Well it’s almost here, and almost gone. Day after tomorrow it’ll be over, the presents will be opened, the turkey will have been eaten, the carols will have been sung and for all practical purposes Christmas 2000 will be but a fond memory.
And yet it is only 16 weeks until we celebrate Easter. Tomorrow we will celebrate the birth of Christ and in four months we will commemorate his death and his resurrection. 112 days, just a little under a third of the calendar year. And with that thought in mind we need to ask ourselves, “How far is it from Bethlehem to Calvary?” How far from the cradle to the cross?
Let’s ask a few people, “excuse me, how far is it from Bethlehem to Calvary?” We ask the tour guide. “Well” he responds, “Geographically, it’s closer than you might think” “If you were to walk down the road about a kilometre and a half, and then take a left it would only be eight kilometres to the city gates of Jerusalem.” Just a two-hour walk from the sleepy little town of Bethlehem where Christ was born, to the bustling streets of Jerusalem where Christ was crucified.
You know it’s not far at all and there’s a lot of history on this road. Why it was in Bethlehem that Rachel was buried, and it was to Bethlehem that Naomi and Ruth came, and where Ruth married Boaze. King David was born and raised in Bethlehem and the prophet Micah wrote in Micah 5:2 But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, are only a small village in Judah. Yet a ruler of Israel will come from you, one whose origins are from the distant past.
It was to this little town that the carpenter Joseph came from Nazareth with his young, pregnant wife to be counted in the census ordered by the Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus. No it’s not very far at all from Bethlehem to Calvary, geographically speaking.
“Well then, how far is it?” we ask the historian “How far is it from Bethlehem to Calvary?” “Historically” he responds, “it’s a lot closer than you might think.” Compared to the Millenniums that have come and gone since God spoke the world into being, thirty-three years is a relatively short period of time. It really isn’t that far from the starlit eastern sky of Bethlehem to the darkened midday sky of Jerusalem. There is only a short lifetime between singing angels and tears of joy, to cursing soldiers and tears of grief.
Just a few short years from swaddling clothes to a crown of thorns, from dimples and stubby fingers to blood stained cheeks and nail pierced hands. And yet as close as it might be, it is a sad fact of life that not many have made that thirty-three year journey from Bethlehem to Calvary.
It is much more comfortable to talk about a cooing baby than a bleeding corpse. The historical journey from Bethlehem to Calvary should be a short one but too many people prefer the cradle to the cross. It seems much less offensive to read to our children the words “I bring you good news of great joy for everyone! The Saviour—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born tonight in Bethlehem, the city of David!” Rather than to read
And when they had come to the place called the skull, there they crucified him. And yet it was the same author who recorded the events in Luke 2 and Luke 23. The two passages both speak of the same person, Jesus of Nazareth, and yet many still prefer Christmas trees to Easter lilies and they try and separate the one from the other.
Everyone loves Christmas with it’s bright lights, upbeat music and gifts in pretty paper. People who may give very little attention to God and the Church pay a great deal of attention at Christmas time, even if it is unintentional. And even though we whine about the commercialization and secularization of Christmas we need to realize that whether society wants to admit it or not, they are joining in the celebration of Christ’s birth. Every advertisement for Christmas keeps the name of the Messiah in front of people. And while Zellers may not play “Victory in Jesus” or “For a thousand tongues to Sing” they proclaim the birth of Christ to everyone in the store with “Silent Night” and “O Little Town of Bethlehem” being played over their PA.
But Easter is different, even though there have been attempts to capitalize on it as a holiday it runs a distant second to Christmas. People prefer to talk about births and babies rather than crucifixions and corpses, but whether we want to admit it or not there is but a short distance between Bethlehem and Calvary.
And so now if we were to ask the Theologian the question, “How far is it from Bethlehem to Calvary?” What do you think the answer will be? Yeah, I would suspect that the answer would be, “Closer then you might suspect.” And yet just the same as it is historically, theologically too many people are content to leave Christ in the cradle.
A Christ child is a safe Christ because he makes no demands on our life. However the birth of the child in Bethlehem would be of little consequence without the death of the man on Calvary. Christ didn’t remain a child, he isn’t forever an infant. Listen to what Luke wrote in chapter 2 verse 52 So Jesus grew both in height and in wisdom, and he was loved by God and by all who knew him. So what was Luke saying? Simple, Jesus grew up. The child grew and matured; he became a toddler, a pre-schooler, school aged, teenager and an adult. And then as an adult he was crucified on a cross at Calvary for you.
You see theologically without Calvary Bethlehem was in vain. Christ could have been born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, taught and healed and performed miracles and then died an old man and all we would have had is a wonderful example to follow. It took the sacrificial death of Christ to take away the sin of the world. The converse is also true. Calvary would not have been the redeeming event it was if God had not chosen to enter this world as a child and to live as a man. It was not a man who was born in a cattle stall, neither was it a god. And it was not a man who died on Calvary’s cross, nor was it a god. It was Jesus Christ, God incarnate. 100% God and at the same time 100% man. And it is here that the paradox of the incarnation leaps out at us.
No one here can fully explain how Christ was conceived in the womb of a virgin, his father being the Holy Spirit. But that doesn’t in any way alter the fact that he was conceived the womb of a virgin and his father was in fact the Holy Spirit. In the same way none of us could ever adequately explain how Christ, dying on a cross could cleanse my soul from it’s sin, 2000 years later. But it did.
Theologically it is just a short distance from Bethlehem to Calvary. So why don’t we make the trip? Why are we content to stay in Bethlehem when there is so much waiting for us just 8 kilometres down the road? After all Bethlehem holds the promise of eternal life but it’s Calvary that holds the gift of eternal life. Maybe we can understand it better if we look at those who were there 2000 years ago.
The Innkeeper Was There. How could this man know that when he turned that that couple from Nazareth that he was assuring himself a place in history.
Luke 2:7 records what happened that night, She gave birth to her first child, a son. She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the village inn. The innkeeper wasn’t being malicious, he didn’t have anything personal against Mary and Joseph, he just didn’t care. The inn had been packed for days with the census going on. Maybe, I don’t know if the inn was actually full or if we need to take a closer look at the phrase, there was no room for them in the village inn.
You see Luke didn’t say that there was no room in the inn, what he said was there was no room for THEM in the inn. I wonder if demand had outstripped supply and prices had soared beyond the reach of the ordinary person. I wonder if there would have been room in the inn if Joseph had of been Herod’s carpenter?
The innkeeper is symbolic of the vast majority of people on that Christmas day. They didn’t know that Mary had given birth to her first born son, and if they knew they wouldn’t have cared. Isn’t that the way it is today? People rush about their business, they go here, they go there. There are trees to find and trim, Christmas lights to put up, presents to buy and wrap, a turkey to stuff and cook. The entire season has become a cult in itself.
And there are a lot of people just like that innkeeper, not antagonistic about the real meaning of Christmas, they are staying in Bethlehem because they don’t care. They really don’t care that Christ was born, they don’t care that he lived for 33 years, they don’t care that he died on a cross for them, and they don’t care that after the third day he rose from the dead. For them there’ll be no Christmas eve service, no Christmas day service, no Christmas story or Sunday School pageants. They’ll get a few paid days off work, a turkey dinner and presents, it’s like the old Toyota ad said “Who could ask for anything more?”
Then There Was Herod. Matthew 2:16 Herod was furious when he learned that the wise men had outwitted him. Furious is a good word, Herod was so angry that he ordered the execution of all the male children under the age of 2 in Bethlehem. Yeah, I guess furious is a good word. Herod was definitely hostile to the true meaning of Christmas. Sociologist Robert Lynd said “There are some people who want to throw their arms round you simply because it is Christmas; there are other people who want to strangle you simply because it is Christmas.” Herod would fall into the second category of people.
It’s not Christmas that people like Herod really resent, it is the religious nature of Christmas. They are kind of like the two ladies who spotted a cross in a store window at Easter, and one commented, “Some people will try to put religion into everything.”
People like that like Christmas, but they’d prefer to keep Christ out of it. They would have us trade the manger for a toy store, they would have us swap Jesus for Santa and exchange the cross for a Christmas tree. And there’s nothing wrong with any of those things, unless they replace what Christmas is really about. My kids used to light up around Santa, but the fat man in the red suit had to take a back seat to Jesus Christ.
Then There Were The Shepherds. Luke 2:8,16 That night some shepherds were in the fields outside the village, guarding their flocks of sheep. . . They ran to the village and found Mary and Joseph. And there was the baby, lying in the manger. I hate to malign the shepherds but I tend to think of them as flash in the pan Christians. Like who wouldn’t be impressed, talk about an engraved invitation. They had this great choir of angels who told them about the Christ child, and that moved them to action. Listen to Luke 2:17 Then the shepherds told everyone what had happened and what the angel had said to them about this child.
But that’s all she wrote, we don’t hear anymore about the shepherds, no aged shepherd making his way to the cross to weep at the feet of Christ, as he saw the fulfilment of the promise. None of the disciples were shepherds, there were no surprise witnesses at the trial of Jesus. No they stayed in Bethlehem, for them it was too far to travel to get to Calvary. When the chills and thrills stopped they were assimilated into everyday life.
Do you remember the first miracle that’s recorded in John’s Gospel? It was when Jesus was at the Wedding in Cana and he turned the water into wine. Listen to what the Bible says right after that, John 2:23 Because of the miraculous signs he did many people were convinced that he was indeed the Messiah. And why not, it’s easy to believe when someone feeds 5000 people with a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish, it’s easy when someone turns 180 gallons of water into wine, it’s easy to believe when a multitude of the heavenly host proclaim the truth from a celestial choir loft.
It’s not always as easy to maintain that belief when you’re sick, the kids are crying, the washing machine is overflowing and the car won’t start. Or when you get laid off work, your spouse leaves you and your parents are dying. All of a sudden belief isn’t nearly as easy, but hey that’s life. We can’t live forever in the manger at Bethlehem. The reason the Christian faith and the Christian Church has survived and flourished over the past 2000 years is that there have been some who after the angels have gone, and the heavens are still, and life is life, they still believe.
There are those who profess to keep Christ in Christmas and they do, the problem is not only do they keep Christ in Christmas they leave him there on Boxing day. The shepherds were an integral part of Christmas, but I really wish that we saw them again somewhere outside of Bethlehem.
Then there were the Wise Men. Matthew 2:1-11 Records the story of the wise men, and we really don’t know much about them at all, but we do know that their belief cost them something. We don’t know where they came from, how long they had been travelling, how many there were or where they went afterwards. They glide into the story, present their gifts and then just as quietly they disappear.
If we listen to tradition we can learn all about them, their numbers were three, they were kings, and tradition even knows their names, their ages and what they looked like. And if we were to choose to pay the fee we could even see their bones in the shrine behind the high altar in the Cathedral in Cologne Germany. But of course those are just traditions.
However little that we know of the wise men we do know that they came from a great distance bearing their gifts of love. They brought Gold, frankincense and myrrh, but greater than any of those gifts was the fact that they brought themselves.
But out of all of the people that were there that first Christmas, there is only one that we know for sure followed Christ from Bethlehem to Calvary and that was the young virgin who was his mother. Her life was changed forever by the child that she had that day. Every moment of every day would be changed from that point on. You see Mary’s was not a half-hearted experience, or a part-time commitment. She was 100% committed to the child she called Jesus. And that is what He is looking for today. He wants us to come to the manager with the same attitude as Mary. Because it’s only when we are completely sold out to Jesus that we will be able to make the trip from Bethlehem to Calvary. This Christmas I trust that we will bring to Christ the one gift that he is looking for, and that is that we can say just like Mary did in Luke 1:38 “I am the Lord’s servant, and I am willing to accept whatever he wants.”
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