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The Rev. Frank
Logue From Mary to the Manger to Us
All through Advent, Mary has been carrying Jesus inside here. The expectancy of the season of Advent is summed up in that experience of a mother expecting the birth of her child. The same expectancy we are to have as Christmas approaches. The same expectancy we are to have for Jesus’ Second Coming in glory. Mary knows in her bones that it is the Messiah she carries. Mary knows that the child in her womb will change everything. If everyone can just understand the significance of Jesus the way that Mary does. Then comes Christmas itself. Last night we read of Jesus’ birth in a lowly stable. The firstborn son Jesus is wrapped in bands of cloth and laid in a manger. Wrapping an infant in bands of cloth is what caring parents did in those days to assure that the child grew straight and tall. The manger is the problem in this otherwise perfect scene. Despite our efforts to sanitize it, the manger itself is supposed to be the shocking element in this story. Manger. That’s the King James English word for it. Manger is a good word. A safe, clean word, because we never talk of any manger’s except the one Mary and Joseph lie Jesus in on the night of his birth. Jesus lying in a manger. But this is no basinet. A manger is a food box or trough. If the manger in that stable was like the manger’s we know of through archeology, it was carved from stone. Any smoothness to the manger came from the wear and tear of use by the herd animals who fed from it, rather than the care in craftsmanship that went into building it. So the Messiah, the Son of God goes from pregnancy in a poor Israeli girl to birth in a stable and the first hours rest in a food trough. Today we read of the shepherds coming and finding the infant Messiah and now the manger itself is the miracle. For in last night’s reading, the angels named the manger as a sign. The shepherds will know that they have found the right baby, when they “find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” That is the proof the shepherds are given that they have found the Messiah, their Lord. The baby in the feed box is the King of Kings. The shepherds believe this unlikely sign and rush from their herds to find Mary and Joseph and the child in the manger. Heaven on earth, God incarnate in the animals food trough. OK. I know I have over emphasized the ordinariness, even the grubbiness of the manger. But it is essential to really grab hold of that fact if you want to recover the power of this story. Just as no one around her knew how special Mary was before the angel Gabriel came, no one knew that a lowly feed box could become a place of rest for the one who created all that is. And so, looking at your own life, it might be hard to guess that God would want to live in your heart. And yet, that is exactly what God has told that the Holy Spirit most wants to do. For the shepherds, the only proof they received, the only proof they needed was the baby in the manger, just as the angels had promised. Then as they went out into the night in Bethlehem to tell their story, all who heard it were amazed. No one was surprised that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. But no one expected a stable or a manger. The birth told something important about God. The Apostle Paul in his Second Letter to the Corinthians (4:6-7) put it this way, “For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power does not come from us.” The light that shines in the darkness is in clay jars. Clay jars. That’s our ordinary human bodies. The story goes that Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit went from Mary to the manger to us. For the Christmas story is as much about Jesus being born in our hearts as it is about his being born in Bethlehem. Jesus can and does break into the ordinariness of our lives. And if we over sanitize the stable and the manger, then we are going to have to do a lot more than a little spring cleaning to our hearts before the Son of God can ever enter in. It’s not that our Lord isn’t in the make over business. In fact, God is into extreme makeovers. The difference is that Jesus is happy to come dwell in you before the makeover. God loved this world in all its ordinariness and Jesus loves you in all your brokenness. You don’t have to get your act together for God. God wants to come in now, as you are. The clean up, the makeover, the happen over time as you make yourself more and more open to letting that light shine in, through and out of the clay jar that is you. Last night we remembered the light that shines in the darkness is Jesus. Today we acknowledge that if the Lord of all can rest in a manger, that same Lord will surely abide in your heart. And that is the miracle of Christmas, God with us and in us. Amen.
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