Luke 2:1-20

Here’s a link to another version of the Bible.  This is The Message – it’s a paraphrase for easy reading.  Let me know if you like it. 

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke%202%3A1-20&version=MSG

Ok, you’ve read the story? Great, let’s chat!

I love how Luke introduces this.  He is writing history.  He provides significant factual bits of information so that anyone could go back through historical documentation and pinpoint exactly when this all happened. This makes it a little humorous that we have the date off by about six years. I’m told a monk was trying to standardize dating methods, and he was a few years off when he determined the year of Jesus’ birth. So he calculated the start of the AD clock a little early and Jesus was born in the year that we now know as 6AD. We should probably cut the guy a little slack because he was doing this 600 years after the event.  

A little biographical info: Joseph was a descendant of David, as was Mary, so he was from the tribe of Judah.  His ancestral home was Bethlehem, which means house of bread.  My Hebrew class taught me that. Aren’t you impressed? All good, no one is. But I loved that class.  The bread theme pops up later. Rejoice my fellow carb lovers!

The trip was a ninety-mile hike from Nazareth where they lived, to Bethlehem. It probably took about a week. You know how when a baby is due and the mother isn’t going into labour they say go for a walk? Well, it worked. And you’ve probably heard the story. They didn’t have a room to stay in, so they were sheltered with farm animals somewhere. Mary wrapped newborn Jesus in strips of cloth and set him in a feed trough to keep him off the ground. I know it sounds kind of chaotic and messy, but it’s also really sweet. There’s this new young mother, without a lot of means, trying to make the best of a tough situation. Mary had some grit and resourcefulness.  She just wanted to take care of her baby.

It turns out the rather unusual nursery set up made one thing easy.  When the angels gave directions to the shepherds, they said, “You’ll know you’ve got the right place when you find a baby wrapped in strips of cloth lying in a feed trough.”  It’s safe to assume that wasn’t an everyday thing.  This was also handy since the shepherds wouldn’t normally have been welcomed into fancy inns in the middle of the night. But a stable? They wouldn’t even have to knock.

Today I find myself wanting to reflect on the angels’ message.  The angels announced that they had good news that offered great joy to all people. The Messiah had finally been born in Bethlehem. They said this to the shepherds and then the skies exploded with singing angels.  Their words are challenging me today.  Great joy for all people.  Jesus is joy.  He brings joy.  The fruit of his spirit is joy.  And he came for all people.  Why is it that so few of us are joyful?  Many people are infuriated by Jesus, and just as many wander through life hopeless and in despair. But Jesus’ arrival was good news for ALL of us. He offers joy to ALL people. If I’m being real, I don’t see a lot of joy around me.  If I’m being brutally honest, I don’t always see a lot of joy in me.  

This is still you, me and the Bible, right?  I’d like to share something God is working on in me.  The year before I turned 50 I announced to whoever cared to listen that my 50s were going to be my decade of joy.  I wanted God to make me a joyful person.  I really felt like if people looked at my life and saw joy, they would want to know my God.  Joy is attractive.  Everyone wants it.  I wanted to be joyful.  About the same time, our family moved to a small farm property that I named Joy Croft.  Yes, I named my house.  Judge me.  I deserve it, and I can handle it.  I prayed that God would give me his joy, that his joy would be my strength, that my joy would encourage and inspire people around me.  I wanted to learn joy.  Do you know what the last three years has taught me about joy?  It’s a lot like praying for patience.  Don’t do it unless you mean it!  Joy isn’t a bunch of happy experiences.  It isn’t even gleeful oblivion in the middle of unhappy experiences.  Joy, in the moments I feel like I am truly grasping it, feels like hopeful anticipation that really has no relationship with the circumstances of my life.  It feels like confidence in something that is still on its way.  I am, in fact, growing in joy.  I notice it the way I might suddenly notice little green balls where a blossom once sat on a cherry tree.  It’s unexpected and delightful, and it’s abundantly clear that I didn’t put it there.  God has, at my repeated request, been growing joy in me.  And it might be the most painful fruit yet.  Since moving to Joy Croft and declaring this my joy decade, our circumstances have been really hard.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence.  I don’t know how I would have noticed the newly growing joy if I didn’t have the stress and struggle to hold in contrast.  Joy, even in the embryonic form it occupies in me, is enabling me to live in the discouraging, frustrating, painful reality that life often offers while also assuring me that this isn’t what it’s all about.  I have confidence that no matter how this day ends, there’s a better one coming.  

When the presence of those radiant angels pierced the shepherd’s night, they were told that joy had arrived.  As far as we know, the next night the shepherds went back to the same hill with the same sheep.  Their circumstances hadn’t changed at all, but their hope had been justified.  They could live their lives in confident anticipation that God had not forgotten them, and he was still working to rescue them.