Luke 21:27
Writer and musician Spike Milligan has been attributed with the quote, “Everybody has to be somewhere.” It makes sense, does it not? You can’t say, “I’m in the middle of nowhere,” because nowhere doesn’t exist.
Do you know what the word, “utopia” literally means? It is the combination of two Greek words. “Eu” means “no.” “Topos” means “place.” So utopia literally means “no place.” A utopia doesn’t exist. It is a no place.
Which means that Jesus was born in a utopia. The story of his birth in Luke says there was “no place” for Mary to have her baby. No place.
Oh, there was a place. As I started this message, everyone has to be somewhere. Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem. That’s definitely a place. It was a small town. Still is. But it was even smaller back then. Evidently only one inn. The story tells us there was “no place in the inn,” not, “no place in an inn.”
No place. No tucked away corner. No scrap of a place on the floor some where. No storeroom. No back hallway. No place.
What’s even sadder is, this is not just about an inn with no place. Remember why Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem. There was a census going on. The Roman government wanted to make sure it was getting all the taxes they thought they deserved. In order to be counted and therefore appropriately taxed by the occupational army and provisional Roman government, a person had to go back to their family home of origin.
What that means is that, for Joseph and Mary, all their extended family would be in Bethlehem as well. Aunts and uncles, cousins and grandparents, nieces and nephews. All of Joseph and Mary’s family would be there. Which begs the question: Why did Joseph and Mary have to find no place in an inn? Why didn’t a second or third or first cousin give a pregnant relative a place? Why was there no welcome given to Joseph and Mary so that they could have a place where their baby could be born?
How could the famous middle eastern ethic of hospitality break down, so that even a pregnant relative could find “no place?” Even among the middle eastern bedouins, if a stranger wandered into their camp, and the bedouin took that stranger into their tent out of hospitality, the bedouin was bound to protect their guest with their life. That was the unwritten rule of hospitality. To offer no hospitality, which literally means to take a stranger in and give them a place, give them protection, to offer no hospitality was a huge insult. Mary and Joseph, and eventually a baby, were given “no place.”
To treat someone as such is to make them invisible. To give them “no place” is to make them invisible. So when Jesus came into the world, offered no hospitality, no room, no home, no extended family gathered round, no place, it was as if he were invisible to the rest of that place. Even, as we shall see, when the shepherds came, all they found was Joseph, Mary and the baby Jesus. No one else. At a “no place” stable cave. Mostly invisible to the rest of that little town, and entirely invisible to the rest of the world.
II
But, when Jesus comes again, he will come on the clouds.
There are two reasons Jesus will come on the clouds. First, a cloud was symbolic for the presence of God. Remember during the Exodus, when the Hebrew slaves were taken out of Egypt by Moses? As they crossed the wilderness a pillar of cloud led them in the right direction during the day time—the cloud of God’s presence.
When Moses went up on the mountain to receive the two stone tablets with the Ten Commandments inscribed on them, a cloud descended upon the mountain—the cloud of the presence of God.
When Jesus was transfigured and met with Moses and Elijah, they were enveloped in a cloud—the cloud of the presence God. When Jesus ascended into heaven after the Resurrection, he did so on a cloud—the cloud of the presence of God.
That Jesus, in his Second Coming will come on the clouds means that he will come in and with the full presence of God.
And the second reason Jesus will come again on the clouds is, unlike the first coming in the stable, he will be totally visible to the whole world. John the Divine tells us in the book of Revelation,
Riding the clouds, he’ll be seen by every eye…
People from all nations and all times. (Revelation 1:7)
No longer invisible, where there is “no place” for him, Jesus will come again and there will be no place that won’t see him this time. The angels told the shepherds that the Savior will be for all people. But not all people saw. Not all people believed. In the Second Coming, all will see, and all will be challenged to believe because of what they will see.
III
In the first coming, at the birth of Jesus, the Savior had a manger for a bed. A feed trough. Remember how you were with your first child. So over-protective. Not letting just anyone hold your baby. Trying to protect them from germs. Thinking that you could provide a protective barrier for your new baby against the grit and grime of the world.
Imagine Mary and Joseph holding the new born baby Jesus, looking for someplace to lay him down for a nap. And you spy the manger. The feeding trough. The place where coarse food—the entire corn plant and other silage—was placed for the horses and cattle. The place where those animals would chew over and slobber into. Years of build up of animal drool and bits of leftover stalks and leaves. That’s the only place to lay their baby—the Savior of the world.
Not a very glorious place, by a long shot. No velvet blankets to wrap the babe in. Only swaddling cloths, a thin layer of wrap to protect your newborn from the detritus of a feeding trough. Not regal at all. No one would see anything of dignity in a baby wrapped in stripped pieces of cloth, and sleeping in a manger. Could this really be the Savior of the world?
But, when Jesus comes again, he will come with “great glory.” Instead of a dingy, dark and dank cattle cave, Jesus will come again in eye shielding brightness and brilliance. Instead of the indignity of a no place, Jesus will come again with overpowering majesty. Instead of having to be laid in a cattle crib on top of chewed up bits and orts, Jesus will come again with the magnificence as if he were a King upon a resplendent throne. Instead of appearing as a nobody in a no place, Jesus will come again, preeminent above all and over all.
C.S. Lewis wrote in his sermon, “The Weight of Glory,”
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship…There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”
What he’s saying is that all of us are being fitted for heaven. Some day we will have heavenly bodies, that, if we saw them now, we would be in awe. Multiply that by the thousands in relation to Jesus. In the first coming, in the first Advent, Jesus and his surroundings seemed dull and uninteresting. Jesus was just an ordinary baby in a less than ordinary cattle cave sleeping in a stall.
But in the Second Coming, the Second Advent, Jesus will be seen in all his glory. No mere mortal, but the glorious, magnificent and majestic Savior and Son of God, so bright we will be unable to look upon him. In the first coming people looked at Jesus and turned away, not really seeing anything they thought worth looking at. In the Second Coming no one will be able to look away from him.
IV
In the first coming, Jesus seemed to be totally powerless. Certainly, babies are powerless. They are completely dependent on their parents for everything. There is nothing they can do for themselves other than cry hoping someone will pay attention to them.
Jesus was born, not to a wealthy family, but a peasant couple, who themselves had no personal power. Repeatedly they were turned away. As I’ve mentioned, they were people who had no place, and thus no power.
Joseph and Mary were doormats, and that made Jesus a doormat. According to Bill Farmer's newspaper column, J. Upton Dickson was a fun-loving fellow who said he was writing a book entitled Cower Power. He also founded a group of submissive people. It was called DOORMATS. That stands for “Dependent Organization of Really Meek And Timid Souls”. They hope people like the name of their group…unless there are any objections? Their motto is: “The meek shall inherit the earth”—if that's okay with everybody. Their symbol is the yellow traffic light.
That’s how Jesus came into the world—a powerless doormat. But when Jesus comes again, it will be with power. This word power in Greek is the word dunamis—the same word we get the word dynamite from. Explosive power. Earth Crushing power.
It’s also the kind of power that is inherent in a thing or person. Most people gain power because it is given to them or they earn it. Prince Charles is next in line to be King of England, not because he is an inherently kingly person, but simply because of the family he was born into. His power has been conferred upon him.
But the power Jesus has when he comes again will be a power that resides in himself just by virtue of his nature—his nature as God. God may be the only being in the universe that has not had power conferred upon him, but is power inherent. Jesus, God in the flesh, will come again into the world with that same natural power.
The irony is that in the first Advent, Jesus had that same power within himself, but people didn’t see it. Nor did Jesus totally exercise it—a miracle here or there. For the most part, as Isaiah the prophet described the coming Savior, centuries before the first Advent:
He was despised and rejected by men;
a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief,
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not. (Isaiah 53:3)
Jesus was treated as if he had no power, displaying his ultimate powerlessness by being crucified.
But in the second coming, that irony will be erased. The one people considered powerless will be displayed with explosive and mighty power. And then we will know.
The same Savior, coming two different times, in two entirely different ways, but with the same intention: to set the people of this world free.
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