*Excerpted from a sermon preached December 18, 2016 at Peace Mennonite Church by Joanna Harader.

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“In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered.” (Luke 2:1)

This didn’t happen. Not really. Not historically. There is no record of any such census, and even if there were a census, Augustus could not have decreed that the whole world register. His empire was great, but it did not encompass the whole world.

“In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered.”

This is not a statement of fact so much as a statement of truth. Augustus was powerful. He could order people around on a whim. Command them from a distance. Require them to register—so he could get more taxes from them.

The Emperor’s decree may not affect the entire world, but it affects the lives of Mary and Joseph and countless others. He controls them from a distance with force. They travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

Then, as we know so well, while Mary and Joseph were in Bethlehem to be registered, “the time came for her to deliver her child.” This baby that is part of Mary’s very body wields a different kind of power.  The power to make Mary go into labor at a rather inconvenient time; the power to panic his parents when he’s 12 and they realize he’s not traveling with the family; the power to break his mother’s heart as his body hangs broken on the cross.

It is a different kind of power that Jesus has over Mary—different from the power of the Emperor.

I know Christmas is about a lot of things: family and music and presents. For the more spiritual among us: hope, peace, joy, love. We could all write our little essays about the true meaning of Christmas. But from a strictly theological perspective, Christmas is about one thing: the incarnation.

God, the Divine One, becoming flesh and blood. The incarnation reveals to us the nature of Divine power. It is, above all else, a power of presence.

Not a power shouting commands from a distance—dropping bombs, firing rubber bullets.

God chooses the power of love, which means that the unthinkable must happen—God must put God’s very self in harm’s way in order to be present with people.

He rushes into an active war zone to pull bodies from the rubble.

She camps in frigid temperatures and faces violence from police to protect land and water.

They are born into an oppressed group in occupied territory.

It’s the power of presence.

And the nativity scene that we take for granted this time of year, the picture of the father, the mother, the swaddled child–this is an image to carry in our minds, in our hearts. It is a reminder that the power of God is not the power we expect. It is not the power of force from a distance.

It is the blood and sweat and joy of a birth. The warmth and stench of the hay and the animals. The insistent wailing and the tender nursing.

It is the power of love. The power of presence. The power of God for us. The power of God with us.

The Christ child reveals to us the nature of divine power. And that baby “wrapped in bands of cloth and laid in a manger” reveals the power to which God calls us—the power to share God’s incredible love and to be God’s consistent, insistent presence in this world. Amen.