We celebrate Christmas in December, though we really don’t know Jesus’ birthday. In fact, it very likely wasn’t in December but in a warmer month when the shepherds were “in the field keeping watch over their flocks by night.” The Lamb of God being born in Bethlehem has greater significance in that the Temple’s sacrificial lambs all came from Bethlehem.

Jesus’ birth was far more interesting – and meaningful – than our traditional Christmas creche. Our tradition includes a desperate father-to-be searching for a place for his nine-month pregnant betrothed to give birth. A grumpy inn keeper. A drafty, dimly lit stable and a rough sawn manger. The reality was likely far different. Joseph’s ties to Bethlehem and the honor-based practice of hospitality insured a place for his betrothed to give birth.

It’s easy to think Mary was clueless. A teenage girl with no idea the task she was being asked to undertake. Far from it. Like all Jews, Mary anticipated the coming of a Messiah. When Gabriel told her she would give birth to “the Son of the Most High” (Lk. 1:32), she would have immediately recognized the title as belonging to the long-awaited Messiah.

Sam shares on King David's life to help us understand that God wants to deal with our sin....and a right response to our sin is humility and repentence. God can restore.

“George Macdonald used to say that no man could be a follower of Jesus if the children were afraid to play at his door.” Matthew places this interaction in the midst of three instances where Jesus predicts his coming death. The mental strain must have been discernable because his disciples wanted to shield him from the children and their parents. But Jesus didn’t view children as a nuisance, a distraction. Instead he commended their childlikeness as a quality he looks for in all his disciples.

Jesus proctors a test of both his disciples and a Gentile woman who is a caregiver at the end of her rope. The woman’s faith is tested and proven. The Disciples prejudice is tested and exposed. When Jesus confronts the prejudice of gender by speaking to a woman, and the prejudice of race by healing her daughter, the disciples learn a valuable lesson about Jesus’ mission: He is for all people.

Jesus act of washing his disciples’ feet is shocking in its context. Disciples served teachers, but in that culture event that did not extend to washing their master’s feet. That task was appointed to a servant. When Jesus washed his disciples’ feet he made a profound statement about the expectation of leaders in His Kingdom: they are called to serve others.

Jesus went to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles, which commemorated the Jews’ wilderness wandering as they journeyed from Egypt to the Promised Land. It was instituted as a reminder that God provided for the Jews in the wilderness spite of their sin. Forgetting the grace this feast celebrated, Jewish leaders in Jesus day proposed to trap Jesus by bringing a woman caught in adultery to him for judgment. When the guilty meet Jesus, they’re redeemed.

Jesus crossed a lake and met a synagogue leader whose daughter was dying. Along the way to her house he had an encounter with a woman who suffered from a hemorrhage. He healed the woman, but learned that the little girl died. Blood and a dead body: two things a righteous rabbi would have strictly avoided. Not Jesus. When Jesus meets broken people, he wades into the mess and restores what is broken.

Jesus crossed a lake and met an outcast, a Roman collaborator. As a tax collector, Matthew became wealthy through oppressing his countrymen. He partnered with Roman authorities earning him derision and hatred from his fellow Jews. Jewish leaders wouldn’t, typically, have anything to do with Matthew. Jesus not only shares a meal with him – a significant cultural statement of acceptance – he also chooses Matthew to be his disciple. When outcasts meet Jesus, they’re included.