Luke’s Story of the Nativity in a Different Light
The Rev. Dr. George H. Martin
Lutheran Church of the Cross, Nisswa MN
Dec. 24, 2016 at 6:30 pm
With us this evening we have many quests. I invite you to sign our guest book as you
leave letting us know where you’re from. And if leave us your email address or your
mailing address we’ll send a word of thanks for being with us. But we won’t sell or give
that away to anyone. We’re just glad you’re here.
Some of you traveled far to be here and to be with family. Other’s live nearby. And all of
us have had some trips, maybe like Mary and Joseph took, that were dangerous or hard.
Here at the Lutheran Church of the Cross we’ve been following their journey. This
creche was empty and the holy family began a journey four weeks ago along a ledge in
the back of the church, and the wise men did too. They still haven’t arrived. There they
are and they will take another 12 days to arrive.
What binds us together is that we’re all fellow travelers with many stories to tell but in a
strange way we’re also bound up in this story of the birth of Jesus.
Traveling was a metaphor for the latter part of my ministry in which I served as an
interim pastor in seven churches in different parts of the country before coming to LCC
this past August. This church is just seven miles from our family cabin—far and away the
closest church I’ve served in a long time.
My first interim call was in Amarillo Texas. After the Christmas Day service in 2000 I
drove to the airport. I’d catch a flight to Dallas and then home to Minneapolis. I would
get home in time for a late afternoon Christmas dinner. But there was ice in Amarillo and
the airport was shut down. Being the independent intrepid cold-climate guy that I am, and
coming from Minnesota, I wasn’t going to let a little ice change my plans. I made the
decision to drive to Dallas and get home later at night.
I started to drive on somewhat icy roads, that got progressively worse as I headed East
and South. Cars and trucks were stranded in the median and in the ditches, and I realized
after three and a half hours I’d driven just 90 miles. I pulled into a motel in a little town
called Childress Texas and got a room. An hour later there wasn’t a motel room to be had
in that little city. I was there for the next two days. Stranded. With only truck drivers to
talk to or the sales clerks in the Wall-Mart that was across the street. I went to the local
movie theater on Christmas night and saw the Tom Hanks movie just out— with the
ominous title Cast Away. I didn’t even have my own soccer ball to call my friend. Tom
Hanks soccer ball friend was called Wilson. And what made it worse for me was that
Childress was a dry county. Two days later I did make it home, but needless to say I
know what it feels like to be lonely on Christmas.
I was certainly not the first to experience such loneliness nor would I be the last. Now
many of us might be tempted to think that Mary and Joseph had to feel lonely there in
Bethlehem, but if that’s the case we haven’t read Luke’s gospel correctly. Those of you
from this church know that I like to teach and dive more deeply into the Biblical text.
Let’s do that with Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus.
The usual way of reading Luke’s account about the travel of Mary and Joseph is to feel
sorry that they had to make the trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Most of the pageants
give us a picture of a very pregnant Mary hours from giving birth. Supposedly Mary and
Joseph can’t stay in the inn which seems to us a tragedy. Even though there’s an
alternative, a manger, and even though we sing carols about the sheep and cows it
nonetheless seems like 4th class accommodations for the Holy Family. But what if we’re
wrong?
I have it on good authority—namely the New Testament scholar Kenneth Bailey—that the
essentials of this story—the details—are exactly what Luke, the author, intended. They are that
Jesus was born in Bethlehem. The child was wrapped in bands of cloth. He was laid in a manger.
And there was no room in the inn. Not a single one of those details, however, was ever intended
to be interpreted in a negative light. Luke was not trying to tell us that at the beginning of the
story of Jesus that his life was somehow in danger. It certainly would be as his life unfolded in
his gospel, but not at his birth.
First of all there’s a very telling phrase in Luke’s story: “While they were there, the time came
for her to deliver her child.” She didn’t travel in the ninth month of pregnancy and arrive at the
eleventh hour to give birth to Jesus. They were there in Bethlehem for a while. And why in
Bethlehem? Because, according to Luke, that’s where Joseph’s family lived—for he was of the
house of David. It’s the name of David that is associated with Bethlehem. And Bethlehem
would, in the framework of the Jewish people be the place for the birth of the Messiah. That
means Joseph went to be with his family. The last place he and Mary would ever had stayed, at
least in that, his hometown would have been a public inn—essentially a first century version of a
motel with a bar and restaurant filled with strangers.
The key to all this is the word used for “inn” or motel in the Nativity Story in Luke. The Greek
word used is katalyma.
You and I know how important it is to use the right word in certain situations. So there is a real
word for the concept of an inn, or what we’d call a motel, in Greek. And it’s the Greek word
used by Luke in the story of the Good Samaritan who paid for the care of the wounded man
who’d been robbed. His recovery takes place in an inn—the word in Greek is “pandocheion”—
paying for the stay in what was a public inn at that time. Luke didn’t call it a katalyma in the
Good Samaritan story, but that’s where there was no room in the Nativity story.
So what’s a katalyma? It’s a guest room, in what would have been a two room house. One room
was the living area of the family, and the smaller room, the Katalyma, would have been given to
any guests. So Luke said there was no room in the Katalyma. So in the house where Joseph had
family, family that welcomed them, that room was already taken. So where would Mary and
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Joseph be when she gave birth? In the family living room. The slightly larger of the two rooms
that defined that house. And where it was the warmest!
Now how do you heat such a house at that time? Well, they would place the house in such a way
that it had something like a lower mud room, only this is where on a cold night they would bring
in the cow, the goats or the sheep. The main living area of this house would be about three or
feet up from where the sheep, goats and cow huddled together. In this two room house, the kind
that has a katalyna, or a guest room, it’s living room opens to the area with the animals, who are
so precious, valuable, and are part of the family. The animals provide the heat! Where the
animals gathered there also was a carved out stone trough, filled with hay for feeding the
animals. And in one part of that trough, in the warmth of that house, inside that living room, with
the smells of those animals, laid on the straw was a baby wrapped lovingly in bands of cloth.
Mary and Joseph weren’t rejected when they arrived in Bethlehem. They had a loving family to
welcome them. And a safe place to lay the baby Jesus.
And then there were those shepherds out in the cold night. They were in a proscribed profession,
which means you wouldn’t want your son to grow up to be shepherd. Garrison Keillor once
described shepherds as the first-century version of parking lot attendants. But they played a role
in this story that is so critical.
Had Jesus been born in a fine home or in a palace it’s a sure thing that lowly shepherds would
never had been allowed to see the Christ child, even if they said that angels had sent them. They
could see Jesus, in Luke’s telling of the story, because he was inside the warmth of that living
room—a room in a house just like they would have had in Bethlehem.
And the significance of the way they saw the baby Jesus? Luke says that the baby was wrapped
tightly in bands of cloth, just like they wrapped their own children when they were born. It’s
what the angels told the bewildered shepherds. It happens still in so many cultures to lovingly let
the newborn feel secure and wanted—as Jesus certainly was, to be all wrapped up. Many of us
wrapped our newborns tightly as well. You can imagine the shepherds feeling the love that
surrounded his birth. Emmanuel had come to them. Not to the house of Caesar!
And when they left Luke tells us they weren’t muttering, “Oh, what a shame that he had to be
born there.” And they weren’t saying, “They don’t even know how to wrap a baby up properly.”
Instead, as Luke want’s all of us to declare, this is wonderful. This is wonderful. They left that
stable, Luke says, glorifying God for all they had heard and seen. And that’s the song we sing
this night.
But this was just the beginning of the story. And what Luke knows, and we know if we live this
story, if we come again and again, is that you tell the beginning because you know the end. And
you know the end isn’t the end. It’s the beginning. It’s not exactly the beginning that takes us to
Bethlehem, but it’s a story that brings us into community that knows Jesus as Lord, Jesus as
Messiah. Jesus the Christ. And Luke says this story begins in Bethlehem. It’s meaning is found
in the life we share as his disciples.
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There’s one more thing to share about the way Luke tells this story. It begins by naming two of
the main rulers in that world: Emperor Augustus and Quirinius,the Governor of Syria , those who
ruled that land. Anywhere you went in the Roman empire there were arches and temples built
and etched in stone with the message that Augustus was the Son of God, and the Savior of the
World. The words “Pax Romana” were also inscribed in stone, meaning that the peace you have,
now that we have conquered you and subdued your land, you have a peace for which should
thank Caesar. And you must counted for the sake of the taxes that bring you this peace.
That’s background for the birth of Jesus. Not born in a palace but in a common two room house,
such as any shepherd in Bethlehem would have known. And the angels didn’t come to Caesar—
they came to shepherds staring into the night sky, keeping watch over their flocks. Given to them
was the promise of peace, peace on earth on those he favors. On a girl named Mary, her dear
Joseph, in that family home, and to those lowly shepherds. This is a message for all the world
and it began with those who thought they must not count for much in this world. But every life
matters. Every life is precious in the sight of God. The shepherds heard. Mary heard. And I pray
we have heard the same. And that is why we have sung this night:
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight
O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray
And we sang:
Swiftly winging, angels singing, bells are ringing, bells are ringing
Christ the child is Lord of all! Christ the child is Lord of all!
And we will sing in the hymn that follows this sermon:
Mild he lays his glory be, born that we no more may die,
Born to raise each child of earth, born to give us second birth.
Please stand as we sing “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”
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