Henrietta United Church of Christ

Rev. David Inglis December 18, 2005

Luke 2:1-7

“Just Another Problem”–A Soldier in Bethlehem

Problems! Hard luck stories! Emergencies! I was fed up with these people who just couldn’t seem to take care of themselves!

As soon as I heard about Caesar’s decree that everybody in the Roman Empire had to be enrolled, I was afraid that I would be put in charge of implementing it somewhere or other. I just hoped it wouldn’t be in Judea.

The Jews had a reputation for being the hardest people to break in the whole Roman Empire. These Jews just wouldn’t submit to Rome’s authority, and they wouldn’t bow to Caesar as their god. They stubbornly held onto their belief that their God would send them a messiah who would miraculously break their shackles and set them free from their bondage.

And wouldn’t you know it, I had the luck of being assigned the job of overseeing the registration in Bethlehem, the town where the Jews’ greatest king, David, had come from. And to make matters worse, Caesar, in his “divine wisdom”, decided that people couldn’t just register where they lived. If their ancestors came from somewhere else, they had to go their ancestral town to register.

Why did he do this? Maybe it was because all that extra traveling would stimulate the economy and put more tax revenues in his coffers. Maybe he thought his army didn’t already have enough to do. Whatever the reason, this decree didn’t make for a lot of happy subjects or happy soldiers.

But my job wasn’t to approve of Caesar’s orders. My job was to follow them...and to get everyone else to follow them too. You wouldn’t think it should be such a big deal, this enrollment. People should just go up to the table and tell the soldier their name, who was in their family, and where they live, and then get their receipt and go home. What could be simpler?

Well, you wouldn’t believe how complicated it really was. And all the complications seemed to end up on my shoulders. “The market is all out of food. What are we supposed to eat?” “Look,” I said, “Do I look like a grocer? I’m a soldier. Just register your family and find your own food, somehow.”

Then not an hour later, I get this: “These people are picking all the grain right out of our fields! And they said it was okay with you! Don’t think we can’t band together and burn up satanic Caesar’s registration papers and make your soldiers regret they ever set foot on our land! And if you massacre us or burn down the city of David, you’ll have all of Judea in rebellion. Now call your soldiers and get those people out of our fields! You’re the cause of all this, you know!

With such a shortage of food and accommodations, I got used to seeing people lying in the street shivering at night, people getting sick with no one to help them, children crying from hunger. So I didn’t pay too much attention to that young couple from way up in Nazareth, who came to me begging for help finding a place where the girl could have her baby. “What on earth did you bring her all the way to Bethlehem for in this condition?” I demanded of the man. “You should have known just by looking at her that she’d be likely to have the baby before you got home. Why don’t you people use your brains a little bit?”

“I’m sorry to trouble you, sir, but I couldn’t leave her there. Everybody thinks she was unfaithful to me, and some people are saying she should be stoned to death. I really had no choice but to bring her with me for her own protection.”

“So, is she carrying your baby or not?” I was just curious.

“That’s not such an easy question to answer,” he said, and I just rolled my eyes, shook my head and laughed. He went on, “But what is clear is that she needs some place to lie down and have this baby, and she doesn’t have much time.”

I tried not to look at her, because her eyes were so full of worry and pain.

“Look,” I said, “my job is to get people registered and back out of town as quickly as possible. I don’t have a hostel and I’m not a midwife. Now go on. I can’t help you.”

“Do you know anyone who might help us?”

“No!! Now go on! Go!!”

To me, they were just another problem that I couldn’t solve.

Do you blame me for the way I treated them? Have you ever been so focused on what you thought you were supposed to do that you didn’t do what you should have done?

When I found out, much later, that my life had brushed so close to the Son of God, you can imagine how ashamed I felt of how I treated them. You know, I still don’t know what I could have realistically done to solve their problem. Probably nothing, really. And there really was no way of knowing who they were. But what I failed to do was to act on what I did know. Even though Joseph and Mary weren’t my nationality and their welfare wasn’t really in my job description, they were fellow human beings. They were in need, and I refused to even care, even to give them a word of encouragement.

You know, since Joseph and Mary didn’t look any different from anyone else, the only way I would have done anything different that day was if I had treated every person as though they were a son or a daughter of God–I mean, as someone who God created and put into this world for a reason, who God cares about and watches over. I wouldn’t have been able to solve everyone’s problems. But maybe I could have opened my eyes and seen their God-given worth. I could have opened my heart a little and felt something of their struggle. I could have opened my hands and helped when I could.

All of this happened a long time ago. But you know something amazing? The story still goes on. Yes, it does. Because I’m not just a soldier in Caesar’s army (takes off helmet). I’m also a project manager in a corporation. I’m a cashier in a department store. I’m a teacher in a public school. I’m a health care worker. I’m a neighbor. I’m a passerby. I’m you.

Every day, our lives brush so close to the sons of God and daughters of God that God sends into our lives. Are they “just another problem” for us to deal with or not? Or are they opportunities to open our eyes, open our hearts, open our hands to the ones God sends us to break our shackles of selfishness and set us free from our bondage to ourselves?