Messiah arrives

 

Luke 2:1-20 is the lectionary text for 12/25/21, Christmas.

A census to count the people, originated by the oppressive occupiers, was instituted.  It meant that everyone had to return to their hometown to be counted.  For the poor, travel is always difficult.  The cost of it is prohibitive.  It is always less expensive to stay in one’s daily routine of survival.  But it was the Law.

 They went, and this betrothed couple had a child.  It is always a scandal that a couple would have a child outside of marriage.  Judgments and stigmas are assigned and attached.  It takes away from the joy and expectation, as does the concern over another mouth to feed, and fears of whether or not this child will have a better life and, indeed, live to see a long life.

 For generations, the poor have been born in their poor surroundings.  No beautiful gowns, no lovely and plush bassinettes, no colorful nursery for this child.  It was cold, dirty and dark.  He was wrapped in strips of cloth.  Hardly the place for the birth of a King, especially the King of Kings and Son of God.

 But wasn’t it?  Wasn’t this where God would be?  Is this not by design, that God would send the Son, in the flesh, born in blood and sweat and tears, a conceived scandal, and in poverty and uncertainty?  That is where God’s people were for two generations at this time of Empire’s occupation and oppression.  Isn’t this where and how God would send Messiah to bring deliverance and hope?

 It was to the night shift of laborer shepherds that the glory of God was shown and heard, while Mary pondered these things in her heart.

 God reached into this part of the Kingdom to deliver it from its oppression and death.  Of course, the Son of God, Messiah, would come to identify with the common people of God and not with Kings and Priests and Emperors.  Of course, scandal would be a part of this.  It is scandalous to think that God would bother to reach into these occupied and oppressed lives to deliver them from those with power and wealth.  Of course, the Son of Man would come in poverty to give hope to the poor, powerlessly to give hope to the powerless and glory for those whose lives were anything but glorious.

 This was their hope.  God was WITH THEM, and on their side.  God came to identify with “the least” in society because of God’s great love for humanity.  God came to deliver those who were victims of oppression from their oppressors.  God came to set God’s people free, again.  This was Good News in a bad news world, liberation from occupation and oppression and deliverance from the hopelessness and despair of life under empire.

 Come, Lord Jesus.  Again.  Come, Lord Jesus.        Pastor Jamie