We’re in the second week of our sermon series on Mary,
the mother of Jesus. Today we’re looking
at her trip to Bethlehem and the birth of the savior, Jesus Christ.
It was about eighty miles from Nazareth, where Mary and
Joseph lived, to Bethlehem. A lot of
times we picture Mary making the trip riding on a donkey, but the Bible does
not saying anything about them having a donkey or anything else. They might have, or they might not have. Either way, they’d have had to take some
supplies because, obviously, back then you did not get eighty miles in one
day. Given Mary’s condition, it could’ve
taken several days for them to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Then, they finally get to Bethlehem, and of
course there’s no place for them to stay.
They have to stay out in the barn with the animals.
Remember how last week we said that Mary’s faith was not
a guarantee that everything would go smoothly?
Well, this would be an example of that.
Here’s Mary, nearly ready to give birth, and she has to make a long and
difficult trip across the country, for no really good reason other than the
fact that the emperor says so.
We’re not told how Mary reacted to this, but I cannot
imagine that she was particularly happy about it. I’m not suggesting that she lost faith or
lost her willingness to serve God or anything like that. But she had to at least wonder about some
things, don’t you think? I can imagine
her thinking, “Uh, Gabriel, could you come back here again? A have a few questions for you. I mean, if this is all planned by God, could
God not have arranged for me to have this baby at home? Where I could have my family and my friends
around to help? Was it really necessary
for me to have to make this long trip and then have my child be born out in a
barn with just Joseph and a bunch of smelly animals around?”
Did you ever think about that? Why was it necessary for Jesus to be born
this way? Why could he not have been
born somewhere more comfortable, somewhere safer, somewhere better?
Well, we’ll come back to that. Because the next thing that happens in this
story is that, while Jesus is still lying in the manger, a bunch of shepherds
show up. Did you ever think about that
part from Mary’s perspective? I mean, here
Mary is, she’s just had a baby, I assume she’s probably pretty tired and just
wants to rest, and all these strangers just come barging in.
You know,
we’re told that an angel told these shepherds to go to Bethlehem to see Jesus,
but nothing says any angel told Mary and Joseph to expect them. What do you suppose Mary thought about
this? We don’t how many shepherds there
were, but here they come, wanting to see her baby. And they probably smell about as bad as the
animals, you know? And she has no idea
what they’re doing there. What do they
want with Jesus? Do they want to hurt
him? Are they going to take him away? What’s going on?
We’re not told
what the shepherds did while they were there.
We’re told what they did afterward, and we’ll come back to that,
too. But Mary had no way to know what
was going to happen. All she knew is
that they came, they saw, and they left.
And Mary and Joseph were finally alone with Jesus. And the animals, of course.
So let’s go
back to the question we asked earlier.
Why was it necessary for Jesus to be born this way? Why could he not have been born somewhere
more comfortable, somewhere safer, somewhere better? And what’s the point of these strangers,
these shepherds, intruding on the story?
Well, I don’t
think God would’ve left something like the birth of the savior to chance. There were reasons why Jesus had to be born
in that way. And I’m sure I don’t know
all of them, but I think maybe I know at least one of them.
And it has to
do with the shepherds, those improbable shepherds who without warning just drop
in on Mary and Joseph, see Jesus, and then leave. What does the Bible say about them? It says “When they had seen him, they spread
the word concerning what they had seen, and all who heard it were amazed by
what the shepherds said to them.”
The shepherds
spread the word. See, if Mary had given
birth to Jesus in Nazareth, with her family and friends around, there would’ve
been nothing remarkable about his birth.
He would’ve been just another baby, one of many who were born in
Nazareth. There’d have been no birth
story for people to remember.
But why is
that important? Why do we need to know
Jesus’ birth story? Well, remember who
Jesus was. Jesus was the fully divine
son of God, but Jesus was also fully human.
He was the word made flesh. But
without that birth story, the human side of Jesus could’ve been lost. We would still know the divine Jesus, but we
might not know the human Jesus. We would
not know the Jesus who did what we do, who experienced what we experience, who
felt what we feel. We would not know the
Jesus who felt joy and sorrow and happiness and sadness. We would not know the Jesus who experienced
real pain in the process of crucifixion.
We would not know the Jesus who experienced real death, just as we will
some day. And we would not know the
Jesus who triumphed over that real death, conquering death not just for himself
but for us, too.
But when Jesus
was born in this strange, unusual way, everyone knew about it. The shepherds spread the word far and
wide. And I suspect they did not just
talk about this for a few days. They
told and re-told and re-re-told this story for years. After all, this was the most important thing
that ever happened to those shepherds.
And everyone they heard was amazed by it. And they told and re-told the story,
too. I would think that the story of
Jesus birth spread to towns all over the country. It was an incredibly memorable story. It was so memorable that people still
remembered it and told Luke about it when he went to write his gospel years
after Jesus’ death.
So you may be
thinking, well, this is all interesting, kind of anyway, but what’s the
point? What am I supposed to take away
from all this?
Well,
sometimes, we think—in fact, we’re convinced—that we’re doing what God wants us
to do. And sometimes, when that happens,
it seems like God paves the way for us, everything just falls into place, and
we feel like that proves we were right.
Sometimes that
happens. But not always. Sometimes, we think—and in fact, we’re
convinced—that we’re doing what God wants us to do, and it seems like nothing
is going right. It seems like not only
is God not making it easy for us, it seems like God is going out of his way to
make things harder for us? Not only are
things not falling into place, things we took for granted are suddenly falling
out of place. And we don’t understand
it. And we wonder what’s going on. And maybe, we even start to wonder if we
really got the message right, whether we really are doing what God wants us to
do.
Well, those
are legitimate questions to ask. But we
should not jump to conclusions about the answers. Because sometimes, when we’re doing what God
wants us to do, things don’t go the way we think they should go. Sometimes, God takes us along what seems to
us to be a really strange path. And yet,
that path still takes us where God wants us to go. And in fact, that path has benefits we never
would’ve thought of, and that path is better than if we’d just taken the easy,
straight road that we thought God should have taken us on.
God has plans
that we don’t know. God has plans that
we will never know. God does not tell us
we need to know everything. God tells us
to trust and to have faith. If God has
led us to start down a path, then all we need to do is stay on that path, no
matter how many twists and turns it takes.
Because that’s the path that will get us where God wants us to go, and
it will get us there in the way God wants us to get there.
I don’t doubt
that Mary had questions. I don’t doubt
that Mary wondered why things were the way they were. But I also have no doubt that, despite her
questions, Mary continued to trust God.
Mary continued to have faith.
Nowhere in the Bible do we read even a hint that Mary may have had
second thoughts about any of this. Mary
trusted God and had faith. And things
turned out, not the way Mary might have planned them, but the way God planned
them.
So if we’re
doing what we think God wants us to do, and it seems like things are not going
the way they should, let’s do what Mary did.
Trust God. Have faith. It’s okay to have questions and wonder about
things, but continue to trust God.
Continue to have faith. Things
may not turn out the way we would’ve planned them. But they will turn out the way God has
planned them.
No comments:
Post a Comment