Anybody not know this story? That's both a problem and an opportunity. Otherwise, your challenge today is to help the children in your group hear the old story in a new way.

So why start with Caesar Augustus and Quirinius? Luke's first point in telling the story is to anchor it in time and history, which is his way of saying, "This is not a fairy tale, folks. God really broke into our world." He wants us to understand what a family from Nazareth is doing in Bethlehem.

And then there's "the city of David." Luke is directing us into a very important element of the story of God in the Bible. The reader is supposed to remember that great promise God made to David in 2 Samuel 7: that his descendant would sit on the throne forever. God is now fulfilling age-old promises, including the one to David.

Strangely, the birth is the shortest part of the story, encompassing precisely one sentence. Jesus is born, wrapped in cloth, and laid in a manger. A what? That would be the first-time reader's response. There was no room, Luke explains. The Lord of glory is born into poverty. The Creator of all is laid in a cows' feeding trough. There is no room for God's Son in the city of David.

As soon as the baby is born and nested in the hay, Luke turns our focus to the fields outside of Bethlehem, where shepherds were watching their flocks. Why focus on shepherds when God has just arrived in Bethlehem? Well, first of all, it was the city of David, the shepherd-king. But, more important, shepherds were on the lower rungs of Jewish society in that time. If heaven were going to make an angelic birth announcement, you would think the message should go to Caesar's palace, or at least to the high priest in Jerusalem. No, Luke says, in ways already signaled by Mary's song in chapter 1, he has come to save sinners, to be with the poor and lowly.

So the angels sing their glorious oratorio while the sleepy shepherds cringe in fright. While Caesar sleeps or parties and the high priest is clueless, the shepherds rush off the Bethlehem to see. And what a scene! Scruffy shepherds peering in on this homeless couple and their baby wrapped in homespun cloth and lying in a manger.

Luke closes the story with two responses: Mary pondering and the shepherds joyfully spreading the story. And he invites us, with them, to do both---to ponder the mystery of the Word become flesh, God with a bellybutton, and to sing with contagious joy about the Savior who has come to join the human race.