Luke 2:1-14
A. INTRODUCTION
The preparation for the birth of a baby should be an exciting time, particularly if it is to be the first born in the family. Apart from the feelings of expectation, regarding the birth itself, the period should be a time when there is plenty of excitement regarding the planning for the birth, with all the decisions to be made, and the jobs to be done.
For example, there’s the decision about where the baby is to sleep. There’s the getting of the cot, and deciding whether the room for the baby needs re-decoration. Then, there’s decisions about what kind of clothes to buy—and the colours. Then, there’s the difficult decision over nappies. Should you use cloth or disposable or a mixture of both? And what quantities are required? And then there are the toys: the decisions about what to get. However, frankly, sometimes I wonder whether some of the toys are really for the child, or for the parents.
And, when the preparations are over, the actual birth should be a time of excitement too. There’s the joy of seeing the baby for the first time; there’s the fascination and wonder of seeing the detail of God’s handiwork in the little bundle of joy; there’s the emotional attachment of being able to cuddle the new born child; and for the ladies, there may well be the relief, knowing that all of the discomfort, the tiredness, the kicking, and the pain is all over (no matter what the future might bring).
Yes, the birth of a baby, and the preparations leading up to its birth, should be an exciting time. But does that seem sometimes like an ideal rather than a reality? Because, like everything else in life, plans and hopes rarely go as smoothly as we would wish.
B. THE BIRTH OF JESUS
1. Mary’s Pregnancy (1-5)
Take for example the experiences of Mary and Joseph—a story which we remind ourselves of at Christmas each year. Think of the preparations that they had to go through.
Well the biblical story doesn’t tell us at all of the preparations in their home in Nazareth. But you can imagine them deciding where the baby was going to sleep; what he was going to wear; and, with Joseph being a carpenter, the kind of toys that would have been made for his enjoyment.
However, what we do know is that no matter what preparations they made, in their home at Nazareth, they were all going to be for nothing. Because where the Bible picks up the story is Mary and Joseph on the road between Nazareth and Bethlehem—a one hundred-and-thirty-five-kilometre trek (a three day’s journey, and uphill much of the way), with Mary in an advanced state of pregnancy.
And why weren’t they at home with all their preparations, waiting eagerly for Mary to give birth? Because of politics. An unusual census was being held. The local ruler, Herod, was under pressure from Caesar to carry out an enrolment for the purpose of taxation. And that required Joseph (whose family came from Bethlehem) to be in Bethlehem to enrol. And because it was probably a poll tax—and all women twelve years of age and older were liable to pay the tax—Mary’s presence was required too, regardless of her condition.
So much for the joys of the preparations for the birth of a baby. Whatever Mary and Joseph had planned and prepared and got excited about, they had to leave it all behind them. So, here they were—on the road—being good law-abiding citizens, travelling from low-lying Galilee to the hill country of Judea. And all for the sake of politics.
2. The Birth of Jesus (6-7)
But their story doesn’t end there. Because when they arrived in Bethlehem—still with the excitement of a baby about to be born—they were faced with another situation that was far from ideal. There was nowhere suitable for Mary to give birth. There was no hotel room, no private room, and certainly no hospital bed. And there was nothing suitable to rest Jesus in after his birth, except for an animal’s feeding trough. All they had were the clothes that they had brought in readiness—strips of cloth like bandages, that Mary wrapped the baby in (as was the tradition of the time) to keep the young infant straight.
3. Comment
Now I’m sure, despite everything, Mary and Joseph would still have taken great delight in the arrival of baby Jesus. There would have been the joy of seeing the baby for the first time; there would have been the fascination of seeing the detail of God’s handiwork; and there would have been the emotional attachment, particularly of Mary with the baby. But a less than an ideal birth? Well I think you would agree.
4. The Shepherds (8-14)
But, of course, one of the strange things about this story is that the less than perfect start to Jesus’s life doesn’t end there. Because the story then takes us way out into the fields, to some shepherds. And although this part of the story is good news, it does start on a rather negative note.
Because the first thing that we are told about the shepherds is that they were there not for their own pleasure, or that they liked being surrounded by sheep, or that the sheep needed lots of attention. No! They were there to protect their herds against thieves and wild animals. Hardly, the ideal continuation to the story of the birth of God’s one and only son.
However, just as the birth of Jesus for Mary and Joseph would have turned their minds from all their mucked-up preparations and hopes to feelings of joy, so too the feelings of the shepherds would have changed too with the appearance of an angel.
On their guard against robbers, and initially fearful of the angel, they too would have taken great delight in the news of the birth of the baby—a baby who was special, who was different, and who had been sent by God to bring salvation to the world.
And of course, as the story continues, the shepherds went off to find the baby as they had been instructed. And, when they found everything that they had been told, they couldn’t contain themselves with their excitement.
However, I wonder, in the climate of the day, whether they went off to see the child, they had left at least someone behind to look after the sheep.
C. SUMMARY
Oh, the joys of having a baby!!!
Ideally, in our society the preparation and the birth itself should be an exciting time—a time when all plans and hopes come to fruition. But life’s not always like that—not for us, and it certainly wasn’t like that for Mary and Joseph either.
D. COMMENT – WHY NOT AN IDEAL BIRTH?
1. The Obvious Question
Now, of course, we could ask the obvious question: ‘If Jesus was God’s Son, couldn’t God have done a better job regarding the birth of his only son? Couldn’t he have made it more of an ideal birth?
After all, if God is really God, couldn’t he have made sure the census didn’t happen until later? Or, if the census was to go ahead at that time, couldn’t he have made sure that there was suitable accommodation for Mary and Joseph on their arrival in Bethlehem? And couldn’t he have chosen a group of people to send to them whose work did not have them on guard against thieves and robbers?
Well, I guess he could have. But in doing so, God would not have been consistent with the God that he claims to be.
Because there are at least three things regarding Jesus’s birth that we need to consider.
2. Why Not an Ideal Birth?
And the first is that although God was the creator of the world, he is actively concerned with the world he created, which has subsequently been corrupted by mankind.
Now that may seem an odd thing to say, except for the fact that we are not puppets. God has given his creation freewill—the ability to make their own decisions, and decisions which are not always conducive to a healthy relationship with either our creator, or his creation.
The kind of world that we live in then, and the kind of world that Jesus was born in, although originally made perfect, had been corrupted, and was far from perfect and far from ideal.
So should God have wiped away all of that, or even a part of it—including our freedom to make choices—so that his son could have an ideal birth? Or was his son to be born in the world in which we live, with all the consequences that go with it?
3. Why Jesus?
Secondly, it’s because this world is imperfect that Jesus had to be born here in the first place. Our way of life—our freewill in choosing the wrong things—is the barrier between us and God. And God needed someone to break that barrier down, so that he could treat it as though it doesn’t exist.
And effectively that’s what Jesus did for all who put their trust in him, when he gave up his life on the cross. But he couldn’t have done that by overriding his own laws or his rules of creation.
4. Why Mary and Joseph?
And thirdly, God needed to show to the ordinary people of life, that he was very much aware of their toils and troubles. And it is because of this that God chose two ordinary people, Mary and Joseph, with all their struggles and hardships to make the whole thing possible.
Yes, somewhere down the line they may have had important people in their families. But by the time of the birth of Jesus, they were just ordinary people.
5. Summary
You see if Jesus had had an ideal birth, he could not have become the saviour of the world.
If Jesus’s birth had been ideal, God would have had to ignore his own rules. And the fact that he made his creation with ‘freewill’, God would have had to have ignored the barriers between himself and his own creation. And God would have had to have shown a total disregard for the ordinary people of life in the process.
E. COMMENT
Now, we all like a happy ending, and we all like our plans and hopes to be fulfilled, just as we had wished them to be. As a consequence, the story of the birth of Jesus is often told with many of the hardships glossed over, remembering only the happy, and idyllic scene of the baby, surrounded by the shepherds (and sometimes surrounded by kings). And that’s understandable. We all like a happy ending.
But the hardships for Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus didn’t end there. Indeed, they had to escape to Egypt for their lives. And only when King Herod died were they able to return to their home at Nazareth.
F. CONCLUSION
A less than ideal birth? For sure it was. But the importance of the hardships in the story of Mary and Joseph cannot be over emphasised. The hardships bring into focus that this world is less than perfect, caused by our preference to make choices—as an individual, as a community, and as a nation—which are contrary to a good relationship with God, and are contrary to a good relationship with his creation.
The hardships remind us of the barrier between God and his creation, and the reason why God had to intervene at all—the need for the ‘Jesus’ solution. And the hardships are a reminder of the ordinary people of life, the people for whom God is most concerned. Ordinary people who are very much involved in the struggles of life. People like Mary, people like Joseph, people like the shepherds, and people like you and me.
So the birth of Jesus is about how God had identified a problem, but had also come up with a solution. A solution that included a less than ideal birth.
But is it a solution we have accepted and embraced for ourselves?
Posted: 9th December 2023
© 2023, Brian A Curtis
www.brianacurtis.com.au
