Caesar's Decree

In a marble palace in Rome, the most powerful man in the world signs an order. He has never heard of Nazareth. He has never heard of Mary or Joseph. But his order is about to send them on the road to Bethlehem.

Luke begins the story of Jesus' birth not in a stable, but on the world stage. The emperor is Caesar Augustus. His real name was Octavian, the adopted heir of Julius Caesar. After years of civil war he had become sole ruler of Rome, and the Senate gave him the title Augustus, meaning the revered one. His empire stretched from Spain to Syria, from the edge of Germany to Egypt. Coins carried his face. Temples were built in his honour. People called him the bringer of peace. And Judea, the small land of the Jews, was one tiny corner of his world.

Luke writes: “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.” The word means to be enrolled or registered. Names written down, households counted, property recorded, so that the empire knew who lived where, and who owed what. To an emperor, a registration is about numbers and money. It is about control. Augustus wanted to know the size of what he ruled.

Luke adds a note to help his readers place the story. This registration, he says, was the first one made when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Syria was the large Roman province to the north, and its governor was one of the most important officials in the east. Then Luke tells us what happened on the ground. Everyone went to be registered, each to his own city. Picture the roads. Farmers leaving their fields. Families loading donkeys. Old men walking back to towns they had not seen since childhood. Whole villages emptying and filling up again.

Here is the wonder Luke wants us to see. Augustus thought he was simply counting his subjects. He had no idea that his decree was serving a far greater King. Centuries before, the prophet Micah had said a ruler would come out of Bethlehem, the little town of David. And now, because of a piece of paperwork in Rome, a carpenter and his pregnant fiancée in Nazareth have to make the long journey to Bethlehem. The most powerful man in the world is moving pieces on a board he cannot see.

Augustus left behind his own account of his reign, called The Deeds of the Divine Augustus. It was set up on bronze pillars outside his tomb in Rome, and a copy survives on a temple wall in Ankara, in modern Turkey. In it, Augustus boasts that he carried out three censuses of Roman citizens. Counting people was something he was proud of. Historians still discuss exactly how Luke's registration under Quirinius fits with other ancient records, but registrations like this were a real part of life under Rome.

Caesar's decree is in Luke chapter two, verses one to three. An emperor's order, a whole empire on the move, and hidden inside it, God keeping a promise to a little town. So here is a question to carry with you. Where might God be working quietly through the ordinary, even annoying, events of your life?