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We tend to notice the big things that happen in our world and miss the small things. The news media focuses, for the most part, on world-shaping events: the election of a president, conflict in the Middle East, a natural disaster that kills hundreds of people in Southeast Asia. It is almost as if someone or something wants us to pay attention to the big stuff and ignore the small stuff.
Even in the church, there is a tendency to focus on the large and sensational while passing over the seemingly tiny and insignificant. When pastors meet together at conventions of various sorts their conversations often whirl around the three Bs: buildings, bucks, and bodies. It is hard, even for those who are supposed to be spiritual leaders, to talk about what is close, small, intimate, and personal. This perspective, unfortunately, gets passed from pulpit to pew. Thus, the average Christian is fed on the idea (through Christian media no less than the secular) that what really matters in life is the big stuff. “Don’t sweat the small stuff,” we say. In a way, that is a good maxim. However, in another way it is untrue to what matters to the heart of God; the small stuff matters to him.
Hear what Dr. Luke tells us on this Christmas Eve about the big and the small from Luke 2:1-7…
In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register.
So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.
In our text for this evening from Luke 2 we begin with the large and seemingly most important figure of first century world history: Caesar Augustus. His given name was Gaius Octavius, and he was born in 63 BC, into an old, wealthy equestrian branch of the plebeian Octavii family. Augustus was adopted posthumously by his maternal great-uncle Gaius Julius Caesar in 44 BC following Caesar’s assassination. Augustus began his reign as Emperor of the Roman Empire in 27 BC and ushered in an era of relative peace known as the Pax Romana. In that same year, following his defeat of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, the Roman Senate voted him new titles, and he officially became Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus. “Divi Filius” means “Son of the Divine”
In a statue from the first century known as the Augustus of Prima porta, Augustus is clearly portrayed as divine. A tiny Cupid rides a dolphin at Augustus’ feet, a reference to the idea that the Julian family was descended from the goddess Venus.
The Cupid in this statue looks like a little baby. If it were, what a perfect illustration, in a way, this statue would be of what Luke is telling us. It is easy to spend our entire lives noticing the big things of this world, like Augustus, and miss the small things, like a baby. As N. T. Wright has said about Jesus…
The birth of this little boy is the beginning of the confrontation between the kingdom of God—in all its apparent weakness, insignificance and vulnerability—and the kingdoms of the world. Augustus never heard of Jesus of Nazareth. But within a century or so his successors in Rome had not only heard of him, they were taking steps to obliterate his followers. Within just over three centuries the Emperor himself became a Christian.
Sometimes the small things of this world, like a baby, make a big difference in the long run. As one unknown poet put it…
More light than we can learn,
More wealth than we can treasure,
More love than we can earn,
More peace than we can measure,
Because one Child is born.
Vance Havner once wrote…
At Christmas we say much of the meaning of His coming to earth, the mission, the message, but we sometimes overlook the manner of his Advent. God set it up in a pattern we never would have dreamed. He was born in a stable to a lowly peasant couple in an insignificant town in an obscure corner of the Roman Empire. Think how we would have arranged it in this publicity-mad day! That same pattern my Lord followed all His days; and the Church might take a hint today, when Hollywood sets the style.[1]
After telling us of Augustus, Luke tells us about his census. There is some historical difficulty making this census jive with the time of Jesus’ birth. The census taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria happened after the time that Jesus was born. One way of translating what Luke is writing here is to say that this census came before the famous one under Quirinius. We may never be able to work out this apparent historical muddle. But Luke’s point is clear. God used human circumstances, even the decree of an emperor, to cause the Messiah to be born exactly where he wanted it to happen—in Bethlehem, the town of David, thus clearly identifying Jesus as the Davidic Messiah.
What circumstances might God be orchestrating behind the scenes to bring about exactly what he wants to have happen in your life and in mine?
In 2004, we moved into our home in Monterey, Virginia. That may not seem like anything unusual, people move house all the time. But it was an unusual move in our lives because before that we had been living in Ireland. We had moved to Ireland to live and work with Douglas Gresham, the stepson of C. S. Lewis. Our invitation to live with Doug extended from the Spring of 2004 to the Summer of 2005. But we went over to Ireland on one-way tickets because it was not possible to purchase a roundtrip ticket for a trip stretched out over more than a year. Once we were in Ireland, we considered the possibility of planting a church there. But when we discovered that we could not get visas to stay beyond our time with the Greshams, we started looking for airplane tickets to return home to the United States.
It was December and we were planning to celebrate Christmas in our Irish home. But when we researched the cost of one-way airfares, we found one particular day and one particular flight that was half the cost of flying at any other time on any other flight or airline over a six month period. We concluded that this was a sign from God that he wanted us to return to the US on December 21, 2004. So, with the Greshams’ blessing, we bought our tickets and made the trip, at a cost of only $1000 for all five of us.
At that time, my brother Roger was leading a Christian camp in the mountains of Virginia and his organization was renting a house to use for staff people, but he didn’t have anyone in the house. When I told Roger that we were moving back to the United States he said, “I have the perfect house for you to live in.” And it was just the right house for us. It was beautiful, just the right size, and it was a block away from the public school where we ended up enrolling our three sons.
We spent our first night in the house on Christmas Eve with hardly any furniture. And within two weeks after our move, my brother was diagnosed with cancer. Five months later, he went home to be with the Lord.
Those events, over twenty years ago now, were among the most clearly orchestrated of God in my entire life, up to that point in time. If we had not come home to the United States when we did, we would have been thousands of miles away from my extended family at a time when they needed us. And so, I believe that God does indeed orchestrate, behind the scenes, in both the small and large events of our lives.
Sometimes the way God does things is pleasant for us. Sometimes it is not. It probably was not too pleasant for Mary, nine months pregnant, to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Nor was it particularly comfortable for her to give birth to her first child in a place fit only for animals. However, God had his good purpose in it all. And even though we do not understand what God is doing in our lives sometimes, he has his good purpose for us too.
As Paul says in Romans 8:28, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
A third thing that Luke tells us about in this passage is the story of something extremely large becoming very small. The one who was and is bigger than the entire universe became tiny enough to fit in a feeding trough for animals.
Allow me to illustrate this with a story from James R. Edwards…
In August 1957 four climbers—two Italians and two Germans—were climbing the 6,000 foot near-vertical North Face in the Swiss Alps. The two German climbers disappeared and were never heard from again. The two Italian climbers, exhausted and dying, were stuck on two narrow ledges a thousand feet below the summit. The Swiss Alpine Club forbade rescue attempts in this area (it was just too dangerous), but a small group of Swiss climbers decided to launch a private rescue effort to save the Italians. So, they carefully lowered a climber named Alfred Hellepart down the 6,000-foot North Face. They suspended Hellepart on a cable a fraction of an inch thick as they lowered him into the abyss.
Here’s how Hellepart described the rescue in his own words:
As I was lowered down the summit … my comrades on top grew further and further distant, until they disappeared from sight. At this moment I felt an indescribable aloneness. Then for the first time I peered down the abyss of the North Face of the Eiger. The terror of the sight robbed me of breath. …The brooding blackness of the Face, falling away in almost endless expanse beneath me, made me look with awful longing to the thin cable disappearing about me in the mist. I was a tiny human being dangling in space between heaven and hell. The sole relief from terror was …my mission to save the climber below.
That is the heart of the Gospel story. We were trapped, but in the person and presence of Jesus, God lowered himself into the abyss of our sin and suffering. In Jesus God became “a tiny human being dangling between heaven and hell.” He did it to save the people trapped below—you and me. Thus, the gospel is much more radical than just another religion telling us how to be good in our own power. It tells us the story of God’s risky, costly, sacrificial rescue effort on our behalf.[2]
Our big God became something very tiny, to usher us into a life larger than anything we can fully describe. But can you imagine being one of those stranded climbers? And can you further imagine rejecting Alfred Hellepart when he came down to rescue you?
Hard to imagine, is it not? Yet, that is what many people do in response to God. It is an old, old story. It happened when Jesus was first born and all throughout his life. At his first coming into the world, there was no room for him in the inn.
Now, I know we give the innkeeper a bad rap. After all, he did not know who Mary and Joseph were. He did not know who the baby in Mary’s womb was. Perhaps the innkeeper really had no room. Perhaps he gave to Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus the best that he had.
However, my point is this… we have had it explained to us who Jesus is. Yet often we still have no room for him in the inn of our hearts and lives.
He who was and is bigger than the entire universe did not simply become small on one occasion. He continues to become small enough to fit inside a human soul, in fact, every human soul that will admit him.
The hymn writer puts the question this way…
Have you any room for Jesus,
He who bore your load of sin?
As He knocks and asks admission,
Sinner, won’t you let Him in?
Room for Jesus, King of Glory!
Hasten now His Word obey.
Swing your heart’s door widely open,
Bid Him enter while you may.
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