Spirituality Column #736

December 22, 2020

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Part 2: What’s Left Unsaid Is …

By Bob Walters

“The shepherds returned [to their flocks], glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.” – Luke 2:20

These gleeful shepherds who had just seen the baby Jesus would have been horrified shepherds if the popular Christmas birth-of-Jesus narrative were true.

Not horrified or fearful of the angel who spoke to them, nor of seeing, well, God in a feeding trough. No, if they knew Mary and Joseph had been refused hospitality and then left alone in a stable or cave to fend for themselves in childbirth? Impossible.  Even these poor shepherds would not have let that happen, or let them stay alone in a stable.

That would not have happened anywhere at that time in that culture: not in Bethlehem, not among the rich or the poor, and certainly not to a family of “the house and lineage of David” in “the town of David.” (Luke 2:4).  In that town Joseph, basically, was a royal and would have been welcomed into any home in Bethlehem.  Likely, he had a plan to stay with family or friends … the Bible doesn’t tell us if he did or didn’t.

Let’s take a brief, issue-by-issue look at the words of Luke 2 and the birth of Jesus through the lens of Middle Eastern cultural expert Ken Bailey’s book, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes.  Cultural context answers (and poses) many questions.

- The Trip (v4): “Nazareth up to Bethlehem…”  That’s a 91-mile trip south though farmland but “up” into the Judean hill country, not far from Hebron where pregnant Mary had traveled 90 miles to visit Elizabeth for three months, then returned home. (Luke 1:39, 56). I notice nowhere does the Bible say Joseph and Mary traveled to Bethlehem alone, so perhaps others from Nazareth went, too.  I’d have organized it for Mary to stay with Elizabeth and meet Joseph in Bethlehem 1. to hide her pregnancy from Nazareth and 2. to save Mary, basically, two 90-mile trips in late pregnancy.  Nobody asked me.

- Birth time? (v5): “While they were there the days were accomplished …” We mentioned this last week.  Very plainly, Jesus was not born the night they arrived.

- The “Inn” (v6): “no room for them in the inn…”  “Inn” here means an extra room in someone’s home (Greek word katalymati is a spare room, not a hotel), adjacent to or above a home’s main living area.  The “stable” would be a lower, open area on one end of the house where animals at night were kept inside for protection from thieves and the warmth for the family. A manger would have been in there; warm and well-attended. The home’s “spare room” evidently was already occupied.

- Manger (v7): – That’s an animal eating trough, either a stand or possibly a bowl dug into the floor of the main room adjacent to where the animals were kept at night.

- Birth attendants: As was custom nearly everywhere in the world, local women would have taken care of the pregnant Mary.  Men would have been cleared out of the main room of the house where the birth took place while various women attended to Mary and the newborn. Then, as was every baby of that time, Jesus would have been swaddled – v7 says “[by] Mary” and, in that circumstance, laid in the warm hay of the nearby manger because “there was no room in the inn [guest area]” of the house.

- Born at night? (v8): The Bible says the angel visited the shepherds at night, not that Jesus was born at night.  However, in v11, the angel says Jesus was “…born this day …” which could very well imply nighttime, since Jewish “days” started at sundown.

- The Shepherds 1 (v8-15): The lowliest of peasants, the shepherds were the first to be visited by the angel.  Note that it was not the Jewish leaders who were notified.

- The Shepherds 2: The shepherds (v9) were “terrified,” then the angel says “fear not.”  Why is that important? Because, as St. Jerome in the fourth century pointed out, when you are terrified you do not understand what somebody is trying to say to you.  The angel wanted the shepherds to calm down, listen to his message, and understand.  That “glory of the Lord” display (v9), I’m sure, would likely take anyone’s breath away.

- The Shepherds 3: They were first to learn, and it’s critically significant, that “a savior has been born unto you … he is Christ that Lord” (v11). “Unto you” is personal.

- The Shepherds 4: Their sign (v12) that the shepherds would find their savior in a manger wrapped in swaddling clothes, was also critical. Why?  Because this told the shepherds that the savior / Christ / Lord – anticipated by the whole Jewish nation – was humbly one of them. The fact they could go visit the Messiah in a common home in a common manger among common people would bring the shepherds great joy; it meant they were not separated from God by their lowly station in life.

- The Shepherds 5: That the shepherds visited Jesus and then (v17-18) “spread the word about Jesus’s birth, the angel’s visit to them, and all they had “heard and seen” is rich with meaning.  They had understood what the angel told them.  On the authority of that angel, the shepherds told “others” what Mary and Joseph likely would have been reluctant to tell them: that the baby Jesus was the Messiah.  It was only the shepherds who the Bible identifies as the initial spreaders of this news.  Even Mary “pondered [these things] in her heart” (v19).  And the fact that the shepherds had “others” to tell suggests strongly that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were not alone.

- The Shepherds 6: The shepherds returned to their flocks in the fields, “glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen” (v20). These shepherds had just been trusted with telling the truth of Jesus’s mission to fulfil God’s salvation of mankind, and whether they understood the full impact of that is hard to say.  But what we can say is that not only were they rejoicing to God; they were satisfied that the village had provided adequate and maybe even laudable care and hospitality amid this birth.  Culturally, that’s something the shepherds would have insisted on and understood,

What’s left for us to understand is to rejoice and praise God, too. What’s left unsaid is that we aren’t meant to be Jesus; we are meant to be shepherds

Say what you will, I’m pretty sure that is the true meaning of Christmas.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes a few other things: 1. Some Bibles say they went to Bethlehem to be taxed (KJV), for a census (NIV), or to be registered (ESV).  It’s all the same Greek root word “apographe.” 2. Jerusalem was also known as the City of David. 3. Nobody knows the exact date of Jesus’s birth; but everyone agrees it was not December 25, and not the year “0000.”  4. The Wise Men showed up months later (Matthew 2:1-12).  5. Everybody tries to explain the Star in terms of astronomy (like the Saturn-Jupiter confluence this week); maybe God just put it there … like the Bible says. 

Spirituality Column #735

December 15, 2020

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Part 1: What’s Left Unsaid Is …

By Bob Walters

“The shepherds returned [to their flocks], glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.” – Luke 2:20

I love the warm-fuzzies of the Christmas season, and especially the King James Bible’s beautiful story of the birth of Jesus in Luke 2.  Like the company of angels in Luke 2:14, we should all be “praising God in the highest” and praying for peace over all the earth.  The decorations, music, traditions, my own memories … I love it all.

I also get a real kick out of filling in all the blanks that exist within not just the Bible story of “Christmas” – a word which does not appear in the Bible – but also sorting through truth and legend of what happened in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago.  God sent to us the most powerful message possible: He sent Himself.  And the message truly did reside in the medium – a humble, helpless baby whose love and obedience would change all humanity in grace and faith … forever. 

There are very few biblical specifics about the birth.  It gets half a verse in Matthew 2:1, and then half a chapter in Luke 2:4-20. Yet there is so much we think we know that isn’t so, because we don’t know that culture. We know it happened.  That’s it.

Around 200 A.D. an anonymous non-Palestinian wrote a story, in Greek, titled The Protevangelium of James about the birth of Jesus.  It is from that story, not the Bible, that we get most of what we think we know about the birth of Jesus in (or near) Bethlehem, and most of it is wrong. 

There’s the story about Mary going into labor on the journey, Joseph putting her in a cave, and Mary, a scared teenager, giving birth by herself.  That notion took hold in the traditions of the Eastern Church, and that is the story in the Protevangelim.

Or, Joseph and Mary make it to Bethlehem in the nick of time and because there was “no room in the inn” (Luke 2:7) – which when translated properly means “extra room,” not “hotel room” – Jesus was in a handy “barn.”  Um, they didn’t have “barns.”

We are also led to believe this was a hurried trip with little planning and no provisions for lodging, that Joseph and Mary showed up unannounced as strangers, and they were either purposely shunned or coldly left unattended by everyone in the town of Bethlehem as Mary went into labor upon (or shortly before) arrival.  No.

Let’s address just one very obvious biblical detail.  Luke 2:6 – again in the beautiful language of the King James, states – “And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she [Mary] should be delivered…”  Jesus was born days after they got to Bethlehem, not as an emergency delivery upon arrival. 

Next week we’ll look briefly at other specifics of Joseph, Mary, the trip, their accommodations, the “inn”, the shepherds, the angels, the animals, and the culture itself.  It’s been a couple of years since I’ve mentioned Kenneth Bailey’s wonderful book, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, which provides realistic cultural context to the Bible’s very brief announcement of this world-altering event.

The Bible is true and accurate, and often says more than we may realize.  Plus, what’s left unsaid is sometimes historically knowable and downright fascinating.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) and his wife Pam decorate extensively for Christmas.

Spirituality Column #728

October 27, 2020

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Knowing What Isn’t So

By Bob Walters

“… you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee.” – John 7:52, Pharisees rebuking Nicodemus for daring to remind them that their law applies to Jesus, too.

You have to be careful about what you say to whom these days.

Whether politics or pandemics, economics or environment, gender or justice, patriotism or wokeness, religion or the Supreme Court, which lives matter or which lives don’t, public discourse is an endless minefield of truth-or-dare when we open our mouth or hit “send” on a post.  Then as now, it was the same risky idea for Nicodemus.

Unwelcome opinions guarantee a dangerous swim in roiling, unknown waters.

If there is no other lesson from the Bible – although I assure you there are many – it is that as much as humanity has “progressed” in the past 2,000 years, mankind is still basically the same. Technology is amazing; man’s proclivity to deceive is mystifying.

Nicodemus … I just love Nicodemus.  I ache for Nicodemus.  I think he truly “got it” – after a time – that Jesus was exactly who He said He was, acted like He was, and represented what He was – the Son of God, the promised Messiah, the saving Christ.

Nicodemus sensed that perhaps the prevailing Pharisaic narrative on this “Galilean” speaking so much distasteful opinion just might have an “in” on divine truth.

Jesus indeed was the fulfillment of God’s prophetic promise to reign in the whole world, over all people, through the Jewish nation and out into all the earth.  Just like the Pharisees mistakenly thought the Messiah would be a conquering soldier to kill the Romans and make the Jews the world’s most power nation, today we think Jesus came to solve our problems, heal our ills, give us stuff, free-pass our sins, and save us into heaven because by golly, we are that important.  And we ARE that important.

But not like we think. Turns out, in capital-T Truth, God’s glory is that important.

It was to the curious, highly-educated, surprise visitor Nicodemus the Pharisee, in the deep of night, that Jesus privately said the words we now know as John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”  Nicodemus had ears but didn’t hear.

The Pharisees had their narrative on Jesus almost exactly backwards.  It was Jesus’s truth that would truly fulfill the Law and save all who believe.  But it was their own destructive Pharisaical narrative they obeyed.  They were in gravest error.

John 7:52 (top) offers a seemingly minor point about Galilee, but it’s an egregious error similar to the many public narrative lies we are fed today.  In the temple the Pharisees “knew” a narrative that wasn’t so: that Jesus came from Galilee.  In truth, as prophecy said and they should have known, Jesus was born in Bethlehem. 

It was truth they ignored; a detail left unchecked.  The pious Pharisees were so darkened by their self-serving narrative that they missed God’s true light of the world.

Jesus came to initiate God’s Kingdom on earth; to fulfil the God-promised, prophetic purpose to bring the Jewish nation and all humanity back into His glory by the work, obedience, and covering of their sin by Jesus. The Messiah God, it turns out, was a loving, humble, servant of others; not a strong-armed tyrant or marauding earthly king.

The lesson is that the truth may not come from where – or be what – we expect.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) encourages all to vote with discernment.  Amen.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) figures modern liberals expressing political “outrage” at caging baby Jesus would have defended Mary’s right to abort Him.