I love the story of Jesus' birth as Luke presents it.     It is touching in its simplicity.   A pregnant young woman with a man awaiting a  birth in dire straits.    

It is utterly human.   Their lot is repeated over and over wherever poverty, homelessness, and human dislocation prevail.    Somehow in the midst of this suffering and seeking, there is not despair but hope and joy and promise.   The heavenly hosts declare it.

But on a meta human level there is political intrigue.   An emperor and his vassal king, an oppressed people,  an  brutal enforcement army backing up tax-harvesters keeping the empire in business.  Pretensions of divine power - bow down to the emperor and pay him what you owe.

It is a political tale - a critique of the first century arrangement in Palestine with echoes into the 21st century.

The Holy One who has "scattered the proud in their conceit ... deposed the mighty from their thrones" - sometimes by force of arms,  sometimes just running out of gas, sometimes by the power of the ballot box.   

And the amazing  Creator Redeemercomes into creation as a powerless infant in a crude stable to "raise the lowly to high places."   Read Luke 2:1-20.

The emperor, Caesar Augustus, becomes an unwitting partner in the divine drama of deposing him by requiring all subjects to register in their birth towns.   Bethlehem - the town of King David and Joseph - doesn't even have room for birthing except among the animals in the inn's stable.  

But an angelic host proclaims this lowly birth to rough shepherds - heaven and earth - transforming this little birth drama into the birth of the long awaited Messiah - a major political coup.

Good thing social media weren't available to advise the Emperor or his surrogate, Herod, in Jerusalem of the threat.  But the Magi give it away to the vindictive Herod that a challenger to both his petty throne and Caesar's imperial reign is near.   

This innocent child, who reveals and lives the truth, justice, peace, and love of the Holy One is a profound threat to the proud, conceited, mighty on their thrones.    How many of the tin-pot bully narcissist political leaders in too many countries are aware of the divine enemy targetting their abuse.

Then and now!   

But then Matthew's Gospel tells us the baby and parents had to flee as refugees to Egypt for safety from the self-interested dragon on the Judean throne.  The family survived; but innocents in Bethlehem were collateral victims.

That baby - Jesus - later comes back to make real the good news for the sick, the poor, the lost and the marginalized.   He modeled what it means to live the love of God for all.   It cost him dearly.

The cross revealed the sin of the powerful and their sycophantic lackeys and the people paid the price.   But for the whole human family the cross became a sign of hope.  Divine self-giving lifting the lowly and promising the reign of Shalom.

Birth in a stable, death on a cross - signs of God's powerful love for the healing of the nations.

Today in our hearing and seeing the scriptures are again being fulfilled.   Come, Lord Jesus, may your reign of love, justice, respect, peace, and hope come!