Luke 2:1-7

Transcript

00:00:00:25 – 00:00:23:22
Clint Loveall
Friends. Welcome back. Thanks for being with us on a monday as we continue through the Gospel of Luke as we move into the second chapter. If you’re church people, this is going to be familiar stuff to you. Probably some of the best known parts of the Gospel of Luke because today we kind of officially get into the Christmas narrative.

00:00:23:22 – 00:00:52:35
Clint Loveall
And you may know this, but in terms of the Christmas story, not not the theology school story, but the historical story, we only get that information from Matthew and Luke. And so Luke has a significant portion of everything we know about Christmas recorded here. His telling is interesting. I don’t know if I’d say sparse, but it’s it’s succinct.

00:00:52:35 – 00:01:15:05
Clint Loveall
It’s to the point. And as we get into this, again, this is going to sound familiar, but we’ll try to point out a few things as we go. So chapter two, verse one In those days, a decree went out from the Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration taken while Corinthians was governor of Syria, all went off to their own towns to be registered.

00:01:15:27 – 00:01:42:41
Clint Loveall
Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea to the city of David called Bethlehem because he was descended from the house and the family of David, he went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged in, who was expecting a child while they were there. The time came for her to deliver the child, and she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in the bands of cloth and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the inn.

00:01:43:58 – 00:02:18:26
Clint Loveall
So you can approach a text like this several levels. One of the interesting levels is historical. We do have some records of registrations being taking place. Actually, there’s some signify conversation about whether this should say the first registration while Irenaeus was governor or the first registration after Irenaeus was governor. In other words, after he finished his term, because Luke’s dating of this or description of this don’t exactly match up with records we have from the ancient world.

00:02:18:46 – 00:02:44:58
Clint Loveall
And so there is some scholarly debate about how to best read the language in a way that seems to indicate the time when we read it. Most of us don’t know those things. It doesn’t matter to us. But if you’re the kind of person who tries to square the biblical biblical account with the Jewish Roman account of the world, there are some there is some wiggle room and there is some stuff that has to be taken into account.

00:02:45:23 – 00:03:20:33
Clint Loveall
And if you read Luke’s Greek carefully, it seems as though he already did that. But our translations haven’t really caught up with that conversation yet. So just so you’re aware that that is out there and in play, I think, Michael, the surprising thing for most people, and this is true of Matthew and Luke is given that we have this very overdeveloped Christmas story, we have Christmas pageants and carols and poems and nativity sets, I think most people are surprised when they come to the Christmas story.

00:03:21:01 – 00:03:36:45
Clint Loveall
This is the birth of Jesus and it happens in seven verses with very little detail. Yeah, And really a kind of simplicity that that we often forget.

00:03:37:19 – 00:03:53:56
Michael Gewecke
So I actually think that there’s a little bit of a danger in our turning to the text here in chapter two because of how often we’ve heard this story, there’s a kind of inoculation that happens when you’ve heard it in a Christmas play over and over and over again, and you expect to see the thing that you’ve always seen.

00:03:54:18 – 00:04:16:58
Michael Gewecke
And you know, Clint, I don’t know if you would say yes to this, but it seems when you are in the church calendar and Advent comes along, it’s a little difficult to come back to the story and to keep finding new things within it because it is so sparse, it’s so short that the sheer amount of content is small related to the large amount of time.

00:04:16:58 – 00:04:35:45
Michael Gewecke
Proportionally, we give it out in the course of a Christian life. When you figure the amount of time that we dedicate to Advent. And so one of the beautiful aspects of slowing down here, I think in a study like this is that it gives us an opportunity to look deeper into some of the places we may be less likely to look.

00:04:35:45 – 00:04:56:36
Michael Gewecke
And I think the first one I’m going to just offer an example of that kicks off the bat right from the start here, verse one In those days, a decree went out from Emperor Augustus. You know, in most Christmas pageants, there isn’t a character for Augustus, and that’s just for most of us, a read pass kind of statement.

00:04:57:03 – 00:05:27:01
Michael Gewecke
But the Bible scholars who reflect on this passage make the case that up to the reader of Luke, it would have been more expected for them to use the Greek name for Augustus Sebastian’s, which would have been the more common telling of that in the culture at the time. But that word has the cognitive version of religious and, you know, power lordship over the people.

00:05:27:16 – 00:06:02:51
Michael Gewecke
And so actually the inclusion here of the word, the Latin title Augustus, may be a strange word choice for its original audience, but may represent an intention that Luke had to emphasize, not the ruler’s power and the ruler’s ability to control, but rather simply to name and place and to put a date on. It’s almost in some ways maybe a pushback against the empire itself, which I think is a fascinating little detail in the story, which we wouldn’t miss if we would miss if we didn’t slow down.

00:06:03:41 – 00:06:24:27
Michael Gewecke
But it has something to say about Luke’s intention in the story to make it clear that this is about Jesus’s birth. This is about the coming of the Son of God, and this is not in any way to put in the spotlight or at the center these worldly powers who, in the face of the arrival of the Son of God really are of least importance.

00:06:24:55 – 00:06:59:15
Clint Loveall
Yeah, it would seem, Michael, not only is it difficult to approach these texts time and time again and find something new, there’s a certain danger in that because you begin to try and add things to the text or you begin to try and get creative in a way that the text doesn’t need for for Luke, these are all the details we need to hear that Jesus was born, that was born in Bethlehem, that, you know, an explanation of how it is that Joseph and Mary get to.

00:06:59:15 – 00:07:31:40
Clint Loveall
And again, there’s lots of historical conversation about why would Joseph take Mary? Why would this be the case? Well, I don’t you know, you can speculate all you want on those kind of things, but speculation often gets in the way of hearing the text. While they were there. It was time to deliver the child. And you’re right, Michael Luke points out at lots of places, this tension between the emperor and the Lord and words like Lord were used of the emperor.

00:07:31:40 – 00:07:55:30
Clint Loveall
So Luke wants to be careful here in making sure that his readers understand the only time he’s going to use words that are political in some sense is like Savior and Lord and ruler are going to be in this text pointed at Jesus. They’re not going to be generic words for Augustus or anyone else. They’re going to be reserved for the Christ.

00:07:55:30 – 00:08:20:11
Clint Loveall
And it’s subtle and you don’t often it’s probably not something you would get just reading the text. You need to know a little bit of the background in order to get there. Another example, I think, you know, Mike Lee, every children’s pageant has this innkeeper and folks have heard this before, but that doesn’t exist, that that’s a character that Luke doesn’t need.

00:08:20:36 – 00:08:43:40
Clint Loveall
Luke only needs us to know there wasn’t room. Now, does that mean Joseph and Mary lack resources? Some have suggested maybe that’s at play here, that Luke is remarkably uninterested in explaining the things we wish he to explain because he so desperately wants us to focus on the major part of the story and not get sidetracked by details.

00:08:43:55 – 00:09:10:22
Michael Gewecke
And that’s another aspect of this story that I think we pass by far too quickly, Clint, is that there are so many gospel stories where Luke and the other gospel writers really don’t care to give very detailed descriptions of when they’re happening or who the influential people there or who the witnesses to that event were, stuff that the modern reader and I would argue the original readers would have been interested in.

00:09:10:57 – 00:09:38:24
Michael Gewecke
Also details like the physical descriptions of characters, those almost never exist in the gospel accounts. So I think what Luke does in the telling of the birth story of Jesus is he tells us exactly what is necessary to know that the Son of God, the Lord is making an arrival in very, very untoward circumstances. And that theme is the Crimson thread.

00:09:38:36 – 00:10:00:52
Michael Gewecke
Everything else that we get in this story, Clint, is just really sort of the sketches of that. And we and our imaginations want to fill that out. We do things like you already said with that innkeeper, but we would also like to know, you know, why is Mary going along? How far along is Mary in this pregnancy? How long are they in Bethlehem?

00:10:00:52 – 00:10:23:02
Michael Gewecke
I mean, there’s there’s a thousand really good and interesting questions. We could ask this text and it has no interest in answering absolutely any of them. You know, fundamentally, we are told that they are going there. And when they’re there, the time comes for the baby. And and he’s born and there is no room for them in the I mean, that’s that’s it.

00:10:23:02 – 00:10:45:57
Michael Gewecke
That’s the story in seven verses verses one through seven. We have the birth story of Jesus. I think quantitatively you could argue that the birth story of John, the Baptist is keeping up. I mean, it’s tracking in the same number, maybe even more. And so it’s just a fascinating way of telling this story and it exposes for us, I think, Luke’s intention.

00:10:46:13 – 00:11:09:45
Michael Gewecke
His intention is not to create a kind of big, glamorous Christmas season story, though we would like to get that from it. His point is to is to show us that God shows up in surprising low places. And that’s that’s the point that serves Luke’s telling of the story. And I think that it’s worth noting that as we move on.

00:11:10:13 – 00:11:35:24
Clint Loveall
So a couple of things here. We’ve made the case that Luke is a remarkable storyteller and a very good writer, and I want to try if this doesn’t work. Michael, help me out here. But I think what’s fascinating is in Matthew, right? If you read the Matthew story, you’ve got a long back story. Why is it the end up in Bethlehem?

00:11:35:24 – 00:12:00:12
Clint Loveall
Well, because the prophet said that they would. And so the wise men show up saying, where would a messiah be born? And they say, well, we studied the scriptures and it would be in Bethlehem, you have this whole thing. You have an entire genealogy given to support the fact that Jesus is in the lineage of David. Here. Luke covers the same ground in two verses rather than a chapter.

00:12:00:39 – 00:12:28:35
Clint Loveall
All of that in here, that Jesus is from Nazareth, that his family is descendents of David, that he’s born in Bethlehem, and an explanation of why that is that Joseph and Mary are engaged and having a child and and Luke takes that same amount of information, but he gives it to us in subtle, condensed form. There’s no quotation of the Old Testament here.

00:12:28:57 – 00:12:50:07
Clint Loveall
There’s no as it was foretold, there’s nothing like that. But if you look for the boxes that need checked from, for instance, the Jewish perspective, they’re all here, they’re all wrapped up. And I think it’s it’s impressive that Luke is able to be able to do that almost in shorthand.

00:12:50:07 – 00:13:25:04
Michael Gewecke
Yeah. Let me give an example of what you’re talking about here. The idea of that Jesus is born in Bethlehem, which we are told explicitly is the city of David. Now, think of the irony that this child, the descendant of David, is laid in a manger because there’s no room in the in the irony of that shouldn’t be lost on us that the descendant of David is being born and placed in an animal trough in the city of David, the place where he should rightfully be enthroned, that he should be treated with privilege.

00:13:25:04 – 00:13:50:07
Michael Gewecke
And that’s the beautiful simplicity that Luke builds into this. He can tell the gospel story, but he doesn’t need all of the detail. And quite frankly, the fact that he doesn’t belabor the cadence of the story should also teach us something that that there’s some merit in knowing the truth of this. But then moving on to the to the story that occupies chapters and chapters and chapters.

00:13:50:07 – 00:14:07:24
Michael Gewecke
And that’s what Jesus teaches and what he does to whatever extent we would like to hang out here and we would like to over emphasize a story like this, I think the brevity, the clarity, the sake succinctness of this telling should help move us along that way, I think.

00:14:07:30 – 00:14:33:59
Clint Loveall
Yeah. And it probably helps that we have some back story. We know something about this child that’s being born, but even so, we see here again a fundamental difference in Matthew and Luke. And we get to see again, Luke’s Luke’s tendency to highlight certain issues. So in Matthew, right, we have the three wise men sometimes called the Three Kings, the Magi.

00:14:33:59 – 00:15:15:50
Clint Loveall
They come from far off, they follow a star, they stop at a palace, they bring gold, frankincense, myrrh. They everything about that is big is elaborate, is important. And here we told you this. Luke loves the details that emphasize those at the bottom. Luke is more interested in the stories that captured Jesus, humanity, his ordinariness. And as he grows his particular love and compassion for those who are poor and sick and left out.

00:15:16:08 – 00:15:36:07
Clint Loveall
And here it is. He laid him in a manger. We’ll get we’ll get to more of this tomorrow when we see who gets invited to the party. But here Luke wants to be sure and mentioned Luke can’t. I don’t think Luke can avoid mention. I don’t think he can help himself. Oh, yeah. By the way, they didn’t find room in the end, so they just.

00:15:36:07 – 00:15:46:30
Clint Loveall
They put him in a feeding trough, wrapped him in cloth. That’s. That’s the Messiah. That’s. That’s how Jesus comes into the world. And that matters a lot to Luke.

00:15:46:57 – 00:16:23:29
Michael Gewecke
There’s another detail here that only serves to accentuate that point. Look here very closely. In verse seven, she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth. That emphasis, she did it. That should shock us because Joseph is there, too, by the way. And yes, we know that that this is not his son. But yet the fact that she’s the one who’s given the agency and she’s the one who’s given that that were thing that matters, Mary here is being lifted up and Joseph is a part of the story.

00:16:23:42 – 00:16:27:10
Michael Gewecke
But Luke in his culture should have given Joseph first rate.

00:16:27:10 – 00:16:57:12
Clint Loveall
Well and who is not there there’s not a midwife there’s not family members. There’s not that extended community that would typically have been at a woman’s side as she delivered. There’s just Joseph probably stumbling his way through, trying to figure it out. So yeah that’s that’s a good insight Michael that that Mary in in some ways does stand alone in this and that’s characteristic of Mary’s role in the Gospel of Luke in some ways I think.

00:16:57:23 – 00:16:57:36
Clint Loveall
Yeah.

00:16:57:36 – 00:17:18:57
Michael Gewecke
And I just think connects to that larger theme where Luke does hone in on and emphasize the role agency and ability of God’s ability to work with and through women. And that to us may seem like that’s the way it should be, but that is groundbreaking and it’s very helpful if you read the other gospel accounts, that emphasis is indeed less present.

00:17:18:57 – 00:17:38:43
Michael Gewecke
And so Luke is not the only voice telling the gospel story and should not be considered to be the only telling that matters. But it is a telling that matters. And this is an emphasis that we have something to learn from. And I think it’s worth pointing out when it’s doing something that is unique to Luke’s own voice.

00:17:38:58 – 00:17:52:08
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I agree. This is a this is a great you know, and again, you contrast this story with what we often do of the Christmas story, and it’s Luke’s simplicity is striking, I think.

00:17:52:19 – 00:18:14:52
Michael Gewecke
Yeah. Because I think of Christmas stories just by way of conclusion. You know, I’ve seen Christmas stories that are that are funny. I’ve seen Christmas stories that are, you know, like caricatures with with characters in different times and places like we’ve gone to insane lengths to try to make this story entertaining and to look at different aspects of it.

00:18:15:16 – 00:18:46:42
Michael Gewecke
I mean, there’s a movie about the Christmas story from the animals perspective, right? I mean, like, what have we not plumbed in this story? And yet what’s really interesting about Luke’s telling is there’s a not really a nod to any of that. This is just a basic, very brief, simple telling of the gospel story of Jesus Christ coming, and that we have to remember, was intentional, that that even the story itself of Jesus’s coming is understated.

00:18:47:11 – 00:19:01:31
Michael Gewecke
And that does not reflect the underside. That does not understate the reality and the importance of this moment. It reflects that that is the places where God shows up and that I think is a really amazing insight in a text like this.

00:19:01:31 – 00:19:22:15
Clint Loveall
Yeah, And in the last word I would say is that there’s also, I think, some foreshadowing and we can circle back to this tomorrow. But you think, well, the Messiah has been born white. Why does nobody notice? Why does nobody care? Why isn’t there a reception? Well, to to some extent, that is the the foreshadowing of the story of Jesus, that he came to his own.

00:19:22:42 – 00:19:51:55
Clint Loveall
And it was largely right, unheralded, unwelcomed in some cases. And that that for Luke starts early in the middle of the night in some manger because an inn was full with nobody really aware of the monumental thing that had just happened. And and that is I think a core of the Christmas narrative certainly in Luke, but I think to some extent also in Matthew.

00:19:52:37 – 00:20:16:21
Michael Gewecke
Thanks for being with us today. Friends, it’s always a joy to spend time together. Of course, if you find this study interesting, subscribe so you can stick with us as we go. You can subscribe to all the audio podcast stuff in the link, the description of this video, but we would love to see you tomorrow and hope you’re blessed until then, thanks everybody.