![Luke 2:1-14 [15-20], The Birth of Jesus](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/56b39b61ab48de92d991a40a/4e95beef-b977-474f-823e-3e53731b0dad/23-12-24b.jpg)
Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“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 for them in the inn.”
NL Daily Devotion for Monday, December 25, 2023
by Madison Johnston, Clergy Stuff
Main Idea: The baby Jesus is our promise of God’s topsy-turvy justice.
The author of the Luke is known as the “historian” of all of the gospel authors. He values a high level of context and includes a lot of details in his accounts of Jesus’s life in the hopes of legitimizing the story, or building the most credibility possible for Jesus’s case.
The fact that Chapter 2 of his Gospel opens with a decree from Emperor Augustus could simply be a natural consequence of Luke’s style—a way to explain the time and place of the story, not to mention Jesus’s family ties to the line of David. However, it could also serve a theological purpose. The story of Jesus’s birth opens by centering Augustus, the grown, established, authoritative and embodiment of Empire who lives in a palace and who everybody knows and who has thousands upon thousands of people interrupting their routines and uprooting their lives to respond to his command for a census count. In contrast, the story of Jesus’s birth closes by centering a newborn baby, the vulnerable and completely dependent embodiment of a merciful promise who nobody knows, who nobody was prepared for and who, as a result, came into the world in the lowliest of places.
One way we can interpret this narrative trajectory is to proclaim that no matter what we consider our starting point in our faith journey—and no matter where we are on that journey now—God promises us the same ending point. And that ending point is the turning of our world on its head. That ending point is justice. That ending point is a divine love that will stop at nothing to seek us out, even if seeking us out means becoming one of us. That ending point is Jesus.
The Magnificat, Mary’s song of praise in Luke 1:46-55, tells us in no uncertain terms that God is all about the reversal of power as we know it. God scatters the proud. God lowers the powerful and lifts up the lowly. God feeds the hungry and turns the wealthy away empty-handed. Our snippet of Psalm 146 makes it clear that God’s power is paradoxical—that while God’s influence expands farther and deeper than we could ever imagine, it tends to shows up in the little things. In our everyday lives. God makes sure that those who are at the highest risk of feeling alone never have to. God sabotages wickedness. God offers clarity and freedom and mercy.
As we go into Christmas Day celebrating the fact that Jesus is here, we can also celebrate what that means for us and for all of God’s children around the world who rejoice alongside us: that God’s justice is what will have the last word. That God’s justice is what our stories build to. That God’s justice is finally here and ready to empower us in building up God’s kingdom.
