The Rev. Frank Logue
King of Peace Episcopal Church
Kingsland, Georgia
December 24, 2000

The Manger Revisited
Luke 2:1-20

Tonight we gather to tell the old, old story. We remember the little town of Bethlehem where the hopes and fears of all the years were met on a night long ago. The story of Jesus’ birth is familiar from the many times we have heard it told and retold. Perhaps the Christmas story has become too familiar. If we are not careful we can lose the sense of wonder the story demands. I want to challenge us all to enter the story anew. 

The Emperor Augustus wrote a decree to go out through all the Roman Empire, which was what he considered to be the entire known world. What Augustus wanted was an accurate head count of the realm. Like all decrees, this one started with the headman himself putting his seal of approval on the big project. But as the news of the decree spread out, it worked its way down the chain of command to the people. First the leaders would hear the news and then those they considered important and so on. Down the layers of society, news of the decree spread. Finally news of Augustus’ announcement made it to the bottom rung on the social ladder. It was there at the bottom of society, among the least of the people in the Roman Empire that our story really begins. Here among the lowliest people, God’s plan is carried out through the Emperor’s decree, without the Emperor ever knowing.

Mary and Joseph learn that they will have to travel from Nazareth back to Joseph’s family’s ancestral town of Bethlehem. The trip will have to come when Mary is nearing the end of her pregnancy. She may have to give birth on the road. And this just so that they can have some Roman official check off the right box on the right form. It’s enough to make anyone wonder if God cares at all. Where are the messengers from God now? Where is the Angel when they have to pack their few belongings and head out for weeks on the road?

Mary and Joseph joined the throngs of travelers out on the road. All along their journey, Mary had a song that played over and over in her mind. It was the song God gave her when she was visiting her relative Elizabeth. As she and Joseph left Nazareth she was humming along thinking, “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior.”

The two left the region of Galilee, crossed all of Samaria, and then entered Judah. They passed by Emmaus and Mary entered Jerusalem riding on her donkey. Mary entered the great capital with the words of the song ringing in her ears, “He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation.”

Mary knew that Joseph was a descendent of Israel’s great king, David. But when she arrived in Bethlehem, it was clear that Joseph was right in saying that most of Israel was also a son of David. The town was jam-packed. Mary and Joseph arrived in Bethlehem as strangers in need of hospitality, something that was in short supply in a town bursting at the seams with travelers in town for the census.

For all the excitement of the past months, here Mary was—a very road-weary stranger in a strange town with no place to sleep. Mary didn’t dare tell Joseph that she had begun to feel labor pains as they made their way from inn to inn. Poor Joseph was trying so hard to find a place to stay that Mary couldn’t trouble him with news of the birth just yet. She tried to concentrate on the song that had accompanied her on the journey, “He has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He has….” The labor pains would come. She tried to keep her face straight as her insides twisted with the beginnings of labor.

Then Mary would sit still and wait while Joseph went to yet one more door to have it closed in his face yet again. While she sat, she tried to picture the angel again. She could still see him standing there in her house. Mary remembered that night and her heart beat faster. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest with what? Fear? Excitement? Amazement? All that and…there came another one. Closer this time. There was no avoiding this child the Angel named Yehoshua, Jesus, was going to be born soon. “Where is Joseph?” she thought as the pain subsided? He wasn’t standing by the door anymore. This time he had been let inside. Surely they would have a room soon, and not a moment too soon.

Joseph came back outside with the owner of the inn, some distant cousin no doubt. He wasn’t exactly smiling.

“Mary, we have a place to stay,” he said, but he wasn’t leading her inside.

“A room? Where?” she asked.

“Not exactly a room,” Joseph hesitated. The owner of the inn was looking at the ground. He didn’t say anything.

“There’s a stable out back. It will be warm enough. We’ll have a place for the donkey and we’ll be there until I find something better.”

Mary didn’t say anything. She didn’t have the heart to tell Joseph, poor, sweet Joseph that she was already in labor. She wanted to say something, but she just couldn’t. The innkeeper led them down a narrow street and entered a cave ahead of them. He left a lamp on the floor and quickly departed, never making eye contact with Mary. Once inside, Joseph piled up some dry straw to make a bed for Mary. The pain came again and Mary cried out. This time she couldn’t help it. It felt like everything inside Mary was trying to get out. “Mary, Mary. Are you all right?” Joseph asked. Mary was awash in a sea of pain, trying to get her bearings. Like a great river flowing down a mountainside, God’s plan was in motion and nothing could stop it now. She had known this for months, but it was even clearer now. Mary was being swept along in God’s plan, something being done both for her and through her. Then before she could ever adjust to the contraction it was gone. 

“Joseph, it’s time,” she said simply.

“Not now. Not here,” Joseph said looking around the dark cave filled with animals.

“Yes, Joseph. Here, and soon.”

Joseph was never going to make it through the birth. Mary could see that now. She busied Joseph, sending him out to find some bands of cloth to wrap the Baby in and to find a midwife if he could. Joseph left, happy now with a mission. Something to do.

Mary lay still, waiting. Another pain came. Much, much closer this time. After the pain passed, Mary began to sing again. Her song came flowing back, but the words had changed their meaning over these months. “He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.” Those words had a funny twist of irony now as she gave birth in a stable. But Mary remained at peace, somehow convinced that all of this must be right. God’s plan was taking place just as it should. Somehow this child, her child, born in this cave would change everything. Mary knew that.

Joseph came into the cave on one of several stops just before Mary delivered Jesus. Together they cleaned him and then Mary carefully wrapped Jesus. She had helped wrap babies before, but this was different. Mary looked down at Jesus, her Jesus with such love. His little wrinkled face was so beautiful to her. His tiny hands and feet were perfect. Lovingly Mary wrapped the strips around Jesus to help him to grow straight. As she wrapped him, Mary sang to Jesus, “He has come to the help of his servant Israel, for he has remembered his promise of mercy, The promise he made to our fathers, to Abraham and his children forever.” Gone was the pain of birth, gone was the frustrating search for a room. Here was Jesus.

Mary was tired, beyond sleep. She and Joseph just sat and watched Jesus. There was a commotion in the street. Joseph went out to see what all the noise was about.  He returned followed by a group of shepherds. They looked dirty and smelled of a life in the fields, but when they saw the baby, Jesus, lying in the trough, their faces lit up.

“He’s here. The baby is here,” one of the shepherds cried out.

Then the shepherds were all talking at once. Finally one of them began to recount their own story of that night. He told of how they were out with their flocks like on a thousand nights before. And there in the countryside outside Bethlehem an angel came to them. “We were scared half to death,” the dirty-faced shepherd admitted.

“But he told us that the Messiah was born today. And then of all things, he said that we would find him wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger. Then the sky was filled a great crowd from the heavenly army singing the most glorious music you ever heard. When the angels left, we came straight to town and have been peeking in stables ever since. It’s a miracle finding you here.”

“Can you imagine? Angels appeared to the likes of us,” another shepherd added.

“I always thought the Messiah would be born among the rich,” another said.

Mary remembered the words of her own song. Here the lowly shepherds were the first to come praise God’s own child. The shepherds did, at last leave, and Mary did get in some sleep before the sun rose. But, first she lay on the hay, thinking back over all that had happened. She added this night to her treasury of memories. Mary pondered it all in her heart. Over the many years of her life that followed, Mary would take these memories out. Once again she would remember the angel that came to her. She would remember Elizabeth and the song she sang to God. And then Mary would come to this night, this night of Jesus’ birth. This was the memory that never ceased to amaze her.

That God would become a human at all was something she could never fully grasp. The birth of His son showed how much God cares for His creation. But that God would be born as such a fragile child in such a lowly place was sometimes more than Mary could understand or express. And yet, God had been made man in Jesus. Over the years, Mary doubted all this at times. Jesus was, after all, very much a boy and then very much a man. But Mary always returned to her memories of this night. She remembered his wrinkled face and his perfect little hands and feet. She remembered the wonder on the dirty faces of the shepherds.

Yes, there were all the miracles that followed in His ministry—the many people healed and made whole. But somehow His very life was a miracle that meant so much more to Mary. God became man. What more could she ask for or imagine? God became man and he came first to the least of the people. By his very birth, Jesus showed how God’s love is for all the world. This is a miracle that we, too, like Mary, can guard in our hearts. A treasure to take out in the dark times, when God seems so far. When the world seems so disconnected from God. When you think that things are such a mess that God couldn’t possibly understand. You can remember this night, this night when God came among us and pray, “O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!”

Amen.