Amy C Walters

The Birth of Jesus – Luke 2:1-7

The angel tells Mary that the child she’ll give birth to will be a king. And yet in the Christmas story, there seems to be another king on the throne–one who is hungry for power and ambitious and arrogant. But the Christmas story reveals that Jesus will be a different kind of king.

In Luke 1:32-33, an angel tells Mary that she’s going to give birth to a son and God will “give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob, and his kingdom will never end.” This child will be a king.

And yet we get to the story of his birth, and it seems like there’s a different king on the throne here. We have Caesar Augustus at the beginning of the story, doing the kinds of things you would expect to see of a king. He calls for a census, he issues a decree, and the whole Roman Empire moves at his command.

He’s in charge of all of these people, and he doesn’t care what their situation is. He wants something done, and it gets done. So we see a king who is self-serving, looking to find out how big is my empire, and how much money can I get for my own purposes, for my rule.

We know from history that it was a long, bloody, expensive process for Caesar Augustus to become the emperor of the Roman Empire. There were multiple other rulers, and he defeated each one through costly battles, a lot of bloodshed. So we see his ambition. We see a desire for power and control and more. Sometimes that’s the kind of thing that you expect from a king.

Once Caesar Augustus has established his empire, once he has consolidated all of this power, there is a period of peace. And for many, it was relatively peaceful, as long as you did what the emperor said.

But it was a shaky peace. It was a peace that only worked if you did what pleased the emperor. If you went against him, there was no peace for you. So it was a peace contingent upon the emperor’s goodwill and what he desired. That’s the kind of thing you expect from a king.

During this time of shaky peace, some people considered Caesar Augustus to be the savior. He brought an end to the bloodshed and the war, and he’s got this relative peace and calm happening. He must be a savior. He even potentially considered himself one. 

There were people who started to worship the emperor, and he desired and encouraged that worship. There were statues built of him. Even the name “Augustus” means the great, “Caesar the Great.” This was a man who was arrogant, who was proud of everything that he accomplished.

Oftentimes in scripture, when a ruler calls for a census, it’s a sign of their pride, because they want to find out just how big is my territory, just how many people are under my rule, my authority, my control. And that is definitely the case here with Caesar Augustus. He thinks of himself as a savior. He thinks of himself as a deity worthy of worship.

And then there’s Jesus.

One of the surprising things in this birth story is just how simply these startling details are stated. Every Christmas, we make a big deal about the swaddling clothes, the strips of cloth that he’s wrapped in. We make a big deal about the manger that he’s laid in, that there’s no room for him in the inn. We expound upon these ideas because it’s mind-blowing to us. This is not what you would expect for the birth of a king.

And yet, Luke just simply states those facts.

“The time came for the child to be born, and Mary gave birth to her firstborn, a son.”

“She wrapped him in strips of cloth and placed him in a manger because there was no room in the inn for them.”

These simple details of a very humble birth, of a baby who is not wrapped up in fine linen or the softest, most comfortable clothing. It’s just strips of cloth. Not what you would expect for a king.

And a baby who’s not placed in a fine cradle or held in the arms of countless relatives who want to celebrate this child. No, he is placed in a feeding trough for animals. Scratchy hay.

I wonder if Mary and Joseph had to shoo the animals away during the night as they maybe came up to try to eat from the hay and they didn’t want them to disturb the baby. It’s not what you would expect for a king.

And when a king comes into town, if this were any other king coming to Bethlehem, he would have ordered for them to give him a place to stay. He would have taken a whole inn to himself, but not Jesus. 

There’s no room for him. And so they go to the barn and they have this baby in quiet, in humility, in a dirty barn full of animals, that probably stinks. Not what you would expect for a king.

And yet this is intentional, because God is showing us, and our key truth for today is that Jesus is a different kind of king.

He is different. And these differences are important because a king like Caesar Augustus is unapproachable. A king like Caesar Augustus is looking out for himself and his own interests, is looking to expand his power, expand his control, and has full pride in his role and his status.

But not our king.

Our king comes to us.

Our king is approachable.

Our king is humble.

Our king empathizes with the struggles that we face with the discomfort of this world because he has experienced it himself.

Throughout scripture, we get these different images of God as he interacts with his people. And many times we see these interactions where God is not in the big, impressive, loud things.

He’s in the small, humble, quiet things.

He’s not in the earthquake and the roaring wind.

He’s in the whisper.

He sends his angel to a teenage girl to give her comfort and tell her that the Messiah is coming.

And later on, as Jesus himself is interacting with people, he describes himself as gentle and lowly.

That is our king.

He is different from what we would expect, and that’s what gets our attention, that’s what draws us to him. That’s what points us ultimately to his sacrifice for our sins on the cross. That’s what kind of king he is.

And that is a king worth worshiping, not because you’re being forced to, as the emperor forced people to worship him, because he is worthy of worship.