Every Advent and Christmas season, we get introduced to a person who, given the number of references to him in the Gospels, can’t be viewed as anything more than a minor character. Indeed, he appears by name only once in the Bible, making him almost a throwaway character.

Crispus, the synagogue leader in Corinth, is mentioned more often. Barsabbas (also known as Justus), one of the possible replacements for Judas Iscariot among the apostles, makes more appearances. So does Tychichus, an Asian companion of Paul’s.

But, though this character’s name is mentioned only once, his looming presence throughout the Gospels acts as a character all its own. He’s lurking behind every run-in with the Temple authorities, and his presence is felt from the very first moments of Jesus’ narrative.

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

That’s it. One verse. That’s the only time he’s mentioned by name in the Gospels. So, you might be tempted to believe that he occupies only a minor place in the narrative—just happens to be the big wheel in charge for the first half of Jesus’ life. Augustus can’t be that important to Jesus’ story if the Gospel writers only think to name him once, right?

Now, I guess I can see how one might think that. But some characters in a narrative are so pervasive they don’t have to be named to know that almost everything in the narrative is shaped by a relationship to that barely named character. The “white whale” in Moby Dick, for instance, makes a physical appearance in the novel only a handful of times. The “white whale” speaks no lines in the novel. And yet, there would be no Moby Dick without having the “white whale” in Captain Ahab’s sites the whole novel. Every scene and every word is shaped by one almost invisible character and the captain’s obsession with it. Whispers of the white whale drive every move Captain Ahab makes.

Caesar Augustus occupies a similar role in the Gospels, even though Matthew, Mark, and John never even mention him by name. But his looming presence in the background shapes the narrative and helps us define Jesus’ life and mission. If we did a crime scene analysis, Augustus’s fingerprints are all over the story of Jesus’ life, ministry, and death.

The question is, “How?”

When my grandfather died in 2003, my family asked my brother and I to do a eulogy. This was my grandfather, Theodore Roosevelt Murray, who, with my grandmother, started the children’s home in Mexico. Needless to say, my grandparents were viewed by many people with a kind of awe usually reserved for heads of state, saints, and TikTok influencers.

But not everyone felt quite so reverential and admiring. For all the good he did in his life, my grandfather had a temper—which most people who admired him didn’t really understand. My mom and her two siblings had grown up before my grandfather became a “saint.” Consequently, they knew firsthand about his anger issues. And they were girding themselves to hear all the nice things about him without the kind of context that would help people really understand him.

My mom told me the night before that some people were concerned about painting my grandfather as a blameless paragon of virtue. It wasn’t that anybody wanted me to be mean and vindictive; they just wanted me to be honest about who he really was.

That’s a lot of power when you stop to think about it. Whoever tells the story gets to say what the story is. Maybe it’s the person who tells it first. Maybe it’s the person who tells it longest or most captivatingly. But there’s no denying that the story that gets told is the one that gives shape and meaning to an event or a person’s life.

The whole episode got me thinking: Lives are complicated; there’s no way to find the words that will perfectly portray the memory of a person. So, you can never be sure about the kind of legacy you leave behind. But, some story’s going to get told by someone.

As lovely as it might seem to be Huck Finn and get to witness our own funerals, see who shows up, and, more importantly, what people are going to say about us, the truth is that we don’t control what people think of us or what they’ll say about us after we’re gone. Somehow we know that, but it doesn’t really seem fair, does it?

But, as I say, someone’s going to tell the story of our lives. The question is: Who gets to tell it? And the next question is: Will it be true?

The answer to those two questions makes all the difference in the world, doesn’t it?

Caesar Augustus understood the perils of having somebody else sum up your life. Too much uncertainty there. You can’t control what people are going to say. You can commission a book like Virgil’s The Aeneid, a thinly veiled literary attempt to connect the founder of Troy and the founder of Rome in a heroic fashion.

But, if you want to make sure it comes out the way you envision, it’s probably best to just write it yourself. And that’s what Caesar Augustus did. Unwilling to leave it to history or to chance, he wrote something like an autobiography entitled “Res Gestae Divi Augusti” or “The Deeds of the Divine Augustus*.”*

This autobiography he’d had reproduced on bronze tablets and spread throughout the empire. It summarizes his impressive military and political feats as Rome’s first and, arguably, most successful emperor. Here is the opening sentence:

“…Below is a copy of the acts of the Deified Augustus by which he placed the whole world under the sovereignty of the Roman people, and of the amounts which he expended upon the state and the Roman people … ”