The most remarkable thing about the Christmas story is that it is basically very unremarkable.
What is so impressive about it is – that it is so very unimpressive.
It is simplicity squared.
It is the story of ordinary people caught up in an ordinary event in some very ordinary places.
Everything is so earthy.
Everything is so dirty. It is not clean and pristine. Nothing is sanitary. It is so very human.
The gurgling baby makes a mess.
There is weakness and helplessness… and uncertainty. It is uncomfortable…
And yet, we have become so very comfortable with the story. Most of us know it by heart.
Many of us can lip-sinc the words as the story is told. We are that familiar, that comfortable with it.
Luke, the author is not writing history. He is writing theology in narrative or story form which makes it – all the more interesting. It is sometimes even poetic.
The story starts out by noting the big wheels of the world and how much they like to jerk the little people around.
It is the power of Rome that makes Joseph dance to its tune, sending him across country to get “counted” so that Rome could become even “more effective” at taking “his” money for taxes.
So, it all begins with a journey. A long journey. A seventy-mile journey on foot. Dusty. Dirty. Sweaty. There is the uncertainty of being lost in strange surroundings and having to be away from friends back in Nazareth.
Mary finds it most tiring and difficult to walk. No one else notices or much less cares.
Oh, and the story has its twists and turns, too! The poor husband has to also desperately seek lodging for his very pregnant wife, bearing a child that he did not father.
It is a story that would hardly arouse any interest in it. It seems almost silly that anyone would want to deliberately record such a story for posterity…
Day turns into night, night into day…and still they travel…it will no doubt become a seven or a ten day journey … they have their marching orders on the beaten paths.
The time comes…the “all important time”… as in… “its time”…and a place must be quickly found…the journey ends out of necessity…they have arrived in Bethlehem…
Timing is everything.
A simple manger, a portable feeding trough for smaller animals – becomes the appointed spot. There — the newly-born-infant-child is laid.
Fragile, small, helpless and totally dependent…it is a boy! A small boy-child – in urgent need of human touch, human warmth and human care. The child is in need of human adult protection. The baby cries to be fed. It hungers, as do we all.
Nothing too exciting here.
That is until the “intruders” come. …Shepherds minding their flocks on the hillsides. Stinky, smelly, dirty shepherds smelling of sheep…aglow with strange stories to tell…
These men are socially shunned by others – because their work keeps them from observing all the requirements of their religion. They are outcastes, not to be trusted.
They come filled with visions of angels and heavenly host who tell them the good news of the birth – of one so small.
They come with tales of the birth of a “savior.”
When everybody knows there is but one savior and that would be Caesar Augustus. He was the winner of the Roman civil war. He defeated Brutus and Cassius, Mark Anthony and Cleopatra, ending the civil war. He was given credit for ending 13 years of chaos…and many called him “the savior of the world.” (A title he freely accepted and used!)
So what is this strange talk about another savior, who would “save us from our sins?”
But Luke is writing about the “true – savior of the world,” one from the line of the great king, David. Bethlehem just so happens to be the city of David…so do not look to Rome for your salvation, but rather, look no further…then where you are.
Look no further than beyond this simple wooden trough.
Look no further than this babe of Bethlehem.
Good news does not come from Rome, it comes from Bethlehem.
It comes from one place —the gurgling baby — who cries out to be fed.