Delivered Christmas Day 2011
It is Christmas morning. What new thing can a preacher say about Christmas? It comes around every year, and it is always the same scripture readings. Those of us who are church-goers have heard the Biblical Christmas story over and over every year for decades. The tales are familiar to us. In fact, they are so familiar that we may not be able to see how strange the story would have sounded to first century ears. I am not talking about elements of the story like the Virgin Birth and angels. Those elements of the story may sound strange to our modern scientific minds, but the first century mindset accepted such supernatural things as a part of reality. Those elements would not have stood out like they do to us. I am speaking about some other parts of the story that fly right under the radar of our modern minds. These are the elements I want to explore this morning. The glad tidings of Christmas would be strange tidings to first century hearers of the Christmas story.
I. The first of these strange tidings is that the Christmas message was announced to shepherds. Of all people or groups that this grand announcement could have come to, it was sent to shepherds in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night. Shepherds in those days were on the fringe of society. Even though the Hebrews had been a pastoral people from the very beginning, by the time of the first century the Jewish religious system had become so strict that shepherds were excluded for all practical purposes. Ritual cleanliness was very important at the time to religious people like the Pharisees and the Sadducees – who were the doorkeepers of the synagogues and the temple. You could not go onto the temple grounds unless you were ritually clean. Shepherds were unclean. Association with bodily fluids – especially blood, the birthing process, illness, and death made one unclean. One had to go through a lengthy purification process. For example right after the Christmas story in the gospel of Luke, we are told about the purification process that Mary had to go through after childbirth. It took forty days in all before she could go into the temple to present Jesus for a child dedication ceremony. Can you imagine shepherds having to go through such a process? Shepherds had to deal with blood all the time. They had to deal with death. They had to deal with newborn lambs, and sick sheep and dying sheep and ill & wounded sheep. So they were continually ritually unclean. Especially in the spring, which is when Jesus was probably born.
Even though we celebrate Christmas on December 25, that date is nowhere in the Bible. It is a later date chosen by the church. It is first mentioned in the mid fourth century, 300 years after Christ lived. It was chosen because it was the time of the winter solstice. When Christianity went mainstream under Constantine in the fourth century, the church adopted many pagan holidays and redefined them to celebrate Christian events. The winter solstice became the celebration of the birth of Christ. Actually the earliest dates that church historians have found for the observance of Christmas (according to Biblical Archeology Review) and was in the spring. That fits much better with the scene of the shepherds staying out in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night. They would not have done that in the winter; it was too cold. They did that in the spring. So Jesus probably was born in the springtime, during spring lambing season. The shepherds would have been continually in contract with blood from new lambs being born. They would have been very ritually unclean when the angels appeared to them and when they visited the Christ child at the manger.
So we see that even at his birth Jesus was breaking the rules. On first hearing the story of the birth of the Messiah, one would expect the announcement to be made to kings and priests and those in authority. Instead the Christmas story has angels announcing it to those who were not allowed to come hear the temple to worship God. Yet the angels came near them. Normally when we imagine scene of the angels appearing to the shepherds, we picture the angels way up in the sky. But when you actually read the Biblical account that is not what it says. Verse 9 says, “And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid.” The angel was standing in front of them. No wonder they were afraid. Then when the other angels appear, look what it says in verse 13. “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God….” The other angels were with the first angel, who was standing in front of them, not flying overhead. The Christmas story presents a close proximity between the shepherds and the angels. The shepherds were literally standing on holy ground.
God could have announced the birth of Christ to anyone, but he chose the shepherds. Why? To make it clear that this Christ came for the unclean. He came for those on the edge of good religious society. He came for those who were not allowed into the temple, and yet provided the Passover lambs and the sheep for the temple. Bethlehem is very close to Jerusalem. The shepherds of Bethlehem were the ones who raised the animals used in the sacrifices in the temple, but they could not go in themselves. It was no coincidence that the ones who provided the Passover lambs were the ones who were first told of the birth of the One later known as the Lamb of God.
There is one more interesting note about these shepherds. They were probably young people. You might remember the story of King David in the OT, who as a boy was a shepherd of Bethlehem. When the prophet Samuel came looking to anoint one of Jesse’s sons as the King of Israel, all the older sons came to present themselves before the prophet. But not David; he was not available. David was left in the fields with the sheep because he was youngest son. It was the youngest who always got the worst jobs. And the worst job was to have to spend your nights out in the fields watching the sheep, while all the older shepherds got to sleep in their warm beds. The shepherds to whom the angels appeared at Christmas were probably the youngest shepherds. They were on the bottom of the list even among shepherds. They were kids, or tweens, or at the most young teens. So we are going to have to adjust our manger scenes. These shepherds were not grown bearded men; they were youths. That is whom the announcement came to.
II. The next strange tiding in the Christmas story is found in the words of the angel in verse 10 “Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. 11 For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” The strange part of this announcement was that the “good tidings of great joy” were for “all people.” Handel’s Messiah might quote the prophet Isaiah saying that these were “good tidings to Zion,” but that is not what the angel said. The angel said these were not good news for Zion, another name for Jerusalem the Jewish capital. This was good tidings for all people.
We have to understand how radical this statement was at the time. The Jews understood themselves as God’s chosen people. God dealt with them and them alone, as far as they were concerned. The expected Messiah was to be the king of the Jews. He was a Jew sent to Jews to redeem the Jewish people. In that historical context it was expected that he would fight against the Gentile Romans who were occupying their land. He was a descendant of King David. David was the great king of a thousand years earlier who defeated all the non-Jewish people around him, starting with the Philistine giant Goliath and established the first Jewish kingdom in the Holy Land. That is what the Jews were expecting– a Jewish Messiah for the Jews to take back the Jewish homeland and reestablish a Jewish kingdom with its capital in Jerusalem. But when the angel announces the birth of this Messiah, he says that this was good tidings to all people. All nations. All races. To us that might not sound so strange but to the first ones who heard the Christmas announcement this would be indeed strange tidings.
The universal scope of the Christmas story is repeated in the Gospel of Matthew with the story of the Magi coming from the East – the so-called three kings who brought their gifts to the Christ child. These were Gentiles. When you read that story of the Magi in Matthew, the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem are left out. These Magi, who were likely Persians, came to Jerusalem and consulted King Herod and the chief priests. And these Jewish leaders were clueless concerning any child born King of the Jews. They were completely out of the loop as far as God’s plans were concerned. God ignored the Jewish political and religious leaders. In fact he bypassed the whole nation of Israel and revealed this birth to these wise men in a foreign country.
These magi were the most unlikely people to receive an invitation for an audience with the Messiah. First, they were not Jews. They were not even Gentile converts to Judaism, which might have been a little more acceptable. They were likely Zoroastrians, a basically monotheistic religion (with dualistic elements) established by the Persian prophet Zoroaster, also known as Zarathustra. This is a nonbiblical, non Jewish religion, outside of the revelation of God to the Hebrew; yet they were the ones who received this heavenly revelation concerning the birth of Christ. Very strange! Furthermore they were astrologers. Astrology and all forms of divination were forbidden in the Old Testament, and yet here is God announcing the birth of his Son through a sign in the heavens, which would only have been interpreted by astrologers. Very strange! The whole point of the angel’s announcement to the shepherds and the magi’s visit is that this Christ was not just for some; he was for all. These good tidings of the birth of Christ are for all people.
III. The third strange tiding of this Christmas story is the announcement that the Christ would to be found lying in a manger. The angel says to the shepherd in verse 12 “And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.” The angel calls it a sign, which means it is something very unusual and meaningful. The word sign is often used in the gospels to refer to a miracle. But this was no miracle, but it was unusual in another way. It was strange to imagine that the Savior, who is Christ the Lord, would be lying in a feeding trough.
On Christmas Eve I explained some about the place where Jesus was born. The traditional interpretation is that there was a Bethlehem Inn that was full, so Joseph and his very pregnant bride Mary were put in the barn. That is not exactly not the way it happened. First of all, the “inn” referred to was actually just a guest room. The same word is used in the Christmas story as is used later in the gospel to describe the upper room where Jesus had the Last Supper with his disciples. It was more like a bed & breakfast then a Marriot hotel. Most homes of any size had a guest room. When Joseph and Mary came to Bethlehem, they expected to be able to stay with relatives in such a room. But when they arrived in Bethlehem, there was no room in the guest room. The guest room was already filled with other relatives who had also arrived for the census. The owners of the home – probably some of Joseph’s relatives – never would have shut the door in the face of family, especially an expectant mother. So they did the best they could under the circumstances; they squeezed them in wherever they could. Back then – and right up to the nineteenth century - Palestinian homes in Israel had the animals’ quarters connected to the house, just like barns are connected to homes here in NH. Although in that land homes and barns were made of stone. Stables were often caves connected to a house, kind of like a basement. If there was no room in the main living area or in the guest room, then it was normal to put the overflow into the place were the animals were kept. This was where Jesus was born.
So don’t picture Christmas as Mary and Joseph all alone in an outbuilding in the middle of winter. Picture them in the spring in an overcrowded house where the overflow accommodations had spread out into the animals’ stalls. Mary undoubtedly had women relatives attending her in the delivery of her child. When the child was born he was laid in the hay in the carved out stone feeding trough for the animals. This was the sign for the shepherds. Our story says in verse 15 “So it was, when the angels had gone away from them into heaven, that the shepherds said to one another, “Let us now go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has come to pass, which the Lord has made known to us.” 16 And they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the Babe lying in a manger.”
How did they know where the child was? There was no star to guide them; that happened later. But Bethlehem was not that large a town. They probably just started knocking on doors until they found one where a baby had been born. When they entered, they were ushered into the stable and found the babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. They would have felt right at home there. This was their type of Messiah. This Messiah was not born in a palace, in a wealthy house, or even in a guest room. He was born in their type of place, lying in the type of place that these shepherds might have spent many a night. In other words they felt comfortable with this Messiah. It was indeed strange for a king to be born in a barn, but for them that barn felt like home.
So the Christmas story is stranger than you possibly thought when you walked into this sanctuary this morning. I hope it is anyway. It was strange for those who were part it over 2000 years ago. It was strange for those who first heard the stories. And it should be strange for us. Christmas should not be a cliché. It should not be too familiar and predictable. It should always surprise us with new truths and revelations. It should always challenge us to see that Christmas is not just for those who think it is for them. It is for those who would never dream that Jesus was born for them. It is for those on the fringes. It is for the unreligious even more than for the religious. It is good tidings of great joy for all people. For unto us is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
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