Not a Silent Night

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

Luke 2:1-7

December 17/18, 2011 • Portage First UMC

Sometimes very precious things can lose some of their luster over time. For instance, take an engagement ring. When it’s presented, the diamond sparkles and shines, and the ring is worn with pride and admired by all. But as the years pass, as the engagement turns to marriage, and as life settles to something resembling normal, the diamond gathers dirt and begins to lose some of its shine. So you might take it to a jeweler to have it cleaned or to restore it to its original brilliance. In fact, the more the ring is worn, the greater the need for occasional cleaning, so that all can see what it really looks like. In many ways, the Christmas story is like that diamond. It’s something that’s very precious to us as Christians, but over the centuries, it’s gathered lots of layers of dust and tradition and stories that have little or nothing to do with the way its told in the Bible. For instance, most of our nativity scenes contain donkeys and sheep and perhaps a cow or two, but where are animals mentioned in the actual story? You won’t find them there. So during this season of Advent, we’ve been trying to peel off those layers, so to speak, so that the story can shine with its original, intended power and brilliance in our lives. We started with Mary in Nazareth, and how she took a huge risk in saying “yes” to God. Then we looked at Joseph, who most likely lived in Bethlehem, and how his humility made him the perfect foster father for Jesus. Last week, we looked at Mary’s visit to her relative Elizabeth, and how important it was especially at this point in Mary’s life for her to have a mentor, someone who could help her through these difficult days.

But this evening/morning we come to what is, perhaps, the most tradition-laden part of the Christmas story, and that’s the actual birth of Jesus. Luke 2 tells the story of Joseph taking Mary to Bethlehem, and while they are there, she gives birth to the baby who is the savior of the world. Matthew tells that whole story in a single sentence: Joseph “did what the angel of the Lord commanded him and took Mary home as his wife” (1:24). I want you to remember that phrase, “took Mary home,” because it’s a very important one. Joseph “took Mary home.” And where was Joseph’s home? Bethlehem. Now, Luke gives us much more detail, which is why many scholars believe Luke actually interviewed Mary at some point. He has much more of the story than anyone else does. We know that Mary returned home to Nazareth just shortly before John the Baptist was born to Zechariah and Elizabeth (1:56), and it’s possible Joseph accompanied her back to Nazareth at this point. Wedding plans were going to need to be made, and the wedding was probably going to have to be moved up. So they travel back to Mary’s home in Nazareth (a 9-day journey), and they put together a wedding, but somewhere in the middle of all that, the government steps in and throws in a new wrinkle.

Luke says, “In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world” (2:1). Augustus was, in some ways, the man who transformed Rome from a republic into an empire. Some call him the first Roman emperor, but he really was just a bloodthirsty tyrant. He issues orders for a census. Everyone must be counted so that he can tax them and get more money into the Roman coffers. When Luke gives us this historical context, it’s not just to fix the date. It would also have reminded the first readers that this is a time of upheaval, a time of great change. It’s a time when rulers were in the business of declaring themselves to be gods. “Augustus” means “exalted one,” and he carried the title, “Son of God.” Some people called him the “savior” of the world, and others called him “lord.” It was a corrupt, confusing time in human history (Card, Luke: The Gospel of Amazement, pgs. 47-48; Wright, Luke for Everyone, pgs. 22-23).

Now, Luke says this census took place when Quirinius was governor of Syria (2:2), and that presents a problem for historians. We know Herod the Great was the Roman-appointed king in Israel at the time of Jesus’ birth, but Herod died in 4 BC. Yes, the modern calendar is off by at least four years. Jesus was not born in the year 0. But historians struggle because the only recorded census under Quirinius took place in 6 AD—maybe as much as ten years after Jesus was born. However, recent archaeological evidence has been uncovered that Quirinius was probably governor twice, the first time from 10-7 BC (Card 48), and so it’s possible that a census was done then as well. But the larger point Luke is trying to make is that it was a dangerous time for a child to be born, especially a child whose followers would call him son of God, savior and lord. Caesar had already claimed those titles—what happens when someone challenges his claim? What happens when some people begin rejecting the creed “Caesar is Lord” in favor of one that says, “Jesus is Lord”?

So the government orders a census, and Joseph and Mary, who may have just begun to settle in to Nazareth, are now forced to return to Bethlehem, because that’s where Joseph is from, and that’s where he has to go register (2:4). Now, it’s about a ten-day journey from Nazareth back down to Bethlehem, if you take the short route. There are two possible routes they could have taken, and I’ll let you explore those in your small groups this week, but the best evidence we have is that they would have taken what is called the Way of the Patriarchs, through Samaria, past historic landmarks that meant so much to them as Jews. They would have passed the place called Jacob’s Well, named after one of their people’s ancestors. They would have passed the place where Joshua set up the place of worship when they first conquered the land. They would have followed the path that the ancient army of Assyria took when they conquered the nation of Israel. But this was not an easy route to take. [VIDEO: Judean Journey] The first part of the journey would have been on a plain through the Jezreel Valley, past a place called Megiddo, which in the book of Revelation (16:16) is the “hill of Megiddo” or Har Megddio, and they would have followed well-worn paths, but as they got further south, they would have crossed into mountainous areas and harsh desert lands. On the ninth day, they would have arrived in Jerusalem, and one more partial day’s walk would take them to Joseph’s hometown of Bethlehem (Hamilton, The Journey, pgs. 93-96). And while we picture Mary riding on a donkey, there is no mention of that in the text. Now, I would guess Joseph had something for her to ride on, but being poor, it’s entirely possible she might have had to walk. And even if she rode, how comfortable would it have been to be on the back of a donkey, nine months pregnant, for ten days? So when Luke says they “went there,” we have to remember it was not an easy journey. It was hard. It was unwelcome. But it was what they had to do.

Luke doesn’t tell us how long they were in Bethlehem before Mary gave birth. We always picture it as: they arrived, she instantly went into labor, and Joseph hurried around to find a place for them to stop for the night. But Luke says, “While they were there” (2:6), implying that they had been there for a little while at least (Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, pg. 26). Which brings up the question I posed a couple of weeks ago: why does Mary give birth in a barn if this is Joseph’s hometown? Again, this one of those layers we need to peel back. The movies all have given us the idea that Joseph, panicked about the baby coming, runs from Motel 6 to Super 8 to Holiday Inn Express, trying to find an empty room, but they all have their “No Vacancy” signs hanging out. That’s the way it’s always portrayed in the Christmas pageants and the living nativities, and that’s based on a mistranslation in the King James Version.  Luke 2:7 in the King James Version says, “there was no room for them in the inn.”  But did you catch what I read today? “There was no guest room available for them” (2:7). We need to understand what houses were like in that time if we’re going to read this passage correctly, because when we hear “inn,” we picture a commercial motel, and Bethlehem in those days was unlikely to have been large enough to have a commercial inn. And anyway, that’s not the word Luke uses. If he meant a motel, he would have used a different Greek word. He calls the place that’s full a “kataluma,” the same word that’s used later in the Gospel to describe the place where Jesus and his disciples eat the last supper. It’s a guest room, usually an upper room in a private home. [VIDEO: Nazareth Homes] There would typically be a main room, where the family lived, and maybe there was also a second, smaller room that was used for sleeping. And upstairs was the “kataluma,” the guest room, where the children slept when there were no guests in the house. Because of the census, because everyone has come home, that’s the room Luke says is full. The “kataluma” is full of other relatives. Joseph came home to Bethlehem and took Mary to his family, but the room they would have ordinarily stayed in was full (Hamilton 97; Bailey 32; Wright 21).

“While they were there,” Luke says, “the time came for the baby to be born” (2:6). Perhaps Mary woke Joseph up in the middle of the night, like Cathy did to me, and said, “It’s time.” I remember wondering, up to that moment, if we’d know the right time. I shouldn’t have wondered; moms seem to sense when the time is right. And it’s at this point we need to know a bit more about first century houses. They typically, especially in poor houses, did not have a separate barn, out back somewhere, like we would. The stable would have been attached to the house, perhaps at a slightly lower level, or perhaps on the same level as the main room. For one thing, this meant the animals you owned were protected at night from thieves and predators. For another, especially in the colder months, the animals in the house provided additional heat (Bailey 29). And so when the time came for Mary to give birth, the stable also provided a more private place in a house full of company for her to deliver her child. She wasn’t alone, as we often picture it. She was surrounded by Joseph’s family, maybe even a midwife of sorts, and in that place, “she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger” (2:7; Hamilton 98). A manger was a feeding trough; it’s what the animals ate out of. This was no sanitary hospital, and contrary to what we will sing as we light candles this coming week, it was not a silent night. Do you know any mother who is silent while she is giving birth? Do you know any baby who is silent when he’s thrust out of a warm womb into a cold world? This was not the picture-perfect silent night. This was a normal birth, taking place in a stable, with the baby eventually laid in a feeding trough. And I can’t help but wonder if, at some point, Mary leaned back, looked around, and with tears in her eyes, thought or said, “This is not how I pictured it. I thought I’d be in Nazareth with my mother, my family, my midwife. I thought I’d be at home, not here, ten days from home, in a stable. This is not how I pictured it. This is not what I wanted for my son.” Contrary to our mental images of that first Christmas, Jesus came into the mess and the muddle of ordinary, noisy, crowded, complex life. Into the messiness and the pain of our world, he was born, and he spent at least his first night sleeping in a feeding trough. “It was disappointing and depressing and hard. Life can be that way” (Hamilton 100).

Don’t get me wrong—I love the song “Silent Night,” and Christmas Candlelight isn’t complete for me until we sing that every year. But I think sometimes, too, when we have this idea that Jesus’ birth was anything other than ordinary, we give the impression that you can’t really follow Jesus if your life is a mess, if your life is anything but “calm and bright.” That’s one of those layers we’ve put over the Christmas story, and I believe it’s one of the stumbling blocks that keeps people who are in a mess from coming to Jesus. It was not a silent night. It was a holy night, to be sure, but it was messy, and muddled, and for Mary, it took place in the midst of a journey she didn’t want to take. Some of us are on journeys like that right now. In the midst of the joy and the celebration of the season, we’re traveling a road we never imagined we would travel. And it’s hard. And it’s messy. And we’re wondering if there is any hope.

Maybe it’s a journey of a marriage that seems to be falling apart, and you’ve gotten to the point where you are just two people co-existing, or maybe you’ve had your spouse walk out on you, and this unexpected journey is not where you want to be this Christmas. Maybe you’ve lost a spouse or a loved one, or you’ve faced medical diagnoses that you simply can’t do anything about. Your life has become one trip to the doctor after another, and that’s not the kind of life you planned on. Maybe there’s something from your past that has caught up with you, and you thought it was long behind you. I know some of you have lost your job, and the journey you’ve been on seems endless, and you’re not sure whether it’s time to just take any job or try to get some new training. Some have ventured out and started a new position or a new ministry, and it’s just not worked out the way you hoped it would. I have a friend who has such a deep heart for ministry, but the doors just aren’t opening like he thought they would by now. Did he miss God’s call? Is he somehow on the wrong path? It’s hard; he’s not sure where the next paycheck is coming from. Still others of us are struggling with children who are on a destructive path, and no matter what we do, it seems we can’t turn them around. We know they’re going to hurt themselves and others, but our words fall on deaf ears. Many sleepless nights have been spent crying and praying and worrying over what they will do next. Maybe there is addiction, or broken friendships, or misunderstandings—life has its moments of disappointments and times of overwhelming sorrow or intense pain (Hamilton 100-101). Mary’s journey to Bethlehem reminds us that sometimes we end up on journeys we’d rather not take.

And yet, in the midst of the mess, Mary had a confidence that God had called her on this journey. She must have held tight to the words of the angel who appeared to her nine months before, that God was blessing her. This didn’t look much like blessing, but Mary knew that God has a broader view of things than we do. God had been with her all through these nine months; there was no reason to think that God would abandon her now. I wonder if the whole journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem was, in some way, God reminding Mary of that truth. As they passed by all those places where God had been found to be faithful to people in the past, Mary could find her faith strengthened that, just as God had been with them in their difficult situations, God would be with her in this one. I remember one Thursday evening—and the reason I remember it was Thursday is because it was my day off in those days—but I got a call to come to the hospital if I could because one of our pastors, John Paul Jones, was having emergency surgery that night. An unwanted journey in the middle of the night. So I hurried over there, and got to visit with John Paul for a while, then the senior pastor came in and we gathered around John Paul’s bed with his family and we prayed. And after we finished, John Paul looked at us and said, “The best of all is, God is with us.” As it turned out, those were among John Paul’s last words. He never woke up after that surgery, but at his funeral, every one of his family members expressed the faith that God was with them and God had been with John Paul during that unwanted journey. Mary reminds us to have a confidence that God has called us on this journey, even if we never understand the reasons for it. God does with us.

We have that confidence because of the Bible’s resounding chorus that there is nothing God can’t redeem. His name, throughout the Bible, is redeemer, and there’s this great picture in the book of Joel in the Old Testament, where the prophet sees a devastating locust swarm coming on the land, destroying the crops and ruining everything. The prophet sees it coming as an act of judgment on God’s part, and it probably is. It’s probably also more than just locusts, because there is a promise of an army that is coming to destroy the people because of their lack of repentance before God. It’s a horribly devastating image. But then, there’s this picture: God calls the people to return to him with all their heart, and when they do, God says, “I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten” (Joel 2:25). I will redeem all that you think is lost. In the midst of an unwanted journey, Mary and Joseph both knew this baby being born was going to bring redemption to the world. This baby was going to save the world. His name, both were told, was to be “Jesus,” which means “God saves.” And the angel even went further in telling Joseph, “You are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). So though this birth looked nothing like Mary thought it would, and though this journey had been unbelievably difficult, she knew that, in some way, God was working through her in this baby to save people from their sins.

And that, ultimately, is what this season is about. Christmas is about hope—about having hope and about giving hope, even when (especially when) life gets hard. Pastor Adam Hamilton writes, “We are called to be prisoners of hope—captured by hope, bound by it, unable to let go of it. Hope is a decision we make, a choice to believe that God can take the adversity, the disappointment, the heartache, and the pain of our journeys and use these to accomplish his purposes” (102). Did you hear that? Hope is a choice. I’ve known people who have made the choice for it and against it—and their lives reflect that choice. Those who live with hope tend to face adversity with more confidence and more strength than those for whom the slightest stumble is an invitation to give up. And sometimes the choice for hope is seen in the decision to hang on to someone else’s hope when you feel you have none of your own. Some of you know it’s been a difficult year for me personally and professionally. In the midst of many, many good things happening here at the church, there have been some significant disappointments and some things said to me that were very hurtful. And there was a patch this fall where I wasn’t sure I wanted to do this anymore. I was on an unwanted journey and, honestly, I was ready to give up. I’m only still standing here this evening/morning because there were a few people who poured hope into my life and helped me see it, too. I’m forever thankful for those saints, but they remind me of our need not only to grab onto hope but to be available, in our hope-filled days, to pour hope into someone else’s life. This baby came to give hope in the midst of difficult and unwanted journeys. He came to give the hope of salvation to every man, woman and child. And we, his followers, are his ambassadors (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:20), offering that same hope to our world.

Every once in a while, I get to do that, too. I’m not one who claims I’ve ever heard an audible voice from God, but there have been a few times when I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt I needed to do something at that very moment. One of those moments happened several years ago. We had a lady in the church named Barb, who was a true lady. Always put together, always very proper. When she showed up a month early for her photo directory appointment, I should have known something was wrong. A couple of weeks later, I was told she was in the hospital, so I decided I would go see her that afternoon. But there was this nagging sense that I needed to go right then, so I did. When I walked into her room, she had just been told she had advanced stage cancer, and that there was nothing the doctors could do. No family was around, and why they told her that without her family is beyond me, but we got a chance that morning to talk about hope, to pray and to commit whatever was left of Barb’s life to Christ. I did not see her again; she died very quickly after that. But Barb, that day, faced her unwanted journey with hope—not because of anything I said, but because she trusted in the baby of Bethlehem who came to bring us life and peace and love and hope and salvation.

Where do you need hope this evening/morning? As we pray, can you entrust even that situation, that unwanted journey, to Jesus? Let’s pray.