Herod’s prognosticators told him in no uncertain terms where the Messiah was to be born:
“In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet: `And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah; for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.’”
Bethlehem, after all, was the city of King David, from whose lineage the Savior was to come. Matthew takes care to let us know that Joseph was of David’s line and just why he and Mary happened to be in Bethlehem in time for Jesus’ birth.
Does it matter for us where Jesus was born? It mattered to the wise men because they wanted to find and honor this new king heralded by such a star. It mattered to Herod, because he wanted to eliminate any threats to his kingship. But does it matter to us?
Here’s one reason I think it does: because the story of God-With-Us, of God-with-Flesh-On is not a general, abstract story. It is a very specific one, with very particular details. Some of those details have been such a stumbling block to critics and would-be believers over the years, that theologians refer to the “Scandal of Particularity.”
Luke’s telling of Jesus’ nativity is full of particulars, who, what when, where:
"In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary…. In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.)
To say that Jesus was a human person born like every other human person in history, to a human mother, in a particular place and in a particular time, is to say that specifics and places and times matter to God. The Christian claim is that God chose to enter specific circumstances in order to redeem all circumstances, that God was born into a specific family in order to redeem all families, that God entered human history in a very particular time (while Quirinius was governor of Syria, yet!) in order to redeem all of time. And perhaps that means that God cares about your specific space and time as well, and mine.
If Jesus was being born in your life this season and you were writing the Gospel account – how would you describe your place and your time? It could be a fun exercise to name the particularities into which God might come to you. What is significant about your circumstances, family, government, times, places? When you’ve named them, you might hold them in prayer for God to make holy. It is a way of praying into our lives as they are right now, today.
I hope you receive the Christmas story as a pledge of God’s love for you. As we begin a new year, in continuity with all the years we have lived to this point, we are invited to remember God-With-Us in every moment, the one we’re living right now, and the one about to unfold before us.
There. Then. Here. Now. You.
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