Notes on Luke 2 for Christmas Eve

Dec. 24 2014

Some folks want Christmas to be just right with perfect placement of decorations, and foods and presents.Luke does a bit of this in this exquisitely structured piece we have heard so many times.He structures it along the lines of the elite and the masses.-

Luke is careful to place the birth of Jesus in a regional setting of the Roman Empire. In that way, he shows two contending ways of organizing life at the same time. He shows how god is using a hidden hand in the face of Roman imperial power. Augustus had been divinized.He was called son of God and Savior, we speak of the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome-the immaculate goddess of childbirth was with him and his mother claimed he was the child of Apollo and his father and mother both had visions the day of his birth. Augustus took his position after a huge power struggle. He was growing older. Here’s an important part for our story. he took on divine names that Luke uses to apply to a baby born in little Bethlehem, on the eastern outskirts of the empire. Son of God. Pax Romana both internal and external. He called himself first citizen but held dictatorial powers for life.Successors to the throne died around the time Jesus may have been born.We are certain of dates for the empire, but less so for the date of the birth of jesus. Divine time and human time do not always correspond neatly.

We don't know that much about Quirinius. I was taught that he was a mere functionary,but that was lazy. He was a rich, fairly high level bureaucrat in the Roman system. He was on the track to being a Roman elite, say a first century Jeb Bush, connected, rich, powerful. I like a governmental appointee is listed with the birth of Jesus.His census was a tax adjustment that demanded taxes be paid in cash and elicited a good bit of Jewish unrest, especially where Jesus grew up in Galilee. .

Society stereotyped shepherds as liars, degenerates, and thieves. The testimony of shepherds was not admissible in court, and many towns had ordinances barring shepherds from their city limits. The religious establishment took a particularly dim view of shepherds since the regular exercise of shepherds' duties kept them from observing the Sabbath and rendered them ritually unclean. The Pharisees classed shepherds with tax collectors and prostitutes, persons who were "sinners" by virtue of their vocation (Saterlee) In our time, the status of shepherds would be that of say ponographers, IRS evaluators, or perhaps Congress.  At the same time, the rulers such as Augustus were called shepherds in the bible.  

Look at the stained glass window in daytime.Stop for a moment and consider the utter dependence and vulnerability of an infant.That is where the hopes and fear sof th all the years was placed.Notice how it turns its back on power.-Every year Christmas arrives in the face of great powers, including the constant drumbeat of the shopping madness instead of the voice of heavenly choirs-do the angels sing? It does not say so explicitly. i like it as the formerly host of heaven as warriors have transformed into a choir.Their praise is to the highest point or in the highest most noble way, that could well be song, I think.-

The word usually translated as inn is translated as upper room in the story of the last supper.Emmanuel God with us is laid in a feeding trough, not a throne. This night, jesus is enthroned in that most unlikely of places, our very lives.