Word of Salvation – Vol.43 No.48 – December 1998

 

The Gospel in Judah

 

A Christmas Sermon by Dr N K Weeks on Luke 2:1-20

Scripture Reading: Luke 2:1-20

 

Dear Congregation.

You are probably familiar with the fact that Christ was born in Bethlehem, and if you rack your brains a little, you could tell me that Bethlehem was in the tribal territory of Judah, because David was of the tribe of Judah and Jesus was born of David’s line.

You may not have thought about an equally simple fact of geography.  The gospels have no record of a ministry of Jesus within the tribal territory of Judah.  Here we have to do some geography.  According to the description of tribal territories in the book of Joshua, the northern border of Judah runs just south of Jerusalem.  Judah extended from the valley south of Jerusalem down to south of Beersheba.  That is why I can say that, strictly speaking, Jesus did not minister in Judah.

However, since Jerusalem is close to the border, and since from David’s time it had a large Jewish population, if we are not being pedantic about things, we could say that he did preach on the very north border of Judah.  (By the way, in case you had not made the association, a Jew is a member of the tribe of Judah.) So we could say that later Jesus did minister on Judah’s northern border.  But the point still remains, as far as we know, Jesus never went south into the real heart territory of Judah to preach the gospel.  To anticipate, what I will come to later, the significance of the angel’s song here is partly that it is the one instance we have in the New Testament of the gospel being preached in Judah proper.

That is a surprising fact.  Why?  Part of the reason is that by the time Jesus was born, there was very little of Judah left anymore.  Whereas once the territory of Judah stretched some 50-60 kilometres from Jerusalem to south of Beersheba, now it stretched some 5-10 kilometres from Jerusalem to just south of Bethlehem.  For the south had been taken over by Idumeans — or to use the term that the Old Testament uses for them, Edomites, the children of Esau.

Note the ironic consequence of this.  Hebron, in old days, before David captured Jerusalem from the Jebusites, was the main city of Judah.  As a matter of fact, David was crowned king of Judah in Hebron.  The ironic fact is that Herod, the idumean who reigned over the Jews for the Romans, had Hebron as his home town.  The heartland of Judah has become the centre from which came the son of Esau to reign over the Jews.

It is partly because of this loss of territory that the Jews moved to settle in Galilee.  Galilee, the territory of the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali, the territory that played an insignificant role in the Old Testament, became the scene of the gospel ministry of Jesus.  Why then did Jesus not preach in Judah?  Because Jesus came for the people of Judah, and where they were he was to go.  His ministry was to real people, not to an historical memory.

Does that mean God was abandoning the remnant of his people who still lived in Judah?  No.  That is part of the significance of the story we read this morning.  However, we need to go back to Luke 1:65-66.  The birth of John the Baptist was a testimony to those Jews who still lived in their ancestral homeland.

So the message of the angels to the shepherds is more than a nice scene to decorate Christmas cards.  It is clear evidence that God has not forgotten the remnant that is left in their ancestral homes.  Indeed the very choice of shepherds about their traditional tasks reinforces the message that God has not forgotten those who still live in the ways of the past.

Bethlehem is on the east side of the plateau of Judah.  It is on the very edge of the cultivatable land.  To its east is a wilderness that stretches down in ridges and wadis to the Dead Sea.  After October, when the rains came and the people were busy planting their crops, the shepherds would take the sheep out into the wilderness away from the cultivated areas.  Once the rains came there was pasture in the wilderness and it was much easier to have the sheep and goats separated from the crops on the plateau.

The little we know of Roman census methods and practices shows that they tended to hold any census in the autumn, say September or October.  There was a practical reason for this.  That was when the people were relatively free and could be found at home.  That reason applied particularly to towns like Bethlehem on the east side of the plateau of Judah.

Further, no government in its right mind would plan a census in winter as the great winter storms can make travel impossible, with impassable roads in modern Israel, let alone in ancient times.  In spring and early summer the people are busy at their agricultural labours, but once the summer is past, then comes the season of relaxation.

After the harvest the sheep were brought back from the wilderness to graze in the stubble of the now harvested fields.  The weather of autumn is pleasant.  You can be out in the day without the burning heat of summer, or in the night without the frigid cold of winter.  So the most probable suggestion is that on such a pleasant autumn evening, the shepherds were out in the stubble of the fields with their flocks, as they had done for more than 1,000 years.  They were there when the message came that God had not abandoned the remnant of his people.

Before going into that message, I would like to fill out the picture.  Jesus came to a people in process of being displaced from their ancestral homes, to the Jews of Galilee whose origin was that of displaced persons.  But he himself partook also of displacement and homelessness, and his parents also experienced it.  There was no room for them.  We do not know why Mary and Joseph had to travel to Bethlehem.  Perhaps they still held some ancestral right to land in the area.

Nevertheless, when the migrant returns home he discovers there is no home anymore.  It is hard enough to suffer the physical problem of giving birth in a strange place without facilities, without even a proper room, but the homelessness of Joseph and Mary lay far deeper.  It is the homelessness of the displaced person, the person for whom the ancestral home and land no longer exists.

We have coined a term ‘alienation’.  It is so often used to describe life in our present world.  Literally it means to feel and act like an alien, a person who does not belong.  One of the most traumatic experiences that people can undergo is that experience of having no home, no place that is really your own, no security of conformity or familiarity.

Jesus came to a people in process of losing their homes and he came as one who himself had shared that experience.  For the root of homelessness and alienation is sin.  Why could there not be a living together of Jew and Edomite?  Because of a sinful conflict that stretched back all the way to their respective fathers, Jacob and Esau.

Why was there nobody to take in this poor young couple?  Because of the sin that makes a threatened people into an inward looking and selfish people, even when their own distant kin are in need.  Why do we experience even in our churches and our homes the sense of not really belonging, of not really being at home?  Because of the sin that distances us form others and makes them feel unwelcome.  Jesus came to deal with that sin and its consequences.  He came to be a Saviour.  To be that Saviour he himself came into the situation of alienation.

I come therefore to the message of the angels.  In the very circumstances of its delivery and in its words, it shows that God has not forgotten the remnant of his people.  To those left at home in their traditional territories, there is also a Saviour.  We might ask why being wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger is a sign.

In the nearest Old Testament equivalent we can find to this passage, the sign is that a virgin shall bear a child (Is.7:14).  I suspect that the sign character of the manger comes from what we have already discussed.  The circumstances of Jesus’ birth are a reflection of the circumstances of the people he came to save.

The salvation is characterised by peace.  Once again we see that the salvation corresponds to the need.  It is to the people who have lost the security of their home territory, who are ruled by a man from their ancestral enemy, as a client for the Romans.

Note, however, that the peace is to a special group of people: those to whom God shows his good pleasure.  We might be in danger of thinking that God brings salvation to Israel because in some way their destitution and misfortune earned it for them.  No!  It is that God has set his favour upon them.  It is God who in his sovereignty decided to set his love upon Israel.  He showed that in proclaiming the gospel to the remnant in Bethlehem.  But note that God is not bound by sentimental attachments.  We have already seen that in the fact that Jesus went where the people were – to Galilee.

So, in this story we see two things: God does not forget the remnant; but God does not merely stay with the remnant.  Because he is the God of mercy.

The going of Jesus to Galilee shows God’s willingness to reach out to the displaced, but there is a displacement and an alienation far deeper than merely that of the displaced person.  Without denying the refugee problem of today, I must say that alienation today is something in our spirits; that deep restlessness and dissatisfaction which prevents our being at peace with God or each other.  And the source of that alienation is, once again, sin.

Jesus has come.  He has come for the rootless and homeless, but has he come for you?  Are you determined that you are without a home and without peace?  Give glory to God in the highest and accept the One who came to give peace and security.

I once had a thinking Dutch migrant explain to me why he found it difficult to welcome strangers to church.  “You welcome people to your home.  I do not feel at home in this land.  They are the ones at home.  I am the stranger.”  What he said was perfectly true and understandable, but I would add a footnote.  Jesus came as a stranger that he might minister to the homeless.  So for us the sense of alienation, however we have come to experience it, is to be the basis of our ministry to the lost.  It is crucially important that we turn our churches and our homes into places where people may be at home.  How, if there is alienation there, within, can others come to feel at home?  Would we recreate what Jesus came to experience and thus to end?

Amen.