Materials
Advent 2003 Series: The Road to Bethlehem
Christmas Travel
Luke 2:1-6
by R. Todd Bouldin
Today
begins the season of Advent, a time when the church turns its thoughts
and prayers to the glorious incarnation and birth of Jesus Christ. If
we fail to celebrate this season, regardless of when the events actually
occurred, we will miss out on an important aspect of our Christian faith.
We won’t stop here – for the next four months, we are going to immerse ourselves in the full life of Jesus Christ – from birth, to ministry, to death, to resurrection. But we can’t get to Calvary without first taking a walk on the road to Bethlehem where we again hear the gospel’s promise to us. Every year, we wonder how we will get to Bethlehem again. There are so many errands to do, so many parties to attend, so many crises in the world to distract us. But Bethlehem isn’t really a place you get to. Bethlehem will get to you.
Prayer - O God, prevent us this year from rushing by the manger. Give us the courage to walk the road to the places you call us so that your Son may be born again in our hearts, for He alone can lead us Home to you, our God and Father. In His Name, Amen.
It won’t be long, and many of us will begin holiday travel. Christmas and travel just go together – it has since the very first Christmas. Traveling over Christmas is always a hassle: loading up the gifts, getting the kids in the car, fighting the traffic, waiting at the airport. By the time we get around to getting in the car or take our seat on the plane, we are exhausted and don’t really want to go anywhere. We would rather just stay at home.
But no one finds the Christmas miracle by staying at home. We are each called at this Christmas season to take our own pilgrimage to Bethlehem. Perhaps we don’t really want to go. Maybe there are places we would rather be. But Christmas comes, and we are held under its sway. We are unwilling pilgrims, perhaps, dragged along by our religious, and cultural, and familial obligations toward Christmas, and toward Bethlehem. We all have to leave home if we are to find Jesus.
Who in this story makes it to the manger? Joseph and Mary have to leave their home in Nazareth to pay taxes in Bethlehem. The shepherds were away from home in the fields when the angels appeared. The angels even had to leave their heavenly home. And some wondering wise men, who never were at home anywhere, got lost in their travels and found the Christ child in a manger. No one in the Christmas story who saw the Christmas miracle was at home.
Come to think of it, who in this story missed the Christmas miracle? Caesar the emperor, and Quirinius the governor of Syria. Though he heard the child was born, Herod too missed the miracle. Herod’s priests and scribes missed it. So did the innkeeper. They were all safely at home where life was comfortable.
Leaving home on the way to the place where Jesus lay is often not comfortable, and many times not our choice. Even though Bethlehem was where Joseph’s family was from, Mary and Joseph hadn’t chosen to make this trip. They would have been more content, no doubt, staying home back in Nazareth. But Caesar Augustus spoke, and they had no choice but to listen: Come and be enrolled, he said (and pay your taxes, which is what he was really saying)--whether you want to or not, come, come to Bethlehem. So the Roman government ordered. And so, whether Mary and Joseph wanted to or not, they did.
Bethlehem was an unlikely place for a miracle. It was a grubby little village back then, overrun with transients, people who didn’t much want to be there either; filled with inhabitants who looked upon their neighbors with suspicion and upon all these strangers with enmity--not to mention innkeepers who charged exorbitant rates; and merchants peddling all kinds of useless wares at exorbitant prices--all trying to cash in on the big influx of visitors who had come to town because of the census. So, for Mary and Joseph that first journey to Bethlehem had all the allure of a trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles, without an appointment, combined with a similar joy as a journey to the Oaks Mall last Friday. How festive the thought of that journey must have been. How depressing, more likely. It seemed like the wrong place for them to be. But that is the irony of the Christmas story. The only people who can find Jesus are the people who know they are not in the right place.
You do not have to leave home physically to find Jesus this Christmas. But you are going to have to leave the places that are comfortable but not the right place. The right place is often what we thought was the wrong place – the place where we find ourselves exhausted from trying to plan life and buy approval and to get home – that is just the place where our hearts can be opened to the forgiving grace of a Savior who restores us to the right place – to our true Home.
Who here today has all of their life just right? Are all your relationships in the right place? What about your children, and your career and your finances? What about your relationship with God? Is that in the right place? I ask these questions so that you can join those in this narrative who find the Savior because the only ones who find Him are those who know they need Him. Perhaps the first road we have to take if we are to make it to Bethlehem this year is the road of confession.
Caesar and Herod and the busy innkeeper missed the miracle because they were in places comfortable enough to distract them from their souls. Any place that distracts you from the yearning of your soul, whether it’s the job you have, or the television set, or all your religious activity, is the wrong place to be. The only right place for you to be in this story is on your knees before the manger. That is your true home, your home with God. Everything else is just a hotel in a foreign land. You can purchase a Hilton room, decorate it with Christmas decorations, fill it with presents and invite lots of people to join your party. And they will for a while. But then you will wake up one morning and realize it wasn’t what you thought. The only way to find a place you really want to stay is to quit trying to assure all the comfort you have amassed yourself with and confront your soul that is still restless, and will remain restless until it worships before this lowly manger. The only way to get to that manger is to tell the truth about how restless your soul really is where you are.
So, maybe instead of trying to run from all the stress this Christmas in chase of an unrealistic fantasy land of perfect families and candy canes and cheery carols, maybe you should run right into the stress and admit your imperfection. Confess that despite how hard you try, you keep finding yourself in the wrong place. Crisis and stress is part of Christmas – it was for all those who journeyed to the manger in Bethlehem, and it still is the first step along our road to the Savior’s manger too. Stress and crisis serve us as a call for our restless hearts to worship.
The point of Christmas is not to have a wonderful celebration. The point of Christmas is to receive your Savior. That will not happen by avoiding the stress but by accepting it. If you are going to enter the Christmas story, you have to remember that the story starts with people in crisis – people who are stressed out of their minds. As Luke tells it, Joseph was from Bethlehem, a sophisticated suburb of Jerusalem. Joseph had been living it up in Nazareth, a country village. He had to come back home to pay his taxes, thankfully not a vehicle tax. This year he would bring back home with him a country girl who was now pregnant – really pregnant -- and they were not married. How would the pregnancy go over with the family in Bethlehem? I’m not sure why they didn’t stay with Joseph’s relatives when they got to Bethlehem – perhaps that was the reason. There was no room in the inn. The best Joseph can do is to negotiate a barn for the childbirth. A pregnant girlfriend, unapproving relatives, no place to sleep or give birth – don’t tell Joseph about your stress! But stress was the way Joseph entered this story – the stress that comes from not being able to get life under control – the untidy realities of your life also can be the place you enter this story and walk down the road to Bethlehem where a great salvation waits for you.
Even if your life seems to be in the right place right now, there is enough happening in the world around you to cause you stress. Terrorists continue to strike and kill innocent people without warning. Our sons and daughters in the military in Iraq and Afghanistan are being targeted by merciless killers. Hunger and AIDS ravage African countries. The courts of our country have moved in directions that some fear attacks their faith or most cherished values. Are we supposed to forget all of these things for the next few weeks and take a holiday from our wounded world? No. It is these realities and the stress they cause that will remind us that we have traveled far from the illusion that we can be safe at home. Our stress and crises can put us on the road to Bethlehem. The only question is whether we will keep traveling until we meet the Savior, or whether we will settle just for some candy canes, and a Christmas tree, and the false hopes that accompany them.
When you become acutely aware that your world and your life are not in the right place, you are now ready to leave the home you have built for yourself and journey to your true Home at the manger. The Christmas miracle is that even God became homeless so you could come Home.
» Back to top |
Bulletin
Class Materials
Resources
Sermons
Spiritual Life
 |
