Within the Christian communities throughout the world for many this is Advent, a time of preparation, expectation and great joy. It is a time within the faith when we speak of the Christmas story. We usually begin the story at really the midway point with these words, “There is born to you this day in the city of Bethlehem” this is the starting point for the greatest story ever told. Today we’re going to take a little time upfront to look at the people, the places, and of course the birth. I guess we should start by first of all sharing that most likely the best Christmas story in the Bible is found in the first two chapters of the books of Luke and Matthew. Luke is often considered the primary source for the familiar nativity elements like the manger the shepherds and the angels while Matthew has a perspective of the wisemen, and Jesus’s Royal lineage. Most of the Christmas narratives are familiar with and will blend details from both of these Bible books creating a richer story from Luke’s humble beginnings and Matthews, theological depth, this according to the author Rachel Wojo in her blog.

Luke’s Gospel chapters 1 and 2, they’ll focus on humility and joy and God’s love of reaching the common people, their key events, such as the Angel Gabriel visits Mary, the journey to Bethlehem, the birth in the manager due to no room at the inn, the Angelica announcement to shepherds and their worship. He creates a special atmosphere in the sense that emphasizes Jesus’  unassuming arrival, he comes as a gift for all people, not just the powerful ones. We read Matthews gospel chapters 1 and two, that focuses on Jesus as the promised Messiah, fulfilling the Old Testament prophecy. Joseph’s perspective on Mary’s pregnancy the visit of the Magi from the East their gifts and the flight to Egypt are the key events that Matthew shares with us. You might be tempted to pick the best one. Let’s summarize it this way. Luke provides the core. The heart warming scene of the manger. Matthew adds the royal visitors, and messianic context, making both essential for the complete Christmas story that we cherish so much today. I would like to share with you first of all is a result of a great deal of reading of different articles and blogs and information, quite a large body of it to be very honest with you and much of it is gathered from, others blogs which are really opinions just as a lot of commentaries are opinions of interpretations, so I encourage you to go to your Bible, Read the story and allow the Holy Spirit to lead you to the truth.

If you have read the story before or if you are familiar with it from Sunday school, in Bible studies at your church and other things, you may have read and studied, join us now as we take just a little bit of a deep dive into some of the things that are packed in to this narrative. First, we’re going to look at Joseph. Joseph was the husband of Mary and Mary was the mother of Jesus. What about Joseph? We don’t really know a whole lot, but we know that he was a carpenter from Nazareth a descendent of David and is described in the Bible as a just and righteous man who obediently follows God’s will. Now as best as I can ascertain Nazareth, where they would eventually settle was where Joseph earned his living. One of the odd things about all of this is that wood was very scarce in that part of the world, and most of the people around there during this time were stonemasons, and it was a very very lucrative trade so we can assume that Joseph stayed very busy at his trade and in the later years after the birth of Jesus what little we know about Jesus and his childhood leads us to believe from Jewish customs and practices, that he would have learned his earthly father’s trade. There are some records according to ancient traditions that suggest at the time Joseph married Mary, he was a widower with children. Now according to the Bible, Mary was engaged to Joseph before they lived together, and when he initially learned of the pregnancy he had initially planned to divorce her and to do it quietly. But after the angels message in the dream, he took Mary as his wife. So what exactly was Joseph’s role in Jesus’ life? Well, Joseph served as an earthly father to Jesus, raising him and teaching him his trade as a carpenter which would have at that time been the Jewish custom. Let’s look at some very important folks in this Christmas story. Now there’s lots of information and lots of controversy concerning the “shepherds in the field”. According to some of the things that I’ve been reading many large cities or cities of that time did not allow livestock within the city itself. Now that is disputable, but in the area of Bethlehem and Jerusalem, most sheep were kept outside of the city and in some essence is quite a distance from any settlements of any kind. And there were two kinds of shepherds actually three, but we’ll talk about the first two. There were the hired shepherds and then there were the shepherds that owned their own flocks. The difference in care and concern was much greater by those who owned those flocks. The third group of shepherds I will get to in just a moment. Let’s look at the biblical account if you will please. The shepherd’s primarily refers to the humble sheep shepherds in the bibles nativity story, Luke two is where we’re looking right now. These were the shepherds that were visited by angels, announcing the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, becoming the first witnesses and reporters of the event. This is very significant in the sense. it’s symbolizes God’s message, reaching the marginalized and the lamb of God fulfilling sacrificial, prophecies. They were by most accounts, ordinary people in a low social class who responded with immediate faith and praise going to see the baby and spreading the news a story essential to Christmas and representing Hope humility and the universal call of the gospel so the very first outside of the family of Mary and Joseph to hear the divine news of the Messiah’s birth were the shepherds in the field. Their duties often kept them from regular attendance at the synagogue, and it also hampered them from the traditional prayers and routines of the Jewish faith, just for those reasons they were not particularly looked upon with any favoritism at all by the faithful in the synagogues. But because they were chosen, it made the point that Jesus and the salvation he brought belonged to everyone, they knew what to look for, a baby and swaddling clothes, and they hurried off to Bethlehem. It demonstrated a quick faith coupled with a quick action, unlike the more relaxed seeking of Christ by others, and after seeing Jesus, they returned glorifying and praising God and sharing the amazing news and all who heard it were amazed, turning them into in a sense early evangelists. Now let’s get to that third group, and I must preface this by saying this is considered to be controversial and not accepted in all groups. According to tradition, they were Levitical shepherds in Bethlehem, and it was their job to make certain that the young lambs were swaddled in strips of cloth, often old priestly garments and place them in mangers to keep them pure unblemished and calm for the temple sacrifice. The assumption is that the sheep in and around Bethlehem were temple sheep, and they were being attended by temple shepherds. Now I’ll go over this one more time, even though it’s repetitions. There was an issue of purity for sacrifice so these labs intended for temple sacrifice had to be without a spot or blemish. So by wrapping them is in swaddling it prevented them from injuring themselves are getting dirty in these rock caves where they were born you see the shepherds would keep an eye out for ewes that was ready to give birth, and they would take them to a cave, normally a cave that was kept very clean and they would wrap them when the lamb was born. They would wrap it in swaddling cloth to protect it from any blemishes. This was symbolic and  the shepherds understood this pointed to Jesus as a perfect lamb of God, born in the same manner as the lambs they attended, fulfilling the prophecy, so here one of the differences is of course, the symbolism, but also the effort to make certain that these young lambs were not marked in any way. Some scholars liking this to Mary’s desire to protect the baby Jesus and it was an indication of the love she had for this child. All right, again we will deal with repetition. Please be patient with me. When we look at the Levitical shepherds in the Bible, it was referring to the tradition that the shepherds who visited baby Jesus in Bethlehem again and Luke, were not ordinary, but specifically trained men, tending flocks, raised for temple, sacrifice, ensuring lambs were on blemished. Tradition holds at the shepherds, possibly came from priestly families, and they was swaddled a newborn lambs in cloth, just as Jesus was and place them in mangers to protect them, making the angels he swaddling cloth, uniquely significant to them as they awaited the lamb of God. Now, while the Bible itself does not explicitly call them, Levitical, Jewish tradition links these shepherds near Bethlehem to the temple. Now the wrap up this part of the blog let’s just answer one more question. Why Levitical? Well, that comes from Jewish tradition and it suggests that these weren’t common shepherds but were those associated with the temple, the reason for that assumption is that normal shepherds wouldn’t typically keep flocks so close to town unless they were special, valuable, and temple, bound animals. The connection to the temple makes the appearance of angels to these pacific shepherds, a powerful yet simple account of the coming of the Messiah and the end of animal sacrifices.

We will close the blog today by looking at the place, the place being Bethlehem. Now we’re going to look at the key aspects and characteristics of Bethlehem. It was a small modest village likely with 2000 to 3000 people, it was not a major city. It was located in the fertile Hill country of Judea about 6 miles south of Jerusalem. Now, many of the homes were built into the natural limestone caves, which also served as shelters for animals. The significance tied to in the Old Testament was the fact that it is known as the birthplace of King David (the city of David) and the ancestral home of his family fulfilling the prophecy about the Messiah. It did well in its location because it was an important crossroads city. There was fertile land and they had a rather robust pleasant local economy. We know that Mary and Joseph have traveled there in order to comply with the census that was ordered by Cesar Augustus, which required everyone to register in their ancestral town. Back in the day, because of that law,  there were a lot of people that came into this small town and there were not any any rooms available by the time Mary got there, so it is written that she gave birth in a stable cave where animals were kept. This is another point that we could really delve into, but there isn’t time. So it’s a very humble setting yet divinely ordained. It would be here in a stable cave that Jesus would be born and placed in a manger. So the very last thing we leave you with is that this was a fulfillment of a prophecy which you can find in Micah 5:2.

I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s blog as we’ve set the scene for the next few weeks of celebration and preparing ourselves for this most wonderful day. This is probably one of the longest blogs I’ve ever written. To those of you who stayed with it to the very last word, thank you. I do hope it has been helpful and that you will come back and join us in The Pew next week.

Life is Good

jk