daily java

Daily Java:

They hurried to the village and found Mary and Joseph. And there was the baby, lying in the manger. After seeing him, the shepherds told everyone what had happened and what the angel had said to them about this child. All who heard the shepherds’ story were astonished, but Mary kept all these things in her heart and thought about them often. The shepherds went back to their flocks, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen. It was just as the angel had told them. (Luke 2:16-20)

It is hard to imagine the first time, but here it was. The shepherds were sitting around minding their own business and suddenly, a choir of angels began to sing. It was probably frightening.

When the angels told them to go to Bethlehem and see the baby, they went. They probably had no idea which baby or where, but they were not about to disobey angels. You can almost imagine them thinking about going house to house when they just kind of gravitated to the stable. There, among all the people and all the babies who were probably born that night, was one who was the King of Israel. And they found him.

It startled Mary and Joseph when a bunch of smelly shepherds came into the stable. Joseph’s first impulse may even to have been to jump in front of Mary and the baby to defend them.

He soon realized that they were from God.

But why shepherds? Why someone so lowly, so menial, so far down the social level? Why not someone better and greater?

He soon found out that Jesus had come to the world, not the “powerful and important.” He came to shepherds as well as kings. He came to everybody.

Soon though, the shepherds left. And Joseph was left with Mary and the baby, his new family, his new responsibility. It was not his child, and he – along with the entire village of Nazareth – knew it. But he loved Mary, and because of that, he loved Jesus.

And life went on.

Glory came down and then everything went back to normal. But meanwhile, the grace and love of God in the form of a baby lay sleeping, dreaming whatever dreams babies dream, waiting for the day he would sacrifice himself for humanity.

Mary adjusted his blanket and went to sleep herself. And Joseph waited. He wondered if something else was going to happen tonight.

one child born among many

About this time, a man and woman from the tribe of Levi got married. The woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She saw that he was a special baby and kept him hidden for three months. But when she could no longer hide him, she got a basket made of papyrus reeds and waterproofed it with tar and pitch. She put the baby in the basket and laid it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile River. The baby’s sister then stood at a distance, watching to see what would happen to him. Soon Pharaoh’s daughter came down to bathe in the river, and her attendants walked along the riverbank. When the princess saw the basket among the reeds, she sent her maid to get it for her. When the princess opened it, she saw the baby. The little boy was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This must be one of the Hebrew children,” she said. Then the baby’s sister approached the princess. “Should I go and find one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?” she asked. “Yes, do!” the princess replied. So the girl went and called the baby’s mother. “Take this baby and nurse him for me,” the princess told the baby’s mother. “I will pay you for your help.” So the woman took her baby home and nursed him. Later, when the boy was older, his mother brought him back to Pharaoh’s daughter, who adopted him as her own son. The princess named him Moses, for she explained, “I lifted him out of the water. (Exodus 2:1-10)

Having a baby boy was illegal in Egypt. However, anyone who truly feared God wasn’t going to kill a baby simply because of its sex. So babies were hidden everywhere. And probably, baby Moses wasn’t the only child in a basket floated down the Nile.

But he was the only one found by the daughter of the Pharaoh, the supreme ruler of Egypt. And he was the only one who was raised in the Pharaoh’s household. And he was the only one who grew to manhood and was used by God to set his captive Israelites free from Egyptian slavery.

We try to make too much of stuff. One lone little basket floating down the Nile. There were probably a lot. There were a lot of Israelites and they had a lot of baby boys. It made no sense that there would just be one. And besides, the God of the universe is big enough to single out who he wants from the crowd.

We do the same with Jesus. One lone little boy born in a small stable, alone itself on the desert.

There were lots of children born that night in Bethlehem. But there was only one who was the Messiah. Isaiah told us, in Isaiah 53:2: He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. There was nothing special to the birth of Jesus to the casual eye.

Yes, he was the anointed of God made manifest in human flesh. Yes, he was conceived by the Holy Spirit with a young virgin woman. Yes, in Christ lives all the fullness of God in a human body (Colossians 2:9).

But God never intended for people to look at the baby Jesus or the baby Moses, for that matter, as being the one who would deliver his people. At least, not until it was time.

When it was time, they boldly strode upon the stage of history and took their places as deliverers.

But until then, they were just one of many.

It is hard to see God’s will like that: working underground, incognito. But he did. Mary knew where Jesus came from, and I would imagine she didn’t tell anyone. They would have thought she was crazy. Joseph knew because of the dream, but even so, that took some faith in that dream being real.

I would imagine that Moses’ mother felt that same way, looking at her baby son, knowing that God had a plan for him and putting him into that basket.

Both babies were gifts. Moses means “a gift” in Egyptian and Jesus (or the Hebrew equivalent Joshua) means God our Deliverer. Same thing, really.

Both sent by God to deliver. But both sent as one among many at first, no different than the others until it was time to be different.

born in a manger

While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them. (Luke 2:6-7)

Some more thoughts on that stable.

Hotel rooms were well known in that day, as they have been in other cultures, as b3ing flea-bitten, louse-ridden dens of thieves.

It was a favor to Joseph and Mary that they got to stay in a stable instead of a hotel room.

The stable was warm, there was plenty of straw to sleep on, the animals provided warmth. Contrary to the song, the manger was probably not cold, nor was the child shivering.

And more than likely, there were more than just Mary and Joseph there. Since everybody had to come home to register, there were a lot of  people in town, all looking for a place to sleep. And since there was no birth control, probably several women were pregnant. Add to that the fact that people traveled in groups for protection from thieves. There were probably a lot of people with them, a regular caravan.

Chances are high that Mary and Joseph shared this manger with other families and other babies were born that night.

That is the point of this humble birth. Jesus, the book of Hebrews says, was just like us. 1 Peter 2:22 says his lone point of difference was he committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.

That was his difference. His Father, after all, was God. He had both humanity and divinity in him. Colossians 2:9 said: For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form. Yet he was also human, born to a human mother and laid in a manger.

If it were otherwise, if he were totally divine and the birth was just a sham, then the life was just a sham, as was the death. And the book of Hebrews, when it says, For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin (4:14), and Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered (5:8) is worthless, a meaningless shadow play devoid of any real humanity.

Instead, God the Father wanted to touch humanity and participate in the experience. He wanted humanity to know that he understood what they were going through. So he sent God the Word to become manifest in the flesh (John 1:14) and be with us, live as we lived, be born as we are born, die as we die, yet do something we could not do – come back to life.

And in that coming back to life, he gave us also that ability to come back to life from our own death, to be with him in perfection, to approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. (Hebrews 4:16).

That is why he was born. Again, what a strange way to save the world.