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 was less likely in some stable and more likely the family room in some poor home of Joseph’s distant kin. The angels on the hillside are recounted by Luke as speaking to the shepherds, not singing. The magi appeared probably a couple of years after Jesus’ birth. Joseph was no master carpenter, just one more unskilled day-laborer (techton in Luke’s Greek). Luke’s main rationale for placing Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem was to underscore the genealogical link with King David, more than any specific question of historiography. Again, the text before us is theological. Any history presented is secondary or even accidental to its purpose.

While our Christmas traditions highlight Luke chapter 2 as the centerpiece of the story, Luke’s account begins by setting the stage for our comprehension of Jesus’ birth by recounting Mary’s reported visit to her cousin Elizabeth. When Luke tells us he had researched well the story of Jesus, we would do well to remember that he was not writing from the perspective of a 19th Century historian. He was writing from the perspective of a theological storyteller, a religious poet, a bard giving us a glimpse into what God was doing through the mystery of the Incarnation. It is the account of a preacher relaying the significance of the events he describes.

I don’t often tell stories about my family in my sermons. When I do, I tend to leave out details. I don’t tell stories about my parishioners. When I do, I generally mask identities and omit details to avoid letting people in on someone else’s story. I may refer to a former parishioner, but I generally don’t tie that story to a specific church, an individual, or a specific time-frame. I don’t use stories about people to talk about them, but rather to illustrate a point about our shared human experience. Getting too far into the details of an individual’s life sends us down a rabbit hole and often misdirects our attention from the point at hand. So for Luke, it is not so much the details of exactly what happened to whom, but some lesson he is attempting to communicate about the more important themes.

He does not tell us, for example, how Elizabeth would know that Mary was pregnant, much less with the Messiah. He does not give any rationale for how a young teenage girl would make a long journey to visit her elder cousin without some protective entourage. Those concerns are distractions to Luke’s purpose. Even whether or not such a visit ever occurred is immaterial to the message he conveys. If Elizabeth had actually known of Jesus being Messiah, one would think she would have communicated that to John we will come to know as the Baptist. Instead, we are asked to focus on the theological issue of who John and Jesus were and how that impacts our understanding of the role their parents played in the unfolding drama.

Mary and Elizabeth were blessed in having a part in this drama of God’s redemption. They were vessels of God’s Incarnation. They had roles to play in rearing these two children. What matters to Luke, however, is that, through the lives and ministries of John and Jesus, God was at work to redeem the people, specifically to lift up the lowly. Through both, the nation was to understand the depths of God’s mercy, forgiveness, and willing desire to redeem those who remained unworthy of such intervention.

Christmas, the birth of Messiah, was for Luke a question of God’s gift of grace. Jesus’ coming underscored our undeserving nature. Not only that, however, but is also highlighted that despite our being less than deserving, God still cared. Grace entered the picture because of our unworthiness.

Our stories too often focus on berating the unkind innkeeper, judging Herod, and blaming the people for missing the coming of Jesus. We try to say that we would have been first in line to welcome the newborn king into the world. The point Luke was making, however, was that while Jesus’ birth was momentous, no one really knew. It was simply one more birth to one more common family in the very mediocre, humble setting of most any other birth. We would have missed celebrating it just like we missed about 10,000 births in our nation yesterday. Not only would we have missed Jesus’ birth. We would have missed its significance.

No one understood what it all meant at the time. Luke gives us some foreshadowing in Mary, Elizabeth, and Zechariah’s words. It was never about a baby. It was never about a manger. It was never about angels or shepherds or magi. It was about the grace of God coming to meet us, coming to intercept us in our daily routines that we might catch a glimpse of the wonder of grace reaching even us. More than us, that same grace came to lift up those we still consider too lowly, too insignificant, too unworthy of our own attention. Perhaps we can lift our eyes long enough to see and allow God’s redemptive presence to continue lifting the lowly through us still today.

— ©Copyright 2021, Christopher B. Harbin

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