If you're not teaching this session at Christmastime, you have a big opportunity to tell the story completely apart from all the holiday hoopla, which means it doesn't have to compete with Santa Claus, presents, and Christmas parties.

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 did break into our world." The imposed census also explains 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 that his descendant would sit on the throne forever (2 Sam. 7). God is now fulfilling age-old promises, and the promise to David is only one of them.

Strangely, the birth story is very short. 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 an animal's feeding trough. There is no room for God's Son in the city of David.

As soon as the baby is born, Luke turns our focus to the fields outside Bethlehem. Shepherds are in the fields, watching their flocks. Why focus on shepherds when God has just arrived in Bethlehem? Well, 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 God 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, the Messiah 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 to Bethlehem to see the newborn King. What a scene: scruffy shepherds peering in on this tired, journey-worn couple and their baby, who is wrapped in homespun cloth and lying in a manger.

Luke closes the story with two responses: Mary's pondering and the shepherds' joyful telling of the story to others. The story invites us 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.