Welcome to the daily disciple podcast, where we seek daily to be with and to become like Jesus, our teacher. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the daily Together on Mission Podcast. This is Travis, and it is so good. To be with all of you, I'm in Luke chapter 1 on this rainy and windy Advent morning, and we're going to spend a little bit of time in Luke's infancy narratives, talk and pray a little bit, and then join a conversation with Jesus throughout the rest of the day.
And today's podcast is called The Mess, and it is going to be the first of three podcasts where I'm going to talk about the messiness of the Christmas story, because that is what God is showing me this year. And it's very practical, because as I'm encountering the messiness of the Christmas story, I'm encountering my mess, and how I run from it, and hide from it, and God is calling me just to sit in my mess. And then, what's so amazing about that is as I sit in my mess, I discover the God who enters into my mess with compassion and with love. And then finally, the question presses, how do I know that I know the God of the Christmas story?
Well, I know that I know the God of the Christmas story depending on how I interact or how I enter the mess of other people. The mess. And the question is, have you ever realized, have you ever really realized how incredibly messy the Christmas story actually is? Because of course, we see the Christmas cards, and the scene of Jesus' birth seems so warm and sweet and serene.
When we begin to look at the story historically, we realize just how messy it is, relationally, politically, financially, and socially. So here's the first question, and I'll have another one in just a moment, but the first question is, have you ever realized how messy the Christmas story is? So in chapter one, Luke says it's in the time of King Herod. In chapter two, Luke says it's in the time of Caesar Augustus, well, to put mildly every Jew hated Herod.
And Caesar was even worse. I mean, these are capricious, megalomaniac political rules that pretty much had complete autonomy, and the political situation for a first century Jew was so messy. And Mary and Joseph, when Jesus was born, are traveling across country because Caesar required that a census be taken. And so, when we put ourselves in Mary and Joseph's position or really any Jew in the first century, the political situation during the Christmas story is so, so messy, then we find that there's no room for Mary and Joseph in the end.
Well, that only happens to people that don't have very much money. Jesus was born in a manger. That's a feeding trough. And then we find out a bit later that when Mary and Joseph go to present Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem, they bring a pair of doves, which the Old Testament allowed if a family couldn't afford an animal.
So we have financial messiness and the fear and the strain that comes as a result of that. If we find Elizabeth and Zachariah unable to have children, and in that first century world, that would have came with a great deal of hopelessness and shame and maybe even disgrace. We find that Zachariah doesn't believe. He's struggling with unbelief.
I just can't believe. So wherever you go in the Christmas story, you find political messiness, financial messiness, hopelessness, shame, disgrace, unbelief. And we could get into Mary's song and Zachariah's song, help us, save us from our enemies. Let your light shine in this valley of the shadow of death.
The Christmas story is so messy. And I'm not even bringing in Matthew's story. Have you ever noticed how messy the Christmas story is? And of course, the next question is, have you realized yet how messy your life is?
And it's about time that you do because those around you have already noticed it. And honestly, some of our mess, we have no control over. Some of our mess and the fear as a result is just the result of living in a broken and fallen world. But then there's that mess called sin that we have a measure of control over.
But often it seems like that sin is getting the better of us. And then, and this kind of makes it a triple mess. And then there's all of the symptoms and all of the reactions when we realize that we're a mess. Like we run, we hide, we blame, we shoulder it all or overperform, we rage.
We try to find someone whose life is messier than ours. We present, we posture, we pose. And maybe we could think for a moment about the symptoms that we have when we become aware of our mess. Again, it's probably a good idea to be aware of those because everyone around you already is.
And so that's the triple mess. That's the mess, the stuff that's not under your control and it's coming in from the outside, the sin that you do have a measure of control over and it's rising up from the inside and then all the symptoms you and I engage in to hide or to cover our mess. And I'm trying as hard as I possibly can not to go to the theme of tomorrow's podcast because I just want to stay here in our mess. That's what I want us to do this morning.
Could we just own our mess? Could we just stop making excuses for our mess? Could we just stop defending our mess? Could we stop trying to find somebody more messy than ourselves?
Can we stop shouldering and outperforming and covering up and hiding and raging and judging? Could we just stop? Could we own the mess that we have no control over? It's pressing in on us from the outside.
Could we just own the mess called sin that we do have a measure of control over and could we just own the symptoms and all the antics that we do to cover up and to hide our mess? So can we just read this story this morning, Luke 1 and 2? Let's notice how messy it is. Notice how messy our lives are.
Become aware of all those symptoms as a result. And could be this morning just sit in our mess. And we'll continue this conversation in the next podcast. Thanks for listening to the Daily Disciples podcast.
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