Mark and John aren’t interested in it and Matthew and Luke can’t agree on the details of it.
You think you know the nativity story but there is no agreement on what actually happened. Rev. Scott McAndless would tell you that’s because Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are gospel writers, not historians. A gospel writer’s job is to tell the story of Jesus Christ; and each one does it through his own unique lens.
Luke’s gospel, for example, is focused on Mary; his lineage is very different from Matthew’s and passes through the mother’s line. Luke has the manger, some angels and some shepherds. Matthew has the star and the wise men; and his lineage traces Joseph’s line.
The two agree that Jesus was born in Bethlehem but not why his parents travelled there.
As a preacher, pastor and storyteller McAndless, minister at St. Andrew’s, Hespeler, Cambridge, Ont., became curious about the differences between the two nativity stories and then fascinated by Luke’s approach. He published Caesar’s Census, God’s Jubilee last year.
He saw in it a pattern, a deeper, richer story if you will, about Christ’s mission. And that story begins before the child is born.
Andrew Faiz: Why, according to the gospel writer Luke, are Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem?
Scott McAndless: Luke sets the birth of Jesus within a Roman administrative act of taking a census. His concern in doing that is not necessarily that he knows or that he knows for sure that it happened exactly at that time. But by setting the birth within that historical context, it allows him to say some significant things about how Jesus is in relationship to Tiberius Caesar, in relationship to Augustus Caesar and the Roman political system in which Jesus found himself. Because of course Luke will be setting up throughout his gospel a certain opposition between the empire of Caesar and the kingdom of God, which is what Jesus is primarily talking about.
So there’s this opposition that runs throughout the gospel between the empire of Caesar and the kingdom of God and it’s for the followers of Jesus to work this out.
AF: And that exists right there in the opening pages?
SM: I believe it really does. And that by starting out his story of the birth of Jesus, by talking about how this happened when Quirinius was governor of Syria and the census was being taken, sets up that whole situation right at the start of the gospel.
AF: What is the Jubilee?
SM: Jubilee is an Old Testament festival celebrated approximately every 50 years and during this festival three things would happen. Everyone would return to their ancestral home, all debts would be forgiven, all debt slaves would be released and given their freedom, and all property would be returned to the original owners.
It was about rebalancing the economy. Over time families lost their land, they lost their freedom, they fell into debt. The Jubilee was about fixing that and making sure that families had what they needed to go forward. And there’s all kinds of discussion about whether this actually happened, whether this was really celebrated in the life of Israel. But what there’s no question about is that the Jubilee is very much a theme in the gospel of Luke.
Throughout the whole gospel of Luke, this is what Jesus came to accomplish. He came to establish some kind of Jubilee. See we have a big problem in the birth story of Jesus and it’s this idea of the census. Because the census that Luke describes doesn’t make sense. The way that Luke describes it, this idea that people would have been registered not where they actually lived but in their ancestral homes makes no sense. You don’t count people in a census where they don’t live. You count people in their primary residence because of course you want to come back later and you want to tax them.
But Luke seems to say that the Romans didn’t do that. They counted them not where they actually live but where their families came from. We know the Romans never did it like that. So, it doesn’t really make sense. The census that Luke describes doesn’t make sense according to history, according to what we know of Roman practice.
AF: What does this all mean to us here and now?
SM: Luke has Mary and Joseph, these parents of Jesus, working through these very difficult decisions about who do you follow? Do you follow Caesar, do you follow the emperor, the civic authority, the system of this world or do you follow God? Do you choose to follow God and what God’s demands are?
He shows Mary and Joseph somehow working out that very difficult decision about who do they obey—Caesar or God—in a productive way that leads to their understanding of Jubilee and what it means for them. But also leads to Jesus and this new person coming into the world, bringing a new perspective, a new way of living. Out of God’s kingdom comes their act of obedience, not simply to Caesar but their act of obedience to God.
So, what it means to us is: we’re faced with those decisions all the time. We live in this world and this system that we live in often leads to good things but also leads to bad things. We live in a capitalist system, which brings us all kinds of benefits and all kinds of wonderful gadgets and creates jobs and allows us to live. But it’s a system that also creates winners and losers, that creates injustices.
How do we find a way to obey God and God’s demands on how we ought to live and how we ought to work out our lives?
Luke shows Mary and Joseph sorting very actively through this very issue that continues to plague us and bother us to this very day. And that’s what makes the story, their story, of this journey to Bethlehem so meaningful to me now as I come to understand these things.
AF: Luke’s Christmas story is a story of a revolution or a rebellion. And then secondly it is an affirmation of God over Caesar.
SM: It is. That’s what I would say.
Later on in his gospel, Luke sites this quote of Jesus where he says give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, give God what is God’s. He’s saying basically, Jesus is admitting that there is this pull; that we are pulled in two directions. Are we going to honour God or are we going to honour Caesar and how do we sort that out?
That question is encapsulated in the nativity story. Mary and Joseph are given a choice. There’s a census on, the empire wants them to do a certain thing. But I believe that what Luke is saying is that they chose to do something else because they chose to observe a Jubilee by returning to Joseph’s ancestral home, which was their way of saying we’re going to honour God first and above all. And that’s how we’re going to sort this out and if that causes problems to Caesar, to this world system that we find ourselves in, so be it. Our first role is to honour God and to follow what we believe God is calling us to do.
AF: So, how do we Jubilee today?
SM: Throughout the Bible this idea of Jubilee keeps coming back—the prophet in Isaiah stands up and proclaims a Jubilee. He says a Jubilee has come. He had no authority to make that happen but he said that God had put this spirit on him and given him the task of proclaiming a Jubilee.
So, this idea of what God wants, this is how God wants us to live. Even though the reality is that all kinds of things get in the way of that.
Jesus kept going on and on about the kingdom of God; he loved to tell stories, to inspire us and lead us all in the direction towards God’s will. The idea of Jubilee is that kind of idea. This idea that God has a desire that His people should live in security. That they should have what they need to survive is a powerful idea.
We’re not always going to agree on what it is to follow God in this world, how to live according to God’s kingdom instead of this world’s system. But as long as we hold out ideas, the idea of the kingdom of God, the idea of God’s Jubilee, what God is calling for, that idea can lead us in the right directions, even if it’s not always clear exactly how we’re going to do this, how we are actually going to live in the kingdom of God.
You can purchase Caesar’s Census, God’s Jubilee through Amazon, iBooks or Kobo.
