(avg. read time: 7–14 mins.)
The Birth of the King
Now we come to the actual narration of Jesus’s birth in ch. 2. Once again, Luke attests to the same thing as Matthew does, but in a different way. Luke lacks Matthew’s tendency to make direct correlations between locations, events, and Scripture, yet he still places Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem. In his case, he explains it as a result of a census decreed by Caesar Augustus. I have written about this census and the reference to Quirinius elsewhere. What is important to note for now is that the reason for returning to Bethlehem is not so much simply because it was Joseph’s hometown/place of origin, but because he also still owned property there and it was his legal place of residence. (For much more on Joseph owning two properties, with the one in Nazareth being for work at this time, see here.)
Much has also been made of the implicit contrasts between Jesus and Augustus here. What interests me most here is the fact that this census is a means of conveying the message that Augustus controls the οἰκουμένη (2:1). It was a way of taking account of what and who belonged to him, and the οἰκουμένη in Luke, as well as in contemporary literature, while a term for the “inhabited world,” typically refers to the Roman Empire specifically as the scope of the inhabited world. Notably, when Matthew refers to the kingdoms of the world, he uses the more universal κόσμος (Matt 4:8), while Luke uses οἰκουμένη (4:5), which has the effect of sharpening how Christ supersedes the emperor (while Matthew’s term is more implicit on this point). Satan may be behind the powers that rule the world, specifically the οἰκουμένη, but Jesus serves the Almighty, whose power and reign are above those of Satan, and whose kingdom has no end. Likewise, when opponents of the Christians—and Paul in particular—claim that they are proclaiming a subversive message, they say that the message has spread throughout the οἰκουμένη (Acts 17:6; 24:5). When Paul proclaims in Athens that God will judge the world through the resurrected Christ, he specifically says that he will judge the οἰκουμένη (Acts 17:31). The scope and scale of Christ’s power operates where Caesar believes he has supreme earthly authority, and beyond it as well in both space and time. While Caesar believes that his control over the world is what establishes what he calls peace, it is Christ who establishes the way of peace that characterizes the everlasting kingdom of God.
The Peace of the Kingdom
Indeed, this emphasis on peace in Luke appears explicitly in the Christmas story as portending his larger story. While references to peace appear in all four Gospels, it never appears as often or with as much emphasis as in Luke. I have already noted how the Benedictus referred to Jesus as one whose light will guide people’s feet in the way of peace/shalom (1:79), which the context made clear is the way of God’s kingdom. We are also told that angelic host glorifies God and proclaims peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased (2:14) on the occasion of the birth of God’s peacemaker. This proclamation declares the presence of the one through whom God will make reconciliation and thus embody God’s glory. Simeon says that God can dismiss him in peace—which is to say, contentment, satisfaction that promises of God’s reign will come to pass—because of this child that he now sees (2:29). In a text that is parallel to part of Matt 10, Jesus not only says that his disciples should declare peace on a house where they stay (10:5 // Matt 10:13), but (and this is unique to Luke) Jesus says that peace will only come upon the house if the person is a child of peace (10:6). This is a way of saying that this person is open to the peace Christ gives, the peace that Christ calls us to participate in by walking in its way. In another parallel to Matt 10, Jesus says that there will be division before there is peace (12:51 // Matt 10:34), for the world will resist the gospel and it will divide families in allegiance. But the fact remains that Jesus’s message is one about God’s peace, God’s shalom. Only in Luke does the greeting Jesus receives on entering Jerusalem include a wish for “peace in heaven” (19:38), a peace that transcends what even Caesar can claim to establish. It is this vision of freedom that Jesus’s nation as a whole rejected, for which he warns that Jerusalem will be destroyed because its people did not know that which makes for peace (19:42) and did not recognize the time of God’s visitation (19:44), so that they sought to establish the kingdom promises themselves through violent revolution. Peter likewise characterizes Jesus’s ministry as one sent by God to proclaim peace (or, more loosely, to proclaim the good news/story of peace, to capture the sense of εὐαγγελίζω; Acts 10:36–38). And finally, it characterizes Church life at the best of times after it has crossed the boundaries of Judea, Samaria, and Galilee (9:31). The vocabulary of peace is itself only one piece of the testimony of the larger emphases of the Gospel and Acts that are conveyed through the preaching of the forgiveness of sins and repentance, the necessary pieces of reconciliation (i.e., peace), which are themes that are especially emphasized throughout Luke-Acts. This larger message is first declared in the Christmas story precisely because it will characterize the ministry of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, and the Church as a whole.
Glory, Worship, and the Gospel
Jesus’s birth also introduces us to the motifs of glory and glorification, which are combined with the emergence of joy. We have seen joy at multiple points in this story already with the news of John’s conception, with his birth, and with his in-utero reaction to the approach of Jesus’s mother Mary (1:14, 41, 44, 58). On one level, these stories resonate with the joy that often comes after a baby has been born, but on another level the joy is also pointing forward to what these babies will accomplish, and never before have we seen someone rejoice in utero at the conception of another. When Jesus is born an angel appears to the shepherds in the glory of the Lord (2:9) and tells the shepherds of good news of great joy (2:10). The heavenly witnesses (the angels) and the earthly witnesses (the shepherds) all glorify God because of the birth of Jesus (2:14, 20), so that with his coming into the world heaven and earth declare the glory of God. Jesus himself is glorified (4:15), people glorify God as a response to Jesus’s miracles (5:25–26; 7:16; 13:13; 17:15, 18; 18:43), and, in the case of the centurion, God is glorified on the occasion of Jesus’s death (23:47). We are told at one point that people rejoice because of the glorious things done by him (13:17). The people who greet Jesus in Jerusalem respond to him with joy by giving glory to God (19:37–38). The disciples likewise rejoice at the fact that they replicate Jesus’s glorious deeds in exorcising demons (10:17), but Jesus tells them to rejoice in something more glorious: that their names are written in heaven (10:20–21). Joy is the proper response to being persecuted for Jesus’s sake (6:22–23; Acts 5:41), to Jesus himself (19:6), and to those who repent in receiving his word (15:5–10, 32). Jesus promises that his coming will be in the glory of God (9:26, 31–32; 21:27) and he says that it was necessary for him to be crucified and resurrected to come into his proper glory (i.e., his honor, his exalted status, his manifest worthiness for worship, and so on; 24:26; cf. Acts 7:55). The disciples respond appropriately to this series of events with joy and praise of God (24:40–41, 51–52). God himself is said to glorify Jesus in the resurrection (Acts 3:13–15) and Jesus is magnified by people after his ascension (Acts 19:17). Indeed, people continue glorifying God because of Jesus as the Church carries on his ministry, proclaiming his gospel and performing miracles in his name (Acts 4:21; 12:23; 21:20) and they continue to rejoice because of these deeds (Acts 8:6–8) and because of the response of people to the gospel (Act 8:39; 11:18, 22–24; 13:52; 15:3; 16:34). The gentiles illustrate both reactions when Paul declares that he and Barnabas are taking the gospel to the gentiles (Acts 13:48).
The Christmas story thus exemplifies what Luke’s larger narrative tells us about the proper response to the gospel and to the God of the gospel. The good news should be received with joy, particularly a joy that leads to giving glory to God, honoring him for what he has done, for his faithfulness to his word, for the love he has manifested to the world, and for what he has revealed about himself in this one and in his gospel. This joy is a delivering joy, being both joy in response to deliverance and joy that delivers from despair, transcending the darkness of the present age with the light of the words, works, promises, and peace of God. The joy that the Christmas story should inspire is an internal response of delight and satisfaction in the wonderful God and triumph in what he has done and yet will do that results in both an internal disposition and external action of worship directed to this God, which must shape our entire lives in loving devotion. This is, after all, the point of the Advent and the Christmas season, not to relegate the joy and glory to a season, but to bring into focus the joy and glory that should characterize our entire lives.
It has often been observed that it is significant that the shepherds are the first to receive the good news of Jesus’s birth, the first outside of Jesus’s family to see him, and the first to become evangelists in declaring the good news of his birth. Shepherds were not highly regarded, even among the Jews who had figures like Moses and David in their history, due to the lowliness and dirtiness of their station. But God chose them to be the first earthly evangelists of the Incarnate One who had a feeding trough as his bed. This fits with a larger Lukan theme about the subversion of status in God’s kingdom, especially among God’s witnesses. We see it in Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners (5:29–32; 7:34; 15:1–2; 19:1–10); in Jesus blessing the poor and hungry while pronouncing woe on the rich and well-fed (6:20–21, 24–25); in the woman who was a sinner anointing, cleaning, and kissing Jesus’s feet (7:37–48), in contrast to the Pharisee who invited Jesus into his home; in the healing of the Gerasene demoniac (8:38–39); in Jesus’s declaration that God has hidden things from the wise and learned—and even the prophets and kings of old—that he has revealed to “infants” of his own time (10:21–22); in the parable of the Good Samaritan (10:25–37); in Mary, the sister of Martha, and how she sits at Jesus’s feet (10:38–42); in his teaching on honor and dinners (14:7–24); in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (16:19–31); in the Samaritan ex-leper being the only one who gave glory to God and thanked Jesus for his healing (17:11–19); in the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector (18:9–14); in the testimony of the women to the empty tomb and the angel’s proclamation (24:1–11); and in the uneducated disciples of Jesus being entrusted with his gospel (Acts 4:13).
Simeon and Anna
Finally, we must note the episodes of Simeon and Anna. The major significance that these two people have for those of us celebrating the seasons of Advent and Christmas is how they exemplify the biblical theme of waiting upon the Lord. While we are on the other side of the First Coming, we are in the same position as these two when it comes to waiting upon God’s promises to be fulfilled in the Second Coming. Both had parallel hopes—for the consolation of Israel and the redemption of Jerusalem—and both had been waiting a long time for it. Simeon had personally received the promise that he would not die until he saw the Messiah. In this baby he manages to see a glimpse of the inauguration of the kingdom of God because he is seeing the inaugurator. At the same time, he realizes that the coming of the king is a divisive event that will reveal the true people of God and the rebels who will seek to resist him at each turn. This imagery evokes the rejected stone that becomes the cornerstone or capstone, the stumbling stone over which the unfaithful will trip and fall to their doom, as well as the foundation stone on which the faithful will find themselves well established, being the foundation of the kingdom of God (Ps 118:22 [Matt 21:42//Mark 12:10//Luke 20:17; Acts 4:11; 1 Pet 2:7]; Isa 8:14–15; 28:16 [Rom 9:33; 1 Pet 2:7–8]; Dan 2:34–35, 44–45). Such statements prove to be true of Jesus’s ministry and his own words about the division created by the coming of the kingdom and its king with it, as some rebel and some receive willingly. But as for Simeon, his whole life had built up to this one moment, it was the purpose for which he lived. Hence, he was content to be dismissed after he saw who he had waited his whole life to see. Of course, he realized that Israel would still have to wait for the baby to grow up, but he had at least received a peek of the one who would bring them salvation.
Anna is an especially old woman (being either 84 or approximately 105, as I have discussed elsewhere) who has been coming to the temple fasting and praying for decades. Prayers and fasts dedicated to the God of Israel were among the emphasized practices of Jews in this time to distinguish themselves (cf. Matt 6:1–18). The particular acts also fit with the theme of waiting upon the Lord in anticipation. They functioned as supplications to God to acknowledge that something was wrong about the situation of the people (Isa 58; Zech 7:3–5; cf. Zech 8:19). Even as fasting was ritualized, it retained its characteristics of signifying urgency, submission, self-denial, and desperate desire for God’s action. Her particular prayers and fasts were answered in a particularly personal way. She saw the purpose of her entire life contained in this one sight of the baby who would fulfill God’s promises; all of her life had built up to this one moment. The words of thanks that she had desired to speak for years on end finally burst forth from her lips. But unlike Simeon, with new life coursing through her, she had words to proclaim to others—though they are not recorded for us—concerning this baby and the hope he brought to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem. What she has to say is not the full gospel yet, but she still had good news to proclaim because of the hope that God revealed to her.
In the same way, we who celebrate the First Coming in remembrance and anticipate the Second Coming in hope are defined in our faith by how we wait upon the Lord. We know that God’s eschatological promises are what our lives are to be built towards. We know that we must pray and fast while we wait. We know that we have good news to proclaim, even as we wait, since we are on the other side of the gospel events from Simeon and Anna. We know that we must trust in God as they did, and we have all the more reason to do so because we live on the other side of the cross, resurrection, and ascension. While the consummation of our hope has not yet arrived, we know as they did, thanks in part to testimony such as theirs, that waiting upon the Lord is never in vain, that the future is as bright as the promises of God, and that God’s faithful love endures forever.