Christmas Eve/Christmas Day
Devotional
Water From the Well
Lectionary Devotional For Cycle A
Object:
In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered.
-- Luke 2:1
If you were in charge of determining which events were to be selected to be broadcast on the nightly news, would you select a decree by the Emperor Augustus, who ruled much of the known world, or what might be happening in the lives of a poor couple in one small village in a third-rate colony of the Roman empire? We are accustomed to believing that the decisions of the powerful are more significant than the events that take place in the lives of ordinary people. Yet 2,000 years later, even from a secular perspective, the event that most transformed the world was not the census that was taken in response to the decree of Emperor Augustus but the birth of a child that largely went unnoticed at the time. The ordinary person would hardly remember Augustus today. This same emphasis on God finding expression in the lives of ordinary people is continued in the event that is recorded next. It was neither through the wealthy nor the powerful that God chose to make the announcement of what had happened in Bethlehem. Rather it was to a group of shepherds who were working the night shift. We have romanticized shepherds in our telling of this story, but at the time shepherds were often considered a necessary but somewhat disreputable part of the society. Their invisibility might be compared to the garbage collectors or street sweepers of our time. Yet it was to them, as they toiled at night on behalf of someone else, that the angels of the Lord appeared. God's choice of a poor couple who had to make do with facilities found where animals are kept and shepherds who labored on behalf of others may have implications for where we look for the presence of God in our world. It might also make us more alert as observers of the ordinary events of life and less enthralled by what others might think of as the important events. God has a tendency to make his presence known in those areas of life that are often overlooked.
-- Luke 2:1
If you were in charge of determining which events were to be selected to be broadcast on the nightly news, would you select a decree by the Emperor Augustus, who ruled much of the known world, or what might be happening in the lives of a poor couple in one small village in a third-rate colony of the Roman empire? We are accustomed to believing that the decisions of the powerful are more significant than the events that take place in the lives of ordinary people. Yet 2,000 years later, even from a secular perspective, the event that most transformed the world was not the census that was taken in response to the decree of Emperor Augustus but the birth of a child that largely went unnoticed at the time. The ordinary person would hardly remember Augustus today. This same emphasis on God finding expression in the lives of ordinary people is continued in the event that is recorded next. It was neither through the wealthy nor the powerful that God chose to make the announcement of what had happened in Bethlehem. Rather it was to a group of shepherds who were working the night shift. We have romanticized shepherds in our telling of this story, but at the time shepherds were often considered a necessary but somewhat disreputable part of the society. Their invisibility might be compared to the garbage collectors or street sweepers of our time. Yet it was to them, as they toiled at night on behalf of someone else, that the angels of the Lord appeared. God's choice of a poor couple who had to make do with facilities found where animals are kept and shepherds who labored on behalf of others may have implications for where we look for the presence of God in our world. It might also make us more alert as observers of the ordinary events of life and less enthralled by what others might think of as the important events. God has a tendency to make his presence known in those areas of life that are often overlooked.
