.  It has to be pieced together from the books of Matthew [Chapters 1:18-2:23] and Luke [Chapters 1:5-2:21].  In Luke we are given the most detail, but only in Matthew do the Magi appear.

Mark and John do not even mention the birth.  They pick up at the beginning or Jesus’ ministry, but that’s thirty years into the story.  Only from Matthew and Luke are we able to see and marvel at the wonderful events surrounding Jesus’s birth.

Why would the other gospels not cover the topic of Jesus’ birth?  Because for those writers, the beginning of Jesus’s life was much less important than its ending.  For them, the Resurrection and Ascension were the whole point of Jesus’ life.  Of course, He had to be born, but that event (as important as it is to us) simply didn’t have the meaning and resonance for their message that His death did.

However, for Matthew and Luke, Jesus’ birth was one of the seminal events of history.  Jesus’ birth was the culmination of prophecy.  [Isaiah, Micah, and Jeremiah] And, it was the beginning of the Earthly Manifestation of the Lord God Almighty as Jesus the Christ.  No wonder the angels were singing!

So, thanks to Matthew and Luke, today this miraculous event is celebrated across the world with much anticipation and fanfare.  It really is a special time of the year and helps us all to put aside our differences for a time and celebrate the importance, not just of Christ’s birth, but of us all and our relationships with one another.

But the first Christmas wasn’t anything like the celebration we enjoy today.  Let’s get real about what really happened.

A difficult Journey.

At the time of our story, Joseph and Mary (betrothed to one another) were living in Nazareth which was in the province of Galilee.  Galilee was the most northern of the three Roman provinces that comprised Israel at the time; Galilee, Samaria, and Judea.  The Jewish leadership in Jerusalem (in Judea) considered it to be a backward and rural region and its residents to be “rubes” in modern parlance.  [John 1:46]

Nazareth was approximately sixty-five (65) miles north of Jerusalem.  We aren’t given to understand why Joseph was living there, but the story picks up when Joseph has been called to Bethlehem (only five (5) miles or so south of Jerusalem) to take part in “the first” census being conducted by the Roman government. [Luke 2:2] Apparently, he was originally from Bethlehem, and so had to go to there to be counted.  So, he took Mary and headed out.

The journey would have taken four or five days.  Although other means of transportation were possible (horse, chariot, wagon, etc.) the overwhelming probability is that Joseph walked.  Tradition has it that Mary rode on the back of a donkey because she was near term in her pregnancy and walking might have been unhealthy for her and the baby to come.  The road to Jerusalem was a dangerous one with vandals and thieves routinely victimizing lonely travelers. [Luke 10:25-37] It is probable that they traveled as part of a larger group for safety, much as the members of wagon trains in the American West banded together for mutual support and protection.

You’re here, so what?

When they arrived, Bethlehem was already crowded with other visitors (presumably also there to take part in the census).  Bethlehem was never large.  Modern estimates of its population at the time give it less than three hundred (300) residents.  Today, it’s effectively a suburb of Jerusalem with approximately 25,000 people, mostly Muslim.

But back then, it was tiny.  So, housing accommodations for out-of-towners were likely to have been limited.  The census probably drew more people to the town than it would see in an entire year of normal travel.  It’s easy to understand why the town was so crowded and places to stay would have been at a premium.

Joseph and Mary were “late to the party.”  Because of the census crowd already there, all the more traveler-friendly accommodations had already been taken.  To make matters worse, Mary’s condition made finding somewhere to stay imperative.

The best he could do.

The best Joseph could do turned out to be a livestock stall, probably attached to the owner’s home.  It wouldn’t have been heated and probably would have had at least one side open to the elements.  About the only thing to recommend it would have been that its roof and sides offered at least some protection from the weather.

We don’t know how long Joseph and Mary had been in Bethlehem before she gave birth, but the implication from the scriptures is that it was shortly after their arrival.   Again, we can infer that the birth was unassisted because no other people are mentioned as being there to help.  No hospital, no doctors, no nurses and no anesthesia!

After Mary had delivered the baby, she “…wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger…” [Luke 2:16].  “Manger” is just another word for “animal food trough.”  Presumably some fresh straw was placed in the manger before the babe was laid there, but “sanitary” is not a word that could be used for Jesus’ first resting place.

It was then that the shepherds arrived to see the new baby.

The Shepherds.

Let’s talk about shepherds for a moment.

Joseph was a carpenter.  While that trade did not place him among Jewish society’s elite, it was a respected trade and some measure of societal acceptance came with it.  You might say that Joseph was solidly in the “middle class” of his time.

Shepherds however were in a different “class” altogether.  The only people in Jewish society who were below shepherds were tax collectors.  And that’s only because the tax collectors worked for and with the hated Roman government.  Shepherds, then, were among the lowest of the low.

They lived and worked outdoors with animals and their contact with other people was minimal.  So bathing and personal hygiene were not significant priorities for them.  Many of them took this kind of work because they were otherwise unemployable.  And some of them were criminals who needed to “stay out of town” so they wouldn’t be arrested for their crimes.  In short, shepherds were not seen as particularly desirable people to be around, or to have around.  Yet, it was to these people that the angels appeared, and who were first to see and worship the Christ Child.

(From Matthew we learn that it wasn’t until after Joseph and Mary had returned home to Nazareth, that the Magi (or Kings of the East) showed up.)

The Contrast.

This is hardly the picture our modern Christmas celebrations portray.  Today, while the nativity commonly depicts Jesus and His family in a stall, the stall is pristine.  And any animals are groomed and coiffed to appear as clean as possible.

When the shepherds are portrayed, they are not the rough, dirty, unsavory characters from the story, but rather are neat, clean and wholesome in appearance.  In short, the whole picture is sanitized almost to the point of caricature.  While this may be more palatable for our modern appetite, it is not representative of the actuality of the event.

The Truth of the Matter.

The truth of the matter is that Jesus, the Lord of Creation, was born in a livestock stall open to the elements, probably riddled with animal waste and bugs that lived on the animals.  He was born in a “flea-speck” of a town, in a socio-economic backwater of a country that the majority of the world didn’t even know about, much less care that it existed.

He was the illegitimate child of parents who were not married, a circumstance which would have followed Jesus for the rest of His life.  His first bed was a trough used to feed farm animals, and the first visitors who came to see Him were shepherds … just about the lowest, most despised, and least-respected citizens of that time’s society.

Not an auspicious beginning to the life that was to transform the world and and bring everlasting life to all who believe in Him!

The Point.

But that’s the point!  God chose the time, the place and the circumstances for exactly those reasons.

Jesus did not come to the rich, to the famous, or even to the clean.  He came to the meanest, the lowest, the poorest, the most downtrodden of humanity.

Only by coming from the most common of common circumstances could Jesus have any credibility with the people He came to save.  He had to come as one of “them” to be able to relate to them and have them listen to Him.  Jesus came as a low-born peasant in order to make the point that God’s grace and mercy is available to ALL people; not just to the rich and famous as polite society would have it.

Yes, Jesus was a marvelous speaker and teacher.  I’m sure He had through-the-roof charisma and presence.  And, His demeanor would have drawn all but the most obstinate and willfully ignorant to Him.

But, for Him to be able to speak to people “on their level,” for Him to be able to approach them with no societal barriers between them, for Him to be able to bridge the gap between humanity and God, Jesus HAD to be humble!  Only as a meager beggar (because that’s how He lived during His ministry) from the poorest of circumstances could Jesus make manifest one of His greatest assurances; that “…the last will be first, and the first will be last…”  [Matthew 20:16]

Closing.

This, then, is the real Christmas and its meaning.  That God came to earth as a beggar and a servant in order to allow humanity the opportunity to reach the pinnacle of human existence, eternal communion and fellowship with Him.  Now, THAT’S something worth celebrating!

Merry Christmas and

God’s Blessings on You All.

Richard

December 21, 2018