Sermon Tone Analysis

1-5

Caesar has called a census, Luke has placed this historically just before the birth of Jesus.

And he tells us as a result Joseph, and of course, everyone else, had to go back to their ancestral home, which for him is the City of David, Bethlehem.

Not only is Luke placing these events historically he is also calling to mind the difference between the one who is King of the Roman Empire and the one who is about to be born a king.

Caesar was one of three former co-rulers but he gained sole control of the empire and reigned from 27BC to 14AD.

He had restored peace after about 20 years of civil war.

He brought in the Empire’s golden age known as Pax Romana, meaning Roman Peace, which lasted for about 250 years.

Of course, we know that this peace was kept through the sheer brutality of its army on those who would even dare speak against Rome or its Emperor.

What we know from historical records is that Caesar Octavian was the first to be called Augustus, which means, revered one.

Until then it had only been used of their gods.

This was the beginning of the time when the Emperors were to be thought of as gods.

And indeed we have an inscription found in Priene, which is in today’s Turkey, that says: “the birthday of the god Augustus was the beginning of the good news for the world that came through him”.

Thus they called Augustus god and saviour of the world.

Maybe now we see what is going on here.

We have the fake and the real put before us.

The true God and Saviour was about to be born into the world.

The contrast could not be greater.

Luke portrays Jesus as the true Savior of the world, the authentic bearer and proclaimer of good news.

Unlike Augustus, Jesus can offer true salvation.

You might ask, “Who determines history—the Caesars, the kings, and the presidents?”

In faith we believe that God is not only the Ruler of all things, but even the Ruler of human history and that many unwittingly serve Him.

And so it was that even in this remote place there was the call to be registered in the census for the purpose of taxation.

There was no get out clause.

The might of the Roman Empire would come heavily down upon any who would refuse the order.

Until then Mary was going to give birth in her home at Nazareth and she was now forced to go on a trip which came at the most inconvenient of times.

She was in her third trimester.

Doctor’s today advise against such travel in the 7 to 9 months period.

But Caesar overruled.

Caesar’s decree denied her the support of family and friends, forcing her and Joseph to instead embark on an arduous 85-mile journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

Please do not take our lovely Christmas cards and carols as the fount of theological knowledge for much of them are but over-sentimentalised fantasy.

The reality of the situation was dire.

There is no donkey mentioned for their journey, no, they had to walk and at a minimum would have taken 5 days.

It cannot have seemed to Mary that God’s hand was in all this such was the hardship.

When they reached Bethlehem, a small town, it was teaming with hordes of people.

But God was making sure the child was going to be born in this place rather than the one that had been planned.

God was miraculously controlling the events of the world, working all things out for good so that He might fulfil His promise to send the Saviour into the world.

And the name of the place itself had been prophesied about 700 years before:

The crowds were clogging all the available housing and eliminated the opportunity for even a traditional delivery for they found nowhere to lodge.

6-7

What do we think about when we think ‘inn’?

I wish that tradition had not encroached on our translations of the English bible though all the more recent ones have updated them including the newest NIV.

This was no hotel.

Again we have a sentimental view and even have an angry inn-keeper in many nativity plays.

But this was not how it was.

There were inns in those days along the busiest of highways but they had a dreadful reputation that most law-abiding Jews would have avoided.

One of those inns is found in story of the Good Samaritan.

We know this from the Greek word used.

There would not have been those kind of inns in a place as small as Bethlehem.

But the Greek word used here is the same word we find later in Luke when Jesus is telling his disciples

This takes on a different understanding of an innkeeper, servants, and the like.

This was simply a room in a house.

And most of the larger houses in Bethlehem had such a room which would have had nothing except four walls, and you were not guaranteed privacy.

And such rooms, because of the hospitality in those days, were free of charge.

But the census was on.

There simply was no room - probably two or three families were already staying in each room.

And now we understand how it is they came to be staying in the part of a building for keeping animals.

And so it was that Mary went into labour.

With the animals and all alone with no family to help, Joseph became the midwife.

They were anonymous, they were insignificant, they were peasants, they were poor.

Some people have asked whether they were so poor.

Well according to Scripture and to 2000 years of Tradition they were very poor.

They say, Joseph was a carpenter with his own workshop.

If so, why did they not return to Nazareth after the census?

Instead we find them still in Bethlehem two years later.

Why, just 66 days later, in the Temple did they not offer a lamb for the sacrifice of purification if they had money rather than the option given to the poor of two turtle doves?

In reality Joseph and Mary had nothing and it is only after their return from Egypt, again no donkey is mentioned going to Egypt or on their return, that Joseph probably then set up shop in Nazareth, which, by then, Jesus was at least 6 or 8 years old based on the historical records of when Herod died.

But then we have the Scriptural evidence where it says in

And here comes the baby, as with all babies we know that they have come into the world when it first cries.

If there is no cry there is great concern.

Joseph was now holding the baby, bloodied as He was, and helpless as He was.

Jesus was born in humiliation.

He did not enter the world in a hospital, in a comfortable home, in the home of a friend or relative, under a doctor’s care, but in a smelly stable, the lowest imaginable place for a birth.

Jesus had come from Heaven and was born in poverty.

This family appeared to have been helpless pawns caught in the movements of secular history but every move was under the hand of Almighty God in fulfilment of prophecy.

The baby was not a Caesar, a man who would become a god, but a far greater wonder, the true God who had become a man!

This is scandalous!

The smell of birth with the smell of the animals and their doings.

This is God, right?

It was clearly a leap down—as if the Son of God rose from his splendor, stood poised at the rim of the universe irradiating light, and dove headlong, speeding through the stars over the Milky Way to earth’s galaxy, finally past Arcturus, where he plunged into a huddle of animals.

Nothing could be lower.

The Son of God was born into the world not as a prince but as a pauper.

We must never forget that this is where Christianity began, and where it always begins—with a sense of need, a graced sense of one’s insufficiency.

Christ, himself setting the example, comes to the needy.

He is born only in those who are “poor in spirit.”

And it was Mary who wrapped the child up in swaddling clothes and laid Him in a feeding trough, for there was no one else to help.

Oh this paradox of the incarnation:

Augustine said of the baby Jesus:

Unspeakably wise

He is wisely speechless

And

Luci Shaw, in her poem called “Mary’s Song,” says:

Quiet he lies

whose vigor hurled a universe.

He sleeps

whose eyelids have not closed before

The omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God had become a baby!

This is an important truth to grasp: The Son of God became a real human being not just the appearance of one.

When he was born, God the Son placed the exercise of his all-powerfulness and all-presence and all-knowingness under the direction of God the Father.

He did not give up those attributes, but he submitted their exercise in his life to the Father’s discretion.

Though he was sinless, he had a real human body, mind, and emotions—complete with their inherent human weaknesses.

As a real baby in the cradle he watched his tiny clenched fist in uncomprehending fascination, just like any other baby.

He did not feign babyhood.