Where Nobody Was Looking--December 24, 2025

Where Nobody Was Looking--December 24, 2025

"In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. he went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no place in the guest room." (Luke 2:1-7)

God does a clever bit of turning the tables here, in these opening words of the Nativity story, which many of us will hear read in worship this Christmas Eve.  Just when you think you know where the action is taking place and who the real movers and shakers are, Luke practically gives us whiplash pointing us in the opposite direction to see God moving, not among the Big Deals in the centers of power, but in a Podunk town in the backwaters of the empire, in a house so modest it didn't have a spare guest room. And it turns out the Lord of the universe chooses to come, not to the Imperial Capital among the powerful and the well-heeled, but among the anonymous nobodies of Bethlehem and their borrowed food trough from the barn.

That's at least part of why Luke our narrator begins the story of Jesus' birth this way. It's a bit of clever misdirection, like in a classic whodunnit or the latest Knives Out movie.  Luke points us at first to the Emperor in Rome, Caesar Augustus, who thinks he is the savior of the world.  Literally--Augustus had official proclamations issued throughout the Empire making his birthday a special holiday and decreeing that his birth was "good news for the whole world" and that he was both "god" and "savior." Augustus had the Senate rename a month of the year in his honor, and quite a number of cities and towns across the empire were renamed "Caesarea" to bring him glory, too.  Talk about a gigantically over-inflated ego, right? It would be funny if it also weren't so pathetic--and if Caesar Augustus also didn't casually wield Rome's military might like a petulant child to attack and invade whomever he wanted.  Everybody in Luke's audience hearing this story knew that Augustus thought he was the most important person in the world, and that he was the head of the most important empire in the world, ruling from its capital city. The regional oversight in the less-fashionable parts of the Empire fell to local Roman-appointed governors, like Quirinius whom Luke mentions, too.  But Luke doesn't ultimately leave his movie camera on the province of Syria, either.  

Neither the Empire's capital or the local seat of power are the important places for the real and living God.  This will be the last mention of Caesar Augustus or of Quirinius in the rest of Luke's story.  They are introduced in the opening sentences, as if Luke is saying, "Yes, I'm well aware that these arrogant bozos were around, and we ALL know that they thought they were the ones calling the shots in the world.  But they have no more to do with our story than just issuing the order for the census. They are self-important bureaucrats at best, and deluded egomaniacs at worst."  Luke tells us that Augustus is the one ruling in Rome when Jesus is born, and then promptly turns our attention elsewhere--to a laborer named Joseph and his fiancée Mary, who are nobodies in the eyes of the Empire.

They go along with Caesar's self-important census (tyrants always want to claim they are the Most Important by counting how big their "numbers" are, regardless of how irrelevant those statistics may be to their actual governance), and they make the journey from up in Galilee down to Bethlehem because that's where Joseph's family is from.  And yet, there, in whatever room they could find as the town was crowded with people coming home for the census, the promised child is born.  Mary had been told by the angel that this was the long-awaited Chosen One of God--the "Messiah" or "Christ" for whom the people of God had been hoping for centuries.  She had practically burst into song about this child when she was visiting her cousin Elizabeth, declaring that in him, God would fill the hungry with good things, lift up the lowly, and pull down the tyrants from their thrones and take the over-inflated egos of the powerful down a few pegs.  And now the child is born--laid, not in a palace or a room decorated with gold trim, but in a borrowed manger in a house that doesn't belong to him. It is precisely the opposite of Caesar Augustus and his self-important bullying reign.

The contrast Luke is making as the director of this movie is obvious: the Big Deals of the world think they run the world with their threats of invading army and gold-plated opulence, barking orders and intimidating their subjects into complying with their every whim.  But meanwhile, the real Lord of all comes into the world as a helpless infant in a backwater town.  The child's cries from the manger practically call out, "The emperor is wearing no clothes."  Caesar can tell himself he is the Savior of the world, but he's fooling himself.  He can claim to be bringing "peace" to the world, but the angels will declare otherwise.  God's way of saving the world will require no invading armies or flexing of imperial muscle; even the whole heavenly host will only be called upon to sing to some shepherds rather than going into battle.  God's way of saving the world comes where nobody was looking--because that is just the way God operates. 

And that's just what we need.

Lord God, come and visit this world in your unexpected and yet perfectly fitting way--away from the typical places of power and domination, and among the lowly and forgotten.