Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.”
NL Daily Devotion for Tuesday, December 24, 2019
by Dr. Kimberly Leetch, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: God became vulnerable, so we might learn to become dependent on a God who loves us.
Israel had been oppressed by Rome for long enough. (And by Greece, Persia, Babylon, and Assyria in the centuries before Rome.) They were tired and defeated. The greedy Emperor Augustus decided he needed more money, which meant higher taxes. The way to collect more taxes was to justify more people to tax. The way to justify more people was to call for a census, which is just what he did.
The census would not only impose a greater financial burden on people, but also required that they travel to the lands of their families. This would mean that those who had settled elsewhere would have to uproot their whole lives, travel, and resettle once again—new home, new job, new community. For Joseph and Mary, who were expecting a child, it would be an even more difficult and dangerous journey. But it was unavoidable, and so they went.
Funny, though, just as Rome squeezed Israel a little tighter, God stepped in to relieve the pressure. And boy, did God ever step in! God became human.
God stepped onto the earth as a baby, vulnerable and dependent on others for survival. God became dependent on humanity, so humanity could learn to become dependent on God once again. God taught us that when the pressure becomes too great to bear, our best course of action is not to fight, but to surrender to a loving God who desires an interdependent relationship with humanity.
Our vulnerability is strength. Our surrender is power. Our interdependence is love.
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