Advent with Luke #1
I’ll say more about Luke, who he was, what’s peculiar and special about his version of the story of Jesus, things to look for as we dive into the Bible’s world, its land, characters, sorrows and joys. For today, I’d just take note that Luke marks the place and time of the coming of the Lord. “In the days of King Herod of Judea” (Luke 1:5), and “a decree went out from Caesar Augustus” (Luke 2:1). For years in teaching this, I commented that Christianity isn’t some other-worldly batch of spiritual feelings and ideas, but something that happened in real space and time, in history, on this earth – and thus that it happens now in real space and time, in history, on earth. It’s where you walk and what you see and smell.
True enough. But what time was it when the Lord came? It was “in the days of King Herod of Judea.” Shiver. Shudder. Herod, builder of wonders, wealthy beyond imagining, and all on the backs and by the sweat of the Judeans, overtaxed, intimidated, subject to capricious, random violence from Herod’s government. A megalomaniac, cruel even to his family and friends. He was loathed; the people lived in constant terror.
And Caesar Augustus? The greatest of all of Rome’s mighty emperors, who boasted of his pax romana, peace in the world – but a peace enforced at the edge of a sword, his regiments crushing anybody who even seemed to get out of line. He boasted that he transformed Rome from a city of brick to a city of marble – all paid for by overtaxing the impoverished of the empire, which was 95% of the population.
Herod. Augustus. History fawns over and admires such over-achievers. But those who lived under their thumb could only sigh in despair. Madeleine L’Engle put the situation into poetry: “That was no time for a child to be born / In a land in the crushing grip of Rome / Honor and truth were tramped by scorn / Yet here did the Savior make his home.”
Two thoughts. You would think if God wanted to take the risk of birth, to take on the perils of arriving on earth, God would have snuck in during a safe season, when the rulers were weak, when there was nothing to fear. But instead, God – being God-like! – came during the reign of the greatest emperor ever, and in the region of the cruelest tyrant ever. Israel, after all, had escaped Egypt, not during the reign of a weakling, but when Rameses the Great, the greatest of all the pharaohs, was on the throne. It’s as if God wanted to make a point: I am the one to worship, I am the Lord, no power is ultimate. Jesus, the little infant, vulnerable in a manger in a little village, born to poor peasants, is the truly great one, the Lord of all, including the megalomaniacs who would laugh if they heard anybody thought this baby mattered.
And then: God anticipated that through history, people being free, and therefore more than capable of bad behavior and misuse of power, God’s people would in countless times and places find themselves in considerable danger, oppressed, overtaxed, powerless over even their own small lives. God wanted us to know there is hope even then. Christianity was born, and thrived, under the worst of governments, under the cruelest of rulers. There’s a pulsating, unquenchable power at the heart of being the people of God – not because of their genius or cleverness or muscle, but because of truth, because of the power that is of the God who made heaven and earth and will bring all creation to its divine purpose.
Have you noticed Paul’s intro to his “love” chapter, the last verse of 1 Corinthians 12? “I will show you a more excellent way,” or “a better way.” Luke dreamed that his Gospel would show us just that: a better way, a more excellent way. His dream has been fulfilled, as we will see.