World Peace
(Luke 2: 1-20)
The running joke at my house every Christmas for the last forty plus years is my response to what I want for Christmas this year. And every year, when asked, I respond: World Peace. This year my daughter told me that she knew I wanted World Peace, but she just couldn’t pull it off, so she got me the next best thing: a heated windshield ice scraper. You plug it in to what used to be your cigarette lighter on the dashboard, it heats up and once it gets hot enough you scrape the melting ice off your windshield with remarkable ease. I may be the first kid on my block to have one. What will they think of next? I guess I’ll just have to wait until next year for that elusive World Peace.
And it’s the promise of lasting world peace that Luke is writing about in our gospel reading for this evening. He’s writing about the birth of the long-awaited Jewish Messiah who will one day bring a lasting peace to the world. It’s important for us to remember that Luke was a gentile himself, a Greek, and a physician, and that his primary audience were non-Jews as opposed to the intended Jewish audience that Matthew wrote to in his gospel. Matthew’s audience would have been keenly interested in the back story and how this little boy born in a manger was connected to all of the ancient prophesies foretelling the coming Messiah. Luke writes like an ancient historian bringing it all together, setting for future generations like you and me, the time and the place.
He starts out by telling us that in those days Caesar Augustus declared that everyone throughout the Roman Empire should be enrolled in the tax lists and that this first enrollment occurred when Quirinius governed Syria. Caesar Augustus was famed for supporting “pax Romana”, Roman peace, but peace was not free, nor was it cheap. So, a Roman census or registration was taken to aid military conscription and tax collection. The Jews weren’t required to serve in the Roman Army, but they were required to pay taxes to support their occupiers. To get an accurate head count, everyone was required to go to their own cities, where they were from, to be enrolled. That seems somewhat inconvenient. It would require me to go all the way across the country to Syracuse to register, but it wasn’t done for the convenience of the occupied. Luke tells us that since Joseph belonged to David’s house and family line, he went up from the city of Nazareth in Galilee to David’s city, called Bethlehem, in Judea. For a single guy, not a big problem, but Joseph was engaged to Mary who was very pregnant and probably should have stayed at home resting. But Luke tells us that while they were there in Bethlehem the time came for Mary to have her baby. He says: She gave birth to her firstborn child, a son, wrapped him snugly, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the guestroom. Now, one of my study Bibles says that the guestroom was probably not a room in a commercial hotel, but rather the lower level of the typical two-story home in ancient Palestine. It kind of reminds me of my house in Port Townsend. We live upstairs and have converted the downstairs into an apartment which functions as a vacation rental for out-of-town tourists. I guess if Joseph and Mary had shown up at my house they could have made a space for themselves in my garage amongst the bicycles, exercise machine, snow tires, lawn equipment, trash bins, and other assorted unused junk. In any event, they had to make do in the home’s stable out back.
Luke continues by telling us that nearby there were shepherds who were living in the fields, guarding the sheep at night. Now shepherding back then was a looked-down-upon occupation in the eyes of the first century elites and were pretty much looked at like some people look at homeless people now. As they were trying to stay warm and make sure no predators snuck into the pens, an angel of the Lord stood before them scaring them out of their wits. The angel said: Don’t be afraid! Look! I bring good news to you—wonderful, joyous news for all people. Your savior is born today in David’s city. He is Christ the Lord. This is a sign for you: you will find a newborn baby wrapped snugly and lying in a manger. You can just imagine how startled and shocked they were. An angel of the Lord telling them about the birth of their long-awaited savior before telling anyone else! It would be like an angel of the Lord appearing at a homeless encampment today and announcing the birth of the Christ. This is more significant than we think, as God sent one of his angels to earth to tell the lowly, the poor, the disenfranchised that the one who will bring world peace is born. The angel didn’t appear at the temple in Jerusalem or at the home of the high priest. He appeared before the ones who most needed to hear the Good News. And, as if this wasn’t startling enough, a great assembly of the heavenly forces was with the angel praising God saying: Glory to God in heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors. They’re probably thinking nobody is going to believe them and that they will be accused of being passed out drunk and having a bad dream. So, after the angels returned to heaven they decided to go to Bethlehem and check it out for themselves and confirm what they had been told by the angel of the Lord. They quickly found Mary, Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger just as the angel had told them. When they saw this, they shared with Mary and Joseph what they had just experienced and had been told about the child. Mary and Joseph were amazed at what they, the shepherds, had been told and they too probably thought it was odd that lowly, homeless shepherds would be the first to get this amazing birth announcement. Luke tells us that Mary committed these things to memory and considered them carefully, pondering the deeper meaning and significance of what had just transpired. Luke closes out this passage telling us that the shepherds returned to their fields glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.
Luke, in his gospel, is radically proclaiming that this baby lying in a manger is salvation in the flesh. And by referring to Jesus as the Lord, he is clarifying Jesus’ divine status and at the same time asserts that this baby, not Caesar Augustus nor any other king, ruler, president, or dictator, is the real savior of the world. They’re all just inconsequential wannabes. That’s a hard pill for some to swallow, that they aren’t who they think they are and that one more powerful and peaceful than they is the one true king.
God’s plan and his way of doing things is all pretty amazing. His playbook is pretty unconventional. For ages the faithful and devout Jews had waited for this, and when it finally occurred, the announcement came to humble shepherds. This was not the atmosphere the Jews expected as the birthplace of the Messiah King. They assumed their promised Messiah would be born in royal surroundings. And it took a decree issued by Emperor Augustus for Jesus to be born in the very town prophesied for his birth in Micah 5: 2, even though his parents did not live there. To say that God moves and acts in ways we will never understand is an understatement as shown by Jesus’ humble birth. I mean, you would think that the birthing of the future savior of mankind would have been a little easier and more sanitary, but it goes to show you that when we do God’s will, like Joseph and Mary, we are not guaranteed comfort and convenience, but we are promised that everything, even the discomfort and inconvenience, has meaning in God’s plan just as it had meaning for the lowly shepherds.
The good news about Jesus is that he comes to all, including the plain and ordinary, especially the plain and ordinary. He comes to anyone with a heart humble enough to accept him. We mustn’t think that we need extraordinary qualifications or status to be accepted by him. He will gladly accept us just as we are. And when he accepts us into his family as brothers and sisters, he offers us more than temporary political or physical changes, he offers us new hearts that will last for eternity. He offers us world peace.
Let us pray.
Gracious and loving Father, how we praise you for the gift of your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ and the miracle of his humble birth. We praise you for the manner of His royal birth announcement as it signified that He was coming to save the lost, the neglected, the despised, the unimportant, and, yes, us too. We praise you for His inclusiveness and that anyone and everyone who accepts him as Savior is equally accepted into your family. Move us by your Spirit to share this Good News with as many people as we can, in as many ways as we can, and in as many places as we can. This we ask in Jesus’ name, Amen.
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World Peace
He offers us new hearts that will last for eternity. He offers us world peace.