Into the worst parts of life
A Christmas Eve sermon
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
It struck me this year that the Christmas story unfolds in the middle of two of the very worst parts of life — taxes and moving, things that almost everybody everywhere hates. “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered,” Luke begins – meaning the Emperor had ordered a census of everyone in the Roman Empire. The Roman government regularly took count of its people in order to determine how much tax revenue it could demand from them. Running such a vast empire, as you might imagine, required a lot of money to do a lot of things – pay officials, build roads, and—most importantly—fund the military campaigns that helped ensure that the empire could keep growing larger and larger by conquering new territories.
So, this census decree was really not about the welfare of the people—it was about money. Human lives were counted…