So everyone knows that Jesus was born in
Bethlehem, was born in a stable, and was placed in a manger. I mean, even
people who don’t believe in Jesus know that’s what the Bible says. We talk about it every year. We sing “O
Little Town of Bethlehem”. We sing “Away
in a Manger.” It’s one of the basic
things of the Christmas story that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and was found in
a manger.
But why? Why Bethlehem? Why a stable? Why a manger? Of all the decisions God
made about how the divine Son of God would be born, this has to be the
strangest. We’ve heard this story so much that we stop thinking about it,
but in human terms this is something that makes no sense whatsoever. If
you had not heard this story, and somebody asked you how the Savior of the
world should be born, something like this would never occur to you.
Just choosing Bethlehem in the first place is a strange
decision. Why Bethlehem? Bethlehem
was nowhere. Bethlehem was this little
dink town. Sure, it was the City of David, but that was a long time
ago. Now, it was just a little place
about six or seven miles from Jerusalem. Jerusalem was where the action was.
Bethlehem? It was hardly worth the
time it took to go there. It’d be like
having the Savior be born in Vivian. I
mean, no offense to Vivian--some of Wanda’s family came from there--but it’s
not like it’s this thriving metropolis that you’d expect someone important to
come from.
One answer might be that Jesus had to be born in Bethlehem
to fulfill Old Testament prophesies. After all, the prophet Micah had
said that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. But that begs the question. All that
shows is that God had already decided Jesus would be born in Bethlehem at the
time God talked to Micah, right? If God had decided Jesus should be born
in Jerusalem, or Nazareth, or Corinth, or anyplace else God would’ve told that
to Micah, and that would’ve been the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.
So while the birth in Bethlehem did fulfill Old Testament prophecy, it
does not tells us why God gave that prophecy to Micah in the first place.
When you think about it, it almost seems like God went out
of His way to have the birth be in Bethlehem. After all, Bethlehem was
not a place that Joseph and Mary would’ve chosen to go to on their own. They only went there because the government
told them they had to. They had to report to Bethlehem because that was
Joseph’s ancestral home, and they had to go there for the census. It was about eighty to a hundred miles from
Nazareth to Bethlehem, and of course it was all on foot back then, so it’s not
like they’d have gone there very often. It looks like God timed this out
deliberately. It looks like God made the
deliberate choice to have the divine Son be born to Mary and Joseph at the one
time that they would be in Bethlehem.
And why a stable? Why a manger? You’d think the least God could do is to
arrange to have Jesus be born in a decent place. A house, at least. With a midwife, or a friend, or someone
there to help. You know, when the angel Gabriel told Mary that she would
be the mother of the divine Son of God, Gabriel somehow forgot to mention this
part of it. Mary and Joseph both had to be wondering, what’s going on
here? This is what God wants?
This is how the divine Son is supposed to be born? In a
barn? With a bunch of smelly animals
around? What’s going on here?
The Bible does not give us answers to any of these
questions, of course. The Bible does that to us a lot, you know? Don’t get me wrong, that’s not a criticism of
the Bible. The Bible is God’s word to us, and I understand that I have no
right to criticize God’s word. God,
through the Bible, has told us everything we need to know. But God has
not told us everything we’d like to know.
And I’d really like to know this:
why was the divine Son of God born in such a strange way?
So here’s what I think. I think God’s choice was an
act of love. I think God’s choice of having the divine Son of God born in
this way was made as a way for God to tell us how much God loves us.
I think that God knew it was
very important for people to know and remember that Jesus was born in the same
way that every human being is born. Why?
Well, think about this. Suppose
we did not know the story of Jesus’ birth.
Suppose we knew nothing of his parents, of his early life, any of that. Suppose
the first thing we knew about Jesus was when he was an adult, thirty years old
or so, and started working miracles, beginning with the miracle at Cana.
If Jesus had burst on the scene in that way, Jesus would
still be an awesome figure. But think of what we’d lose. We’d lose the human side of Jesus. He’d come to us fully formed, as a prophet,
as a miracle worker, as a God. We could still acknowledge his greatness. We could still admire his wisdom. We could even still worship him. But it would be a lot harder to love him.
It would seem like Jesus was totally beyond and above anything we’d ever
seen or ever would see. Jesus would be
on a higher plane, on a level we could never reach.
We’d still respect him.
Maybe we’d even fear him. But we would not be able to relate to
him. It would be a lot harder to believe that Jesus could really know
what we’re going through. It would be a lot harder to believe that Jesus
could really understand our struggles.
It would be harder, basically, to believe that Jesus could know what
it’s like to be a human being. And so, it would be harder for us to love
Jesus, or to believe that Jesus could really love us.
The reason we can know that
Jesus does understand our struggles, the reason we can believe that Jesus does
know what we go through, does know what it’s like to be a human being, is
because we know the story of his birth. We know that Jesus was born as a
baby, in the same way that you and I and everyone else is born. We know that he had human parents who raised
him. We know that he had to go through
all the stages of growth that you and I do. He had to be a baby, and then
a little kid, and then an older kid, and then a young adult. He had to learn all the things about being an
adult that you and I had to learn. He
had to make some mistakes and grow and learn from them.
In saying that, I’m not saying
that Jesus sinned. I’m just saying that, for example, the first time
Joseph had Jesus try to build something in the carpenter’s shop by himself, it
probably did not turn out to be perfect. Joseph had to show him how to do
it, and then show him again, and then show him again, until Jesus learned how
to do it right. That’s how all of us
learn how to do stuff--by trying, by making some mistakes, by trying again, and
by continuing to try until we get it right. And Jesus had to go through
that.
Jesus had to go through all the
things we go through. He had to learn how to make friends. He had to learn how to deal with it when
people did not like him. He had to learn how to deal with it when people
he thought were his friends betrayed him.
And I could go on and on. All the things we deal with--all the
things that make life what it is--Jesus went through all that. And because we know he went through all that,
we can relate to Jesus. We can know that Jesus does understand. We can know that Jesus does love us. And we can love him, too. But it’s only possible because we know the
human side of Jesus.
Because it was so important
that we know the human side of Jesus, God had to have Jesus’ birth happen in a
really memorable way. It happened in the little dink town of Bethlehem
because that’s where a traveling woman giving birth would be noticed. If it’d happened in Jerusalem, no one
would’ve thought anything about it. It’d be like a birth in New York
City--there’s a bunch of them every day, and other than the people involved no
one knows and no one cares. But in
Bethlehem, everybody noticed. Probably
everyone in town knew about this woman who’d just had a child.
And just to make sure everyone
knew, Jesus was born in a barn. Out with the animals. Jesus was born in this strange, unusual way
so that everyone would know the story, and everyone would remember the story.
Remember, the gospel of Luke was written, as far as we can tell, in about
70 A. D. That means it was written about
seventy years after Jesus was born. Luke was not there, obviously. As far as we know, he never even met
Jesus. He was learning of all these
things after the fact. Which means that
he must have found people who remembered this story, or at least were told
about this story, seventy years after it happened. The only way people
would remember something like that so many years later is if it happened in a
really strange, unusual way that people would remember.
God wants us to know that God
knows what it’s like to be human. God wants us to know that God
understands what we’re going through. God wants us to know that God loves
us. And God wants us to be able to
relate to God, so that we can love God. And God chose this strange,
unusual way for the divine Son of God to be born so that we’d know all that.
As we celebrate the incredible
gift of Christmas, let’s make sure we celebrate what God did to make sure we’d
know and remember that gift. Let’s truly be grateful to God that we know
and can remember the strange, unusual, wonderful story of the birth of Jesus
Christ.
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