Getting To Bethlehem
a sermon by Rev. Rebecca Segers
Luke 2: 1-20
Matthew 2:1-12
As I began my journey to Bethlehem this week, I chose my scripture lessons – not too hard a job – and came up with my sermon title. Then something happened that often happens to me during the trek from the first thought or germ of an idea that I have about what I’m going to say. The sermon God had me write was not where I’d thought I was going at all. Now usually I map this all out on Monday, and when I come in on Thursday and ask my secretary, Denise, “Have you printed up the bulletins because my sermon title has changed….”, she laughs and replies, “Of course not. I knew this was going to happen.” Well, this week was different, because I’m preaching on a Friday, the week got compressed and by the time I got to the point that I usually am – well, the short version is, folks, my sermon title has changed.
I call this one “Getting to Bethlehem.” After all, that’s where we’re all going tonight, isn’t it? After weeks of anticipation – in worship service, at least, if not out in the secular world – after weeks of waiting, weeks of wishing it were time, weeks of thinking if only we could be there, we finally get to Bethlehem to see the Savior born. We come with awe and with excitement, imagining the precious child lying in the manger surrounded by angels and shepherds and wise men and, of course, Mary and Joseph. We envision the beauty of the scene and feel our eyes well up with tears of comfort and familiarity and hope. We hear the words that the angel has proclaimed, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth, peace, goodwill toward all.” We want desperately to be a part of that promise, that promise of peace and goodwill, but we don’t even know where to begin.
As I reread these beloved texts over and over again in preparation for this sermon, I noticed something that I had never noticed before: The story of the birth of Jesus is actually not the story of the birth of Jesus at all – In Luke, it is the story of the trip to Bethlehem by Mary and Joseph, and the story of the shepherds who were visited by the angelic heavenly host and their journey to see the baby. In Matthew’s gospel, it is the story of the wise men and their trip through treacherous territory to find the Prince of Peace. In all of these stories, only one lone verse speaks of Jesus’ actual birth. Luke 2:7 says: “(S)he gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”
That’s it. That’s the only verse that talks about the baby and the picture that we hold in our minds of the manger scene all comes from this one particular verse alone. All the rest of the story is about anyone and everyone except Jesus getting to Bethlehem.
Getting to Bethlehem. It’s ironic in a way, because scholars now think that’s it’s possible Jesus wasn’t even born in Bethlehem at all. Of all the gospel stories, these two in Matthew and Luke are the only ones that speak of Jesus’ birth at all (to Mark and John that was an unimportant detail compared to Jesus’ life, death and resurrection). Matthew and Luke were probably trying to deal with an early objection by Jewish scribes and others concerning Jesus’ validity as the Messiah. You see, all through the Bible it is very clear that Jesus hails from Nazareth in Galilee – not Bethlehem. But the Scriptures, the Hebrew Scriptures, the prophetic scriptures from Isaiah that the Jews held dear to their hearts, are very clear that the Messiah, the one who is the Savior of Israel, is to be of the line of King David and be born in the town from which he comes, which is Bethlehem. This throws these two passages in Matthew and Luke into a whole new light. They are both trying to deal with those nay-sayers who claim that Jesus can’t possibly be the Messiah because he’s a Nazarene. They are both attempting to prove that Jesus really is from Bethlehem, in fact he was born there. The problem is, they tell two different stories.
Luke opens his passage with a discussion of the census and the need for Joseph and Mary to return to his city of birth in order to register. Unfortunately, there is simply no data to support the historical accuracy of this set-up. Cyrenius didn’t become governor of Syria until 6 C.E., which is later than we like to date Jesus’ birth. And while he did conduct a census of Judea, there is no record of a registration of “all the world,” which would have been the Roman Empire, not merely Judea, to Luke, being required to register. But okay, let’s give that one to Luke – it wasn’t “all the world” who had to register, it was only the Judeans. We’re still in the ballpark here. Except the Roman system of registration didn’t require one to return to one’s place of birth or family origin. Just as we register with the census today, they were counted in their current geographical location. Furthermore, women weren’t counted. So Mary wouldn’t have been required to ride a million miles pregnant out to here on the mythical donkey that somehow got added in over the years and they likely couldn’t afford anyway. So why would Luke do this? Why would he expend so much time and energy spelling out something that is probably not historically accurate?
First of all, you have to recognize the culture of the times back then. Often, major historical figures were given biographies that included fantastical or invented events to mythologize them in their current day. It was not looked down upon as lying or exaggerating; it was the accepted biographical practice of the day. And it had a point. There truly would be a reason behind Luke – and Matthew – telling their stories they way they chose to tell them.
Let’s continue to look at Luke. Luke has a pattern of relating the gospel story to significant events and rulers of the time. If you read his gospel, it is different from the others in its worldview. It is clear that he is probably not a Jew, but a Gentile who is trying to relate to other non-Jewish people the Jewish customs and practices that it is important for them to understand in order to convert to Christianity, which is at this point in time, still an offshoot or sect within Judaism. So what does he do, but attach the gospel story to rulers and peoples that the audience he is speaking to will understand. Augustus and Cyrenius are important people that everyone knows. Also, and probably more significantly, Augustus was widely touted as a bringer of peace. By relating Jesus’ birth – and the accompanying angelic announcement of “peace on earth” – to Augustus’s decree, Luke is able to proclaim that the true bringer of peace was not Caesar Augustus but Jesus the Savior. Luke is really sticking his neck out here – for his time, these are revolutionary words and concepts. But in the midst of the revolution, Luke wants to cast his family members as law-abiding citizens who work within the Roman system. By having Joseph comply with census enrollment, he sets up a pattern that develops later – this is the first example that shows Jesus wasn’t out to overthrow the government, but rather to change the whole world order.
Finally, we get to the big one: if Jesus is a Galilean from Nazareth – which is like saying if we are New Yorkers who live on Long Island – but he is to be the prophet that Isaiah foretells, he must be born in Bethlehem. This story gets him where he needs to be in order to fulfill the prophecy.
Now Matthew tells an entirely different story: he has Mary and Joseph living in Bethlehem at the outset, and then he has to get them to Nazareth. He accomplishes this through a bloody plot of Herod’s to kill all the male children under two years of age – yet another story that has not been found that have any historical accuracy: although it is true that Herod was a particularly bloody and cruel ruler, there is no evidence that he perpetrated a plot to kill all male children under the age of two during his reign – but according to the Bible he does, so Mary and Joseph run away to Egypt to avoid Herod’s wrath and when they finally return, they move to Nazareth to be a safe distance from the bad guys.
Matthew also adds in the wise men – kings is a permutation that is not rooted accurately in the Greek, so “wise men” it is – who probably came from Persia or Babylonia and were a priestly class of experts in the arts of astrology and dreams. They have seen a star that leads them to Bethlehem and then “stands still” to show the precise spot where Jesus lives.
Matthew is also much more clearly Jewish than his contemporary, Luke, and he writes from a perspective that has a stronger scriptural foundation, but also recognizes the need to reach out to the Gentile population with this Jesus movement. So he uses the star to combine prophetic expectations – pagan beliefs associated the birth of a new ruler with astral phenomena and a broad stream of Jewish tradition related the hope for the Messiah to the “star out of Jacob.” The star thus forms something of a bridge, binding together pagan astrological hopes and Jewish biblical promises.
This is all very interesting, isn’t it? But why? Why am I up here 2000 years later telling you that these beloved stories may not be historically accurate – which I want to very clear with you doesn’t mean they aren’t “true.” There is truth in these stories that transcends any “historical accuracy” claims those who disbelieve care to make. Because ultimately, these stories have been told over and over again for a reason. The stories were written, designed, and told because Jesus’ birth has meaning, has thematic and theological significance.
Jesus, the son of David, bringer of peace, was born in Bethlehem, the city of David. The Savior of all people was born under the reign of Caesar Augustus, whose peace paled before that announced by the angels. The baby, born in a lowly cattle stall, would overthrow the powerful and raise up the oppressed. The context of Jesus’ birth serves as a commentary on his future role. It is an omen or a sign. What is important is not Luke or Matthew’s precision as historians, but in the underlying theme of their stories.
The lowly shall be raised up, the least important shall be exalted, the last shall be first. The birth of this little baby in the absolute humblest of circumstances who came to change the course of history overturns all our expectations – it did back then and it still does it today. We know who has the power – who had it then and who has it today. And it ain’t us. Although we have more than many. We’re fed and housed and clothed. We lack for nothing and expend a great deal on things that are far from necessities. Yet that promise the angel made so many years ago, “Peace on earth, goodwill toward all” is one that resonates with us still. It is one that cries out to our souls as we are overtaxed and overburdened, overrun and weary from all the demands of the Christmas season. Peace is something we all could wish for. Not only peace in the grand general sense of “no more war,” but peace in the sense of feeling complete and quiet and calm.
But the baby in the manger seems to actually be the opposite of that type of peace. Oh, the scene itself is tranquil enough. Baby, Mary, Joseph, cattle lowing, star overhead, etc. But the reality of it – the reality of a king dressed in swaddling clothes, a ruler come from Nazarene poverty, the one who is to change the world an illiterate, itinerant Jewish rabbi, that picture seems to break the peace rather than keep it. And in fact, what has the history of Christianity been known for if not for war and blood-shed? How can we claim Jesus as the Prince of Peace as the angels do given our own responses as Christians?
I’ve spent the last few days wrestling with my health and whether or not my voice would hold up for this evening’s service. At one point, I even imagined having to stand up here in silence and wondered how that would be – for you and for me. Could we stand a few moments of silence, two or three or four, much less twenty? Silence and peace – how do the two go together? Often silence is not peaceful. Yet we live with the illusion that it is. We imagine peace to be silent and silence to be peace. But there are many times when silence is not peace or peace-filled. There is the silence during a ceasefire. Or the silence before a forest fire when all the animals stop and listen before chaos breaks loose as they run for their lives. The silence of a home when a loved one has passed away and we are left alone. The silence in the eye of the storm.
If I seem to be heading off on a lot of tangents up here to you tonight, I hope that it is not simply me exposing my own streams of consciousness, but instead, that you might also see all these threads in the gospel stories that we read tonight – the threads of peace and silence and getting to Bethlehem. The threads of the journeys that we hold in our heads and our hearts. The threads that tell us it doesn’t really matter how you get there, it matters that you take the trip. It doesn’t matter if you are a wealthy wise men who is part of a caravan riding on camel and coming prepared with a gift of finest gold or if you are a shepherd, a filthy, dirty, ill-mannered, illiterate outcast in your own village. It doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile. It doesn’t matter if you “belong” or you don’t. It doesn’t matter if you make six figures and you’ve got a swimming pool in the backyard or if you rent by the week and have to go to the Community Food Council to supplement your grocery bill. It doesn’t matter if you’re five or fifty-five or a hundred and five. It doesn’t matter if you are black or white or red or yellow or green or purple or orange. It doesn’t matter if you speak English or Spanish or French or Korean or Arabic or Chinese or any or all of the above. It doesn’t matter if you show up in this church every single day, every single week or if this is the first time you’ve darkened the door of a sanctuary this year. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do or why you chose to show up tonight. What matters is that you came.
What matters is that you let go of all the responsibilities that the Christmas season brings with it, the turkey, the stuffing, the presents, the visits, the gifts, the lights, the parties, the cards….whether you had all of it or none of it accomplished by this moment in time, you left it and you answered the call of the angel, “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; You shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.”
Whether you knew it or not – you may have thought it was your mom or your wife yelling at you to “hurry up and get ready; it’s time for church” – whether you knew it or not, you heard the angel speaking. And you felt the call that follows hearing the angel’s voice. The call of the “multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward all.’”
Perhaps the story of the birth of the Jesus is not a story about him or his birth at all. Instead, it is a story about your journey, my journey, our journey to him. It is about us getting to Bethlehem. Not simply today, but every day of our lives. If we feel more compelled to get to church today than other days, then that is a wondrous thing, but maybe it is just a beginning. A baby step toward the babe in the manger who will bring us the peace for which we long. As we begin the journey to Bethlehem, because no, folks, it isn’t over yet. Even after we’ve gone home and eaten dinner and opened presents and watched football and put away the tree and the trimmings, the journey to Bethlehem has just begun. This voyage that we’re undertaking together tonight will grow in richness and meaning as we continue it together.
As our first step in the new journey through the Christian calendar, let us take these candles that symbolize our lives. I will light mine from the Christ candle in the center of the Advent wreath and pass the light to you. Will you please pass it to your neighbor. Once all the candles are lit, we will sing our final hymn for the evening, “Silent Night,” and may the grace, love and mercy of Jesus Christ fill her hearts and souls as we do it, offering up the peace of God that passes all understanding to you, to all of you as we journey back out into the world and complete this Christmas season. Amen.