Isaiah 9:2-4, 6-7

Psalm 96

Titus 2:11-14

LUKE 2:1-20

Christmas Sermon

So who was this “Emperor Augustus” who figures in the very first verse of what is probably the most generally familiar passage in the entire New Testament? And what does he have to do with Christmas?

Caesar Augustus, the first Roman Emperor, ruled a domain which stretched from the North Sea to the Sahara Desert in North Africa, and from the beaches of Portugal to the Jordan River. He was the great-nephew of Julius Caesar, and was given the title of “Augustus” by vote of the Roman Senate in 27 B.C. when he had become undisputed master of the realm after a long civil war. He ruled for 41 more years after receiving that title – years of unprecedented peace and prosperity, for which he received credit and enormous popularity. His imprint on western civilization was both deep and lasting; how many rulers, to choose a trivial example, have named a month after themselves and had it stick for 2,000 years?

The title “Augustus” means “reverend” and translated into Greek implies divinity. While Augustus was careful not to claim this status for himself, at least in Rome, in the provinces the adulation of his subjects was allowed to be less restrained. One scholar notes that “in Egypt, at the beginning of the Christian era, sacrifices were offered to the god and lord emperor, Augustus.”

An inscription from 7 B.C. from another locale refers to “the most divine Caesar” and says, regarding his birthday, “we may rightly regard it as the beginning of all things….the birthday of the god was the beginning of the good news to the world…”

In some provinces, the calendar was indeed reworked to make his birthday (September 23) New Year’s Day. In a number of places Augustus was referred to as Lord” and as “Savior.” Just a month after his death, the Roman Senate voted to declare him to be divine, a precedent followed in the case of some other, later, emperors.

St. Luke wrote his Gospel a generation or two after Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, and perhaps 60 years after the death of Augustus. The same space of time separated him and his readers from Augustus as separates us from Franklin D. Roosevelt. How would our lives have been different had America lost World War II? We take the achievements of what Tom Brokaw called “the greatest generation” so for granted that we would truly shudder to contemplate what our lives would be like had FDR and those he led failed. But Like’s readers remembered and appreciated Augustus.

Luke’s readers had, since the time of Augustus, endured far, far worse rulers. Anyone who lived through Caligula and Nero wielding supreme power would have really appreciated Augustus in retrospect.

But in the opening of St. Luke’s Gospel – a word that means good news – this all-time-great, all-time Gallup-poll-winning Emperor is reduced to one phrase of the narrative.

Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus, Augustus’, role in the Greatest Story Ever Told, is to hold up a cue card saying, “Enter Mary and Joseph, stage left.”

Enter Mary and Joseph, and within Mary the child who is the real Lord, the real Savior, the real KING, the real GOD. This is he who is truly worthy to be worshipped, to have temples built to him, to have people kneel before him.

And the first one to know is a Jewish peasant girl from a hick town so obscure its name never appears in all 1,237 pages of the Old Testament. And the second one to know is her fiancé, a carpenter. And the next to know are a bunch of shepherds working the third shift in a field outside another small town also 1,500 miles away from where the Emperor sits on his throne thinking – and being repeatedly told – that he is the most important person in the world.

The Nativity story may seem really familiar, but it has depths within depths. By Luke’s opening with the reference to Augustus, by the titles which Luke uses for Jesus (ones applied to the emperor), by his account of the angels’ song (“Peace on earth”) Luke, in a subtle and masterful way, is saying this Jesus is far better than even the best of human rulers and deserves the adulation they get – while they don’t deserve it.

Had Luke compared Jesus to crazy, murderous tyrants like Nero, his first readers would have readily agreed that this Jesus would likely be better – but they could have drifted into nostalgia, wishing for the return of Augustus. Instead, Luke brings Augustus into the story for artistic purposes – the census referred to happened 10 or 12 years after Jesus’ birth – to highlight that while Jesus was born during ”the good old days” of the reign of Augustus, Christ would usher in a new Kingdom far better than anything anyone had ever experienced: the Kingdom of God. To us, Luke’s message is, what Jesus offers is better than the best human leader of any era could offer.

Had we lived in his empire, Caesar Augustus would not have known who any of us were. Sorry, folks, but I don’t see any generals, senators, governors, tributary Kings, or fawning poets or historians like Virgil or Livy among us. And while he was relatively benign for an emperor Augustus was not about sacrificing himself for the well-being of some obscure subjects at the fringe of his realm.

God, the real God, on the other hand, does know who each of us is – and everything about us, our joys and sorrows, our hopes and fears, our tribulations and our dreams. God, who is the ruler over a realm so vast that his planet (never mind the Roman Empire) is like one grain of sand on a vast beach, takes a profound personal interest in our total well-being – here and now, and our eternal well-being.

God takes such an interest that he becomes one of us, incarnate as a human being – and not as the child of an emperor but as a child of a subject people with a long and mostly painful history in a troubled backwater of the Empire.

To use a pro football image, God did not stay up in the “owner’s box” amid plush surroundings and watch us through binoculars. No. Though God is the owner of the universe, God got – and gets – down on the “playing field of our lives,” in the mud and the struggle, whatever “weather” we are experiencing in our lives. And unlike any emperor or other human ruler, God in Christ did in fact give his life that we might have new life. “God with us” “Emmanuel.

That is what Christmas is. The “trimmings” can be great – presents, parties, festive times – but at the center of Christmas is Christ, who came into a world which needed – and needs – both peace and liberation, both justice and safety, both abundance and an end to deprivation, both personal salvation and a beloved community, both healing and wholeness in this life and the hope for new and indescribably better life beyond this life.

That is still what the world – and each and all of us – needs. That is still what Christ offers. By accepting him as Lord and Savior or renewing our commitment, and joining with like-minded people to form a community of commitment, we can be transformed ourselves and be part of the beginning of the transformation of the world.

The Rev. Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

Monmouth Junction, New Jersey