Luke 2:1-20, 41-52; Matthew 1:18-25, 2:9-15, 19-23
Now I’m a simple man. A simple man living in a small town. And, as you know, life is simple in a small town. Small towns are full of good, simple people. So I’m a simple man living a simple life in a simple town with other simple people.
But we do not worship a simple God. I used to think so. When I was young, my parents taught me the Ten Commandments. “Simple,” I thought. “Keep these ten rules, and everything is fine” Not easy, because they aren’t easy rules to keep, but simple. Follow the rules.
And I thought that God just sat up there and kept track of whether or not we followed the rules. A nice pretty blue mark for each time we did, an ugly black mark for each time we didn’t. Simple. God was the scorekeeper.
Well, that was before I became a father. Not just any father, but the husband of the mother of the Son of God. Now, that’s hard to say that way, so I’ll just abbreviate it and say that I am the father of the Son of God. But only the human father, not the real father. Only the one who got to help raise him. Believe me, life was not simple anymore!
First, there was the problem of Mary being pregnant! My friends thought it was pretty simple. “She’s with child, and you say it’s not your baby. You know what to do.”
But if I lodged a formal complaint against her, she would be stoned for adultery!
“But I don’t want her killed!” I replied. I went home and thought about it. I could simply file the writ of divorce and leave out the issue of her pregancy. If people wanted to believe that I would get her pregnant and then abandon her, they could do that.
And then, just when I thought I had managed to make life simple again, an angel showed up in my dream.
“Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” OK, simple again. Marry Mary.
And raise the Son of God!!!! WOW!!! NOT simple!!!
By now you know that the birth of this child is not going to be simple. That census caught us shortly before the baby was to be born. I argued and argued, but it didn’t matter. We had to go, and we had to go right then! So we went.
Of course, when we got there, every place was packed full of people! David had a lot of descendants, not just me.
Finally someone took pity on us. “The guest room is full, but we’ll take you in.” He looked back into the house and spoke to someone. “And my mother will help your wife.”
Mary had the baby there in the house with the people. The animals were on the lower level1. We laid him in the manger, so the animals wouldn’t step on him.
Now somehow it seemed from the beginning that every time I managed to make things seem simple, they just refused to stay that way. So now we have everything under control, right? The baby is here: he’s healthy and he’s safe. He’s even sleeping. Mary is tired, worn out, hurting, but she’s fine. The older woman helped her, and now it’s over. Now it will be simple, right?
So the shepherds showed up. They came bursting into the lower level of the house, shouting something about angels and looking for a baby in a manger. And just as I was about to yell back and chase them out, they saw him. They stopped dead in their tracks. One of them pointed and whispered, “There he is! Just like the angel said!”
Now you have to understand that shepherds are not the best people in the world. They aren’t well educated, if at all. They’re certainly not clean. In fact, they’re pretty crude. They live out on the edge of town, and they don’t usually mingle with townsfolk. That’s fine with the townsfolk. For one thing, we don’t trust shepherds.
But these, as soon as they saw the baby — I’ve never seen anything like it! One of them put his finger to his lips, and the others hushed. They tiptoed up to the manger and stood there, looking at him, whispering softly.
One of them told me, “An angel appears to us and said the Savior, the Messiah, has been born in Bethlehem. You’ll find him in a manger.” These men who hated towns and people came into town, looking for a baby in a manger. And then he smiled gently. “And now we have found him.”
The oldest one added, “We were afraid you would chase us away, but when the angel said the baby would be wrapped in bands of cloth, like we do our babies, and he would be in a manger, we knew we would find him born to ordinary people, not to a wealthy family.”2
Simple. Go into Bethlehem and find a baby in a manger. I wonder how many ordinary, one-room houses with lower levels there are in Bethlehem!
Later we had other visitors. Not simple shepherds, but magi from the east. Following a special star, these men managed to find us.3 And I saw in their eyes, as they stood and gazed at our baby, that same look of awe and wonder that I had seen on the faces of the shepherds.
The oldest one, he must have been a grandfather, took our child by the hand and told him the story of the star they followed. They left gifts, expensive gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Still not simple.
No sooner had they left than my angel showed up again. “Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.”
We didn’t even wait until morning; we just gathered up what we had and left. That gold came in handy, both for traveling to Egypt and for living there. I’m a good carpenter, so once in Egypt it wasn’t hard to support my family. And for a little while, life was simple, as simple as it can be with a child growing and learning to walk and talk.
After a while, my angel appeared again. “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.”
Nazareth seemed a safer place than Bethlehem, so we went back to Nazareth. Life settled into some kind of normalcy for a while. We had other children. Jesus continued to grow. He helped me in the shop. He especially liked to help with the garden, tending the seedlings. He was good with the younger children.
Finally, the time came when he was twelve years old, old enough to accompany us to Jerusalem for the Passover. We left the younger children with friends who were too old to go. And we had a wonderful time. We showed Jesus all the popular places in Jerusalem, but he especially liked the Temple.
After several days, the Passover celebration was over, so we headed back for Nazareth. Now if you know about extended families and small towns, you know that you don’t worry about your children when you are in such a group. There were dozens of families from Nazareth. They all knew Jesus, and he knew all of them.
There were several boys that Jesus hung out with. They were a pretty close group. I spotted a couple of them as we headed out of Jerusalem, so I figured that Jesus was with them. Boys that age don’t like to travel with parents, so we just let them go, as long as they stayed with the crowd.
It wasn’t until evening that we realized that Jesus was not with his friends. Now I don’t mind telling you that really threw me into a panic! Where was my son? Was he sleeping on the street? Who was feeding him? Worse thoughts crowded into my mind, but I refused to allow them to stay. And I could see by the expression on her face that Mary shared the same thoughts.
We literally ran back to Jerusalem. Well, not all the way, but a good part of it. We’d run a while, then slow down to a walk to catch our breath, and then run some more. And as we ran, we held hands, to comfort each other, to reassure each other. It was well after dark when we got back, but the guard let us in the side gate.
Once back in Jerusalem, where to look? And that’s when it hit me! You see, after Jesus was born, after the shepherds and the magi left, after the angel sent us to Egypt … well, I guess I forgot that this was not MY son, that this was God’s Son. I loved him as if he were mine. After all, I was caring for him, protecting him, helping feed him, doing whatever necessary for him. And so, now and again I might remember that I was only the husband of the mother of the Son of God, but for most of his life, I had been the father of Jesus.
And right now, I was a very worried father! I had spent enough time in this city to know that there were people in it who would not hesitate to … Oh, my word! What could I do? God gave me this special child to care for, and I have lost him! I have lost the Son of God! That must be worth a couple thousand ugly black marks on my record!
Now Mary is always the one who stays cool and collected, who can think on her feet, who has some sense of organization. Mary always has a plan. And she did, this time, too. But before we started searching, she sat me down on a low stone wall and looked straight into my eyes.
“Jesus is the Son of God,” she reminded me. “God knows where Jesus is, even if we don’t. And God won’t let anything happen to such a special child.”
I nodded and felt better. “Thanks, Mary. That helps. You’re right.”
We searched the entire city, block by block, especially the places we had spent showing Jesus the sights.
Finally, we could search no farther. We were exhausted. We hadn’t slept during the entire three days we were searching. When the thought occurred to me, when I told Mary that maybe we were going at this the wrong way, she finished my thought for me. “You’re right. We’ve been trying to do this ourselves. We should have gone to God for help at the very beginning.” We headed straight for the Temple.
Now if you’ve ever lost a child and then found the child, you know that relief and anger are very closely related emotions. The first thing you want to do is pick up the child in a great big bear hug, and then you want to vent your frustration in a good sound scolding. When we saw Jesus sitting there in the Temple with a group of older men, it was hard to know how to react.
Even Mary, usually the cool, calm one, spoke to him with a tone a lot sharper than I had ever heard her use with him, even as she grabbed him in a big, frantic hug. “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.”
If you remember when your kids were twelve, you remember that their logic doesn’t match with adult logic. But his answer simply reminded us that he really was growing up, and he knew who he was. “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
He had heard his birth story dozens of times. And he knew that he had two fathers, one standing in front of him in a mixture of anger and relief, and one who had brought him into being, who had cared for him in a way I could not, and who would continue to guide him as he learned how to be the Son of God in a human world.
Life would not be simple for him, even more so than life was simple for anyone.
One day, as many others have done and will do, he would have to choose between his family and his call. One day, he would have to choose between security and integrity. One day, he would have to choose between living a simple life and challenging the injustices of the world in which he lived. One day, as only the Son of God could do, he would choose between living life like his earthly father and doing the will of his heavenly Father.
In the meantime, Mary and I had an awesome responsibility. And I wondered again, as I have a million times, why all children were not raised as though they were children of God.
General Questions
1) How does this story follow its Scripture?
2) How does this story expand its Scripture for you?
3) What is the message of this story?
4) How does the message apply to us today?
Specific Questions
5) Why isn’t life simple?
6) Why would Joseph want to chase the shepherds out when they first came in?
7) How would you have responded if you had been one of the shepherds?
8) How would you react if you had been looking for your son for three days in a city?
