On our recent church trip to Palestine,
we were collected from the airport by a minibus,
which was to be our main mode of transport for the next ten days.
We decided that it needed a
name,
and because it was carrying us to Bethlehem,
in quite a bouncy manner,
we christened our minibus ‘Little
Donkey’,
and the name stuck
as our tenacious beast of
burden and its driver
time and again managed to make progress
on roads that would have had most vehicles giving up in
disgust.
I’m sure we all enjoyed
singing the carol, ‘Little Donkey’ just now,
and I’m sorry if you find it stuck in your head for the
next week!
But of course, the donkey of
the nativity story
is a later addition to the narrative,
not mentioned in the Bible at all.
I don’t personally think this
matters too much,
after all, as my Dad often says,
‘don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story’.
But it does raise the
question for us
of the relationship between Luke’s gospel
and the historical context in which he sets his story of
the birth of Jesus.
In fact, Luke goes to some
pains
to set the birth of the Messiah
within the wider context of Roman and Jewish history.
Right through his gospel,
Luke gives us lots of little historical clues,
so much so that he has
sometimes been described
as a bit of an amateur historian.
However, the problem we have
with his version of the birth of Jesus
is that he doesn’t get his history entirely right!
As far as we know, there was a census in Judea (it just wasn’t
empire-wide)
and it took place, as Luke suggests, under Quirinius,
but the problem with it is that it happened in the year 6
A.D.!
However, this is only part of
our historical conundrum:
The other issue is that Herod the Great,
who, according to Matthew’s gospel
was alive at the time of Jesus’ birth,
actually died in 4 B.C., some nine years before the
census…
And the thing we need to hold
on to here,
is that interesting though such historical background
might be,
Luke’s
purpose in telling his story the way he does
is to contrast the Roman Emperor Augustus,
a man who held worldwide political power,
with a seemingly insignificant birth in Bethlehem.
Luke’s story is told the way
it is, historical inaccuracies and all,
to reflect the fact that Jesus was a Galilean from
Nazareth, of all places,
which is a bit like saying he’s a Scouser
from Newcastle,
and also to show that the
birth of this ‘working class northerner’
fulfilled the prophecy of Micah 5.2
that the ruler of all Israel was to come forth from
Bethlehem.
But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who
are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who
is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days. (Micah 5:2)
So Luke tells his story
to show that it was the Emperor Augustus who unwittingly enabled Jesus
to be
born in the right place, by calling the census,
thereby demonstrating that the final power belongs to
God,
and not to any human forces at work in the
world.
The circumstances of the
birth of Jesus
point to the life of one who will have nowhere to lay his
head (Luke 9.58);
born as he is in a borrowed stable,
but they also indicate that the child will be a Saviour;
in fact he will be the Messiah, the Lord,
far
outshining even the emperor.
For the time being, however,
the birth is announced only to humble shepherds.
They hear the heavenly host
singing an angelic song,
which echoes the cry of the seraphim in Isaiah 6.3.
Heaven and earth are now
indeed full of God’s glory.
Nativity plays and popular
culture often cast angels as female,
when, as we all know,
in the
Bible angels are universally encountered
as male
messengers from God.
However, there is a further
possible gender confusion in Luke’s nativity story,
and this time it's one which goes the other way.
In traditional Bedouin societies,
it was the women who often looked after the flocks,
and it is certainly at least possible
that these shepherds,
who rushed to the scene of a new born baby, were women.
Of course, at the end of
Jesus' life,
those who remain with him to the very end are the women,
and the first witness to the resurrected Jesus also is a
woman.
Add all this to the fact that
his mother is a teenager and unmarried,
and take it in a context where women were more commonly
regarded as property than persons,
and a peculiarly liberating picture of Jesus emerges...
This is a messiah for all
people,
not just for powerful men.
His birth may have been set
against a backdrop
of Emperors, Kings and governors,
but he will be a messiah for
those whom society devalues,
a messiah for shepherds and refugees,
for single parents and frightened fathers,
every bit as much as he is a messiah for the wise,
the educated, and the prosperous.
The challenge for those of us
who follow him
is to never lose sight of the one in whom, as St Paul
said,
there is neither male and female, neither
slave nor free,
neither foreigner nor native. (Gal
3.28)
The message of the Christ
child
is that in his kingdom all are included, all are welcome.
And so the shepherds are
vociferous in their excitement and amazement,
they sing and babble and shout the good news
of a messiah for all people.
But Mary needs to contemplate
quietly,
keeping her thoughts to herself.
‘Mary treasured all these
words.’ Says Luke.
After Jesus’ birth there is
no song of magnificat
to mirror the song she sang when first told
that she was going to have a child as a gift from God.
It seems that Mary found no
words
for such an overwhelming experience:
A young woman, pregnant out
of marriage,
far from home, giving birth in poverty,
facing a long journey, with our without a sturdy
donkey,
and shortly to become a refugee
on the run from a murderous tyrant.
Is it any wonder that her
words ran out,
and her song fell silent.
Christmas is a complicated
time for us all,
just as the birth of Christ was complicated for Mary.
For some of us, Christmas is
a time of joy,
as our Lord comes to us in the midst of our happiness and
festivities.
But for others, our
experience can be closer to that of Mary,
as we struggle to find the words to combine reality with
hope.
Sometimes, the coming of
Christ is not to a world made easy,
but to the difficulties, arguments, griefs and conflicts
that make up the reality of our lives.
But whether we are sad or
happy this Christmas,
whether we mourn or rejoice
nonetheless it is to us that
the Christ child comes,
as hope arises in the midst of despair,
and good news breaks into our reality,
as God takes human form and
comes to the world once again.
And as God draws near to us,
we too draw near to God,
making our own journey to
Bethlehem,
to worship with the shepherds
the one who is the good news of God,
for all people, in all places.
Amen.
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