Lifting the Lowly
Luke’s birth narratives are much more theological interpretations of the meaning of Jesus’ birth, the Incarnation of God, than any transcription of history after the manner of a court stenographer. Rather than giving us “just the facts,” Luke puts words into the mouths of Elizabeth and Mary to let us in on the wonder unfolding in the story he has begun to tell. Along the way, he liberally quotes from Hebrew prophets about Yahweh's Messiah coming to set justice and equity in motion, establishing the long-forgotten basis of national economic security in which those at the bottom receive a full measure of the bounty from Yahweh's land. All too often, however, we get so ensnared by recreating the events of that birth that we miss the message it should convey. There are lots of things we should set right in our retellings of Jesus’ birth, simply from traditions of misreading Luke’s account. There was no angry innkeeper pushing Mary and Joseph out into the cold. The manger ...