Sing to the Lord a New Song

Christmas – December 24/25, 2024

Isaiah 9:2-7
Psalm 96
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-20

The shepherds head off to find the newborn savior and the angel tells them, “You will find a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.” What kind of directions is that? If your GPS gave you directions such as, “Your destination is a red house,” you would throw it out the window. Well, I would. Bethlehem was a small village in that day. No one really knows what its population was but a guess of three hundred to a thousand would be in the ballpark. Luke tells us that there were more people than normal because of the census. So, how did the shepherds find Jesus? Wrapped in swaddling clothes would not be a help since all babies at that time were wrapped in that way, nor would his bed be much help. Mangers were common. They could have brought one into the house for Jesus’ bed. So, even in a small town it would not be easy to find the baby – I doubt Joseph hung out a sign that read, “Babe in Swaddling Clothes.” Did the shepherds knock on every door until they found the right place? We don’t know. Luke must have left some details out from his story. But then, he wrote his gospel seventy years after Jesus was born and he was never in Bethlehem or even in Palestine. (We know that because he gets some of the geography wrong.) The angel may have given better directions but in the retelling of the story over seventy years those details were lost. Luke may have eliminated them to make the story more dramatic. What he was concerned about here is that the first people who were told about the birth of the Savior of the world were outcasts – possibly foreigners – but clearly people that everyone looked down upon. Yet everyone who heard what they said about this baby were amazed. We usually think that it was only Mary and Joseph and maybe a relative or two that this refers to but the Greek seems to indicate that those who heard may have been more than just those gathered around the baby. Maybe the shepherds did knock on every door. Wouldn’t you if an angel had told you about the birth of the Savior of the world?

Of course you may not know that we are celebrating the birth of the world’s salvation today by how people are acting. I have noticed that people have a sharper bite lately. I admit that I am more on edge this year than I have been in other years in part due to my health issues. During several short conversations I have had these past weeks with store clerks they expressed the same feeling noting how unfriendly and even nasty some people have been recently. This is the opposite of that first Christmas where those involved did have legitimate issues to gripe – Joseph about more taxes, Mary about the long walk while nine months pregnant, the struggle to find a private place to have a baby, and the shepherds terrified in the fields – yet they rejoiced around the baby. If Mary, Joseph and the shepherds could rejoice in their situation, so can you. Rejoice this day and give thanks to God for the gift of salvation given this day to you and to the world.