Delivered Christmas Eve 2011
The Christmas story takes place during a census in Roman Palestine. Our story begins “And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This census first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria. So all went to be registered, everyone to his own city.” Governments have been taking censuses for thousands of years. I am glad; they come in very handy for genealogists. I am the Davis family genealogist. I inherited the job from my aunt, who is now 89 years old and in failing health. The caretaker for my aunt and uncle in Florida shipped me three big boxes of family historical records a couple of weeks ago by UPS. I was excited when I saw the brown truck pull up in front of our house. My first thought was that I was getting some Christmas presents from my kids in California and Pennsylvania. I should have known better. They are not that organized. Just old papers.
Part of the research I did on my family history in NH involved looking at old census records in Strafford County. My ancestors landed at Dover point in the 1600’s and gradually moved inland. In the nineteenth century they were living in Barrington and Nottingham. So I bushwhacked through overgrown cemeteries with my aunt and studied the 1830, 1840 and 1850 census records. Back when I was doing most of this research in the 1980’s, I could actually handle the original big census books; probably now you can only look at digital images of them. The 1850 census was particularly helpful because in that year the government began to ask more questions. In 1850, the census began collecting "social statistics" (information about taxes, education, and value of estate, and crime.) Subsequent censuses in our country gathered even more detailed data on race and ancestry, health, housing, and transportation. Nowadays governments use the data to determine voting districts. Racial data are used to assess fairness of employment practices, to monitor racial disparities in such areas as health and education and to plan and obtain funds for public services.
They had censuses even back in Roman times. Caesar Augustus was very interested in the number of citizens in his empire. He was especially interested in gathering taxes; so not much has changed in government in 2000 years. Historians know of three empire-wide censuses ordered by Caesar Augustus during his reign; they took place in 28 B.C., 8 B.C., and 14 A.D. The census described by the Gospel writer Luke in our passage was the one in 8 BC. Jesus was not born in the year 1. Our calendar, which dates everything from date of Jesus’ birth – BC and AD, was invented by a monk in the sixth century and adopted widely in the ninth century; the monk got it wrong. All biblical scholars now date Jesus birth somewhere between 12 to 4 BC. If we date Jesus’ birth by the Roman census, then he was likely born in 8 BC.
What type of questions would they have asked Mary and Joseph in the Roman census in Palestine, in 8 BC? We actually know some details. Archeologists discovered in Egypt a Roman census document, dated 104 A.D., in which citizens were specifically commanded to return to their original homes for the census … just like in the Gospel of Luke. Another census document from 119 A.D. has been found in which an Egyptian man answers seven questions: (1) his name and the names of his father, mother, and grandfather; (2) his original village; (3) his age and profession; (4) distinguishing physical characteristic – in his case a scar above his left eyebrow; (5) his wife's name and age, his wife's father's name; (6) his son's name and age; and (6) the names of other relatives living with him. The document is signed by the village registrar and three official witnesses. These two archeological finds are important because they show that it was the custom for people to travel to their ancestral homes like the Bible describes. This latter document is of special interest, because it gives us an idea of the kind of information that Joseph and Mary would have had to provide for the census.
The Christmas story is historically accurate concerning the Roman census. Mary and Joseph would have been instructed to go to their ancestral town of Bethlehem. The story says, “4 Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, 5 to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child.” When they got there, the town was full of pilgrims who had arrived in town for the census. The traditional wording tells us “there was no room for them in the inn.” It was not actually an inn. They did not have Comfort Inns or a Holiday Inns back then. It was more like a guest room in a relative’s home. Hospitality was an important virtue in that society, especially for family. Every family of any means kept a guest room. It was in that type of room that Jesus later held the last Supper with this disciples in Jerusalem. That is what the story was referring to. The “inn” that the story refers to was more like a Bed and Breakfast than a Marriott Hotel & Suites. There was no room for them in the guest room, so they had to camp out in the common area attached to the house where the animals were kept at night.
But you probably did not come here this evening to get a history lesson, even though I personally think it is fascinating to explore the historical context of the first Christmas. So I want to talk about another type of Christmas census this evening - one involving you. You have traveled here this evening to this meetinghouse, and you are going to be part of a census tonight. Don’t worry; we will not have the ushers going around the sanctuary with clipboards. But I want to ask you one question this evening and you can answer it privately in your own heart and mind.
Every census deals with households and the relationship of the respondent to the head of the household. We call this meetinghouse the house of God. The NT speaks of the church as the household of faith and Jesus Christ as the Head of the church. So my census question to you this evening is this: How are you related to the head of this household of God. When I did my personal family research in the 1850 census in Barrington NH, I found one of my ancestors missing from her parents’ household. She was a child in the 1840 census, but gone from the family home in the 1850 census. I finally found her as a teenager in another household in the same town. It was common back then for teens to go to live with another family for a variety of reasons. Perhaps their birth family could not afford them or a neighboring family needed help. A relative or a neighbor would provide them with room and board in exchange for working at the house or farm. That is what happened with my ancestor. My question for you this evening is: What is your relationship to the one whose house you are in this evening? What is your relation to the Head of this household - Jesus Christ? Are you like my ancestor – just visiting - or are you related to him?
In the apostle john’s Christmas account, he says of Jesus:, “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. 11 He came to His own people, and His own did not receive Him. 12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”
This is what Christmas is about – not just about the child born in Bethlehem, but about us being spiritually born of God. The good news of Christmas is that we become children of God through faith in the one who is the only-begotten Son of God, born in Bethlehem that holy night.
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