Scripture: Luke 2:1-14 Series: One offs
A Christmas Eve sermon on Luke 2:1-14 that opens with the surprising history of the AD/BC calendar to show our dating system was never built on evidence of Jesus’s birth. The preacher dwells on the named Roman power-figures (Augustus, Quirinius) to argue that Luke deliberately roots the nativity in real secular history — yet God enters that history not through the consuls and governors who fill the history books but through unimportant people in an unimportant town: Mary, who had no pedigree, education, or status, and simply said yes. The message turns to the congregation: like Mary and the shepherds, they are called to be God-bearers and proclaimers of good news. Worthiness comes not from blood, job, children’s schools, or a 401k, but from God’s Spirit and grace, offered here and now. The closing exhortation is to receive the blessing, the grace, and the baby Jesus, and go forth in peace.
Illustrations: no-year-zero-calendar-history, quirinius-governor-of-syria, family-christmas-eve-luke-reading, tiktok-roman-empire-trend, charlton-heston-sword-and-sandal-epics, grad-school-wikipedia-pages, roman-defeat-in-germany
December 24 (Christmas Eve)
In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no place in the guest room. Now in that same region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!” Luke 2:1-14
There was no year zero. Jesus wasn’t born in year zero. After 1 BC is 1 AD. As well, this wasn’t the calendar system for years at the time of Jesus. Romans used the Roman calendar based on the founding of Rome. They followed the Julian calendar for months but dating the years was different. The Jews followed the Hebrew Calendar based on the founding of the world. The Greeks followed a number of calendars but a major one was the Olympiad which marked every Olympics every fourth year.
The first designation of Anno Domini, didn’t take place until the 6th century when a monk Dionysus Exiguus wanted to make a calendar for Easter but didn’t want to acknowledge the Roman Emperor, Diocletian, who had been a great persecutor of Christians.
Before that, Christians followed an Anno Mundi, or year of the world calendar similar to the Hebrew Calendar, dating every year based on its distance from when they thought the world was created.
The first designation of BC did not even take place until 1474 with the Carthusian Monk, Werner Rolevinck’s, History of the world from Creation to the Papacy of Sixtus IV.
All of this is to say that our calendar wasn’t designed around an historical understanding of the date of Christ’s birth. Intuitively, we might imagine with BC and AD that the dating system is based around empirical evidence of Jesus’s birth, but that is not the case.
The birth of Jesus marked something significant for history, though, and we see that in Luke’s Gospel.
Luke marks an important step in Christian history, for it lays out the entrance of the Jewish Messiah into secular or worldly history. Luke 2 begins with the emperor, Augustus, and the governor of Roman Syria, Publius Sulpicius Quirinius.
Quirinius is one of the names that people read every year but never really think about. My family used to read Luke 2:1-15 every Christmas eve together after the church Christmas Eve service and this name always struck me as unique, but it took me a long time to really look into it.
Quirinius became governor of Syria in 6 AD and gave a census over Judea to prepare the area for Roman taxation. This is the time and reason which Luke gives for the return of Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem and the location of Joseph’s birth.
Quirinius was born in 51 BC in Lanuvium, a village near Rome, to an unremarkable family. He moved up the ranks of the army and was elected Consul in 12 BC.
There was a trend on tiktok a few months ago, of wives or girlfriends asking their significant others how often they think about the Roman Empire. The most popular response was daily. Many men think about the Roman Empire once a day. I must confess that were I to have been I asked, that would also have been my response. If it is not your thing, the consul may seem like a strange thing, but it was an extremely important position. There were two consuls elected every year and they held enormous power. Once Augustus became emperor, the power of consuls wained slightly but it was still a very influential position. To be elected Consul was both a lifetime achievement and a military duty.
Once consul, Quirinius led a successful campaign against a rival nation in what is now Turkey. Upon victory, he was named tutor to Augustus’s heir.
Then in what we now call 6AD, after the banishment of Herod Achelaus and the collapse of the Herodic tetrarchy, Augustus named Quirinius governor for Syria. 6AD marked the transition from Roman Palestine being a client state ruled by a local warlord, to the area becoming an official Roman proctorate, with taxes and responsibilities therein.
It was this transition which demanded a census. Augustus never ordered a census for the whole world at the same time. The word in Greek translated as known world is based on the root of home, oikos, like economic, and could mean inhabited land. The total of the houses is another adequate translation. We often don’t dig into these names because the history of Christmas feels so far removed from our lives.
There’s a certain way of hearing stories from the Bible and imagining them all as mythic. We imagine a sword and sandal past, like Charlton Hesston in the 10 Commandments or Ben-Hur, far different from our lived lives and experiences. Distant history, distant historical experiences are often hard for us to comprehend and understand. Putting ourselves in the shoes of ancient Romans or ancient Jews is not a simple task. The world has changed, but humans have not changed very much. We still hunger and thirst, we are still tired and happy and sad and jealous. People are born and people die. What is so important about the Gospel of Luke in this passage is that we see the entrance of God’s story directly into secular history, into world history. Quirinius and Augustus, and later Pontius Pilate, these are not Christian figures. They are Roman figures. They are named here, not because they are good or noble or virtuous, but because they are historical. They are the kinds of names we find in history books. They existed during a point in time when other humans existed.
Christmas is the celebration that the God of all creation, not partial creation, all creation, humbled himself to be born of a woman in a town southeast of Jerusalem. It was not an important place. She was not an important person. There were histories of important places and important people. Mary and Joseph, were not subjects of those histories. Most of us will not enter the history books. There may be a few people here that have their own Wikipedia page. At one point at a party in grad school, I started making Wikipedia pages for my friends, and there was about a three minute lag before somebody flagged it and took it down. I think that they are a lot faster with flagging now, but still, most of us will not have our own Wikipedia pages. We will not be in editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica when the story of the 21st century is told. Our names will not be at the forefront. Bethlehem never comes up in the history of Rome during the last days of the reign of Emperor Augustus, which is the period when Jesus was born. A woman named Mary and a man named Joseph do not come up in those stories. There’s a great battle in what is now Germany where the Romans are defeated. That comes up a lot. Another one of Augustus’s heirs dying comes up a lot. Mary and Joseph, and the baby named Jesus do not. Quirinius comes up. He was a consol, a very important position. He was a tutor to one of Augustus’s heirs. He was a governor in a province that had just become fully romanized. He was an important figure. God did not enter history through him. God entered history through an unexpected way. Mary doesn’t have the best genetics. She doesn’t come from the right people. She did not have the right education. None of that mattered. God sought her and she said yes. She was offered a frightening responsibility. God offers the frightening possibility of bringing the divine image in the flesh into the world. And Mary says yes to this. At Christmas, we celebrate God becoming human in Jesus Christ. This moment of entrance in history where God’s love and offering of life is opened up to all, where the shackles and chains of sin no longer hold total domination. It is a gift. It is a gift worth giving presents over. It is a gift worth celebrating, but it is not just a gift of the past. God entered actual history through Jesus Christ, and God calls us to welcome him again. This day, God calls us to be God-bearers. This day, God calls us to announce the good news like the shepherds. This day, you may not feel like you are good enough to bear the image of God’s son. You may not feel that you’ve done enough. It may seem like a burden, gosh, so much to live up to. Yet what bore Jesus Christ was not the will of Mary, but the Spirit washing over her and that spirit is here offered for you. You can bear God’s love in this world, not because of your blood, or who your parents are, or what your job is, or where your kids go to school, or how big your 401k is. None of that ultimately matters. It all goes to dust. You are worthy already. You are loved already. You are good enough already. You are deserving not just of love and affection, but of purpose. You are deserving of a purpose and a mission in this world. You’re deserving of it. God is offering it to you, not just in the past, not just in the future here and now. Receive it. Receive the blessing, receive the grace, receive the baby Jesus, and go forth in peace.
Let us pray, Heavenly Father, help us to receive your gift this day. Help us to let go of ourselves this day. Help us feel loved. Help us to offer love in this world without cost or price, as you gave love to us. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.