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By the time Jesus was born, Augustus had already been monarch for a quarter of a century. King of kings, he ruled from Gibraltar to Jerusalem and from Britain to the Black Sea. He had done what no one had done for two hundred years before him: he had brought peace to the wider, Roman world—peace at a price. A price paid in cash by subjects in far-off lands.

Augustus "gave peace, as long as it was consistent with the interests of the Empire and the myth of his own glory," wrote Arnaldo Momigliano. There you have it in a nutshell: the whole ambiguous structure of human empire, a kingdom of absolute power, bringing glory to the man at the top, and peace to those on whom his favor rested.

Yes, says Luke, and watch what happens now. This man, this king, this absolute monarch, lifts his little finger in Rome, and fifteen hundred miles away, in an obscure province, a young couple undertakes a hazardous journey, resulting in the birth of a child in a little town that just happens to be the one mentioned in the ancient Hebrew prophecy about the coming of the Messiah. And it is at this birth that the angels sing of glory and peace. Which is the reality, and which the parody?

Here we have to pause, because the passage from Micah 5, which Luke intends to awaken in our minds, is so well known and so little attended to: "But you, Bethlehem of Ephrathah, little among the clans of Judah—from you shall come forth the one who is to rule in Israel" (Micah 5:2). The passage is regularly cut off a verse or two early when read in public. Verse 4 launches a project that ought to make Augustus anxious: "He [the coming King] shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of YHWH, in the majesty of the name of YHWH his God; and they shall live secure, for now he shall be great to the ends of the earth." But the next verse goes on: "And he shall be the man of peace."

How is this peace to be secured? This coming King, born in Bethlehem of Judea, will rescue his people from the hand of the foreign emperors. In Micah's day, this was Assyria; but Luke's readers would have transferred the meaning to Rome, and Luke would have hoped that subsequent generations would be equally adept at contemporary applications. Herod was worried by what the wise men told him. If someone had told Augustus what the angels had said to the shepherds, he would have been worried, too.

Suddenly, Luke's scene ceases to be a romantic pastoral idyll, with the rustic shepherds paying homage to the infant King. It becomes a clear statement of two kingdoms destined to compete, kingdoms that offer radically different definitions of what peace and power and glory are all about.

Here is the old king in Rome, turning 60 in the year Jesus was born: he represents perhaps the best that pagan kingdoms can do. At least he knows that peace and stability are good things; unfortunately, he has had to kill a lot of people to bring them about, and to kill a lot more, on a regular basis, to preserve them. Unfortunately, too, his real interest is in his own glory. Already, before his death, many of his subjects have begun to regard him as divine.

Here, by contrast, is the young King in Bethlehem, born with a price on his head. He represents the dangerous alternative, the possibility of a different empire, a different power, a different glory, a different peace. The two stand over against one another.

Augustus's empire is like a well-lit room at night: the lamps are arranged beautifully, they shed pretty patterns, but they have not conquered the darkness outside. Jesus' kingdom is like the morning star rising, signaling that it is time to blow out the candles, to throw open the curtains, and to welcome the new day that is dawning. Glory to God in the highest—and peace among those with whom he is pleased!

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December 9 1996, Vol. 40, No. 14