I want you
to try and imagine that you have never heard the story of the birth of Jesus
before, that you have never seen a nativity play or read Matthew’s gospel. I want us to look together, just for a short
while, at Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus as if for the first time.
The first
thing we might notice is that it is an account that is very firmly placed in
history and in historical context. Luke
tells us that Jesus was born during the reign of the Emperor Augustus, who
ruled the Roman Empire from 27BC until 14AD.
He further says that it was during the governorship of Quirinius, who
although he was Governor from 6AD was also involved in military functions in
Judea in 7BC. We know that Jesus was
born in the reign of Herod the Great, who died in 4BC so it seems that Jesus
was born in or around 7BC.
The second
thing we might notice is that we are told where Jesus was born. He was born in a specific place, a little
town called Bethlehem. People who have
been to the Holy Land have told me that there is a church built on the spot
where Jesus was born and that you can visit the site of his birth.
The third
thing we might notice is that this is an account of real people.
It is the
story of a woman, Mary, who is pregnant before she is married, in a society
where you could be stoned to death for having a baby if you weren’t
married. It is the story of a woman who
agreed to carry the Son of God, knowing the risks and yet stepping out in
faith.
It is the
story of a man, Joseph, who trusted Mary, his fiancée and then found out she
was going to have a baby that wasn’t his.
It is the story of Joseph’s support for Mary in perhaps the hardest of
emotional circumstances and of his faith that Mary was telling the truth and
God was in it all.
It is the
story of a baby born in circumstances of poverty. Whether it was a stable, or a common family
room shared by animals as some scholars suggest, Jesus was born in less than ideal
circumstances, into a family who were probably living around the poverty line.
It is the
story of shepherds, men despised by the Jews because they rarely attended
Synagogue and were seen as a bit dishonest.
Shepherds who braved the stares and hostility of the people of Nazareth
to visit a baby because they had been told it was what God wanted them to do.
The account
of the birth of Jesus as told by Luke is a very real story, it is a very human
story.
It is also
the story of angels: of the angel Gabriel visiting Mary in the tiny Galilean
village of Nazareth to tell her that she was favoured by God and had been
chosen to be the Mother of God incarnate on earth. It is the story of angels visiting shepherds
on a Judean hillside and telling them that the long awaited Messiah had been
born in Bethlehem.
It is also
the story of God himself entering into human history and becoming part of his
own creation: of something so impossible for us to comprehend that we accept it
by faith. It is the story of God becoming
fully human as well as being fully divine.
In the baby Jesus we see, as Charles Wesley put it, “our God contracted
to a span, incomprehensibly made man.”
There, in an
animal feed trough in the obscure little town of Bethlehem, having his nappies
changed by a teenage woman, lay God himself; a helpless baby and at the same
time love and power beyond our imagining.
Luke’s
account of the birth of Jesus. A very
real story of human beings blessed by God.
A very human story! A very real
story of God becoming a part of creation and changing human history
forever. A very holy and divine story!
It is indeed
a very real story, a story for each one of us, because we too are human beings,
like Mary and Joseph and we too have been touched by God through the Jesus who
was born in that stable. Our lives, our
very selves, are very different because of the touch of the babe of Bethlehem;
the one who became human on that very special day; taught us and demonstrated
to us how to live and love and gave his life that we might live.
So let us
take this very real story of human beings and God and make it more and more a
part of our story; this day and for all time to come.
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