Manger

My grandson, Payden, was a cow in the nativity scene in the church Christmas play in Weatherford, Oklahoma. Leah informed me that during rehearsal Payden improvised with some non-bovine dance moves while they sang “Silent Night.” Who knew that Franz Gruber’s classic melody was a dance track? None-the-less, it was a “moo–ving” performance! Nativity scenes were initiated by Saint Francis of Assisi in the early 13th century to remind the masses that Jesus was the reason for the season. It seems Jesus being marginalized is an issue for every generation. I believe that some of this is because mankind has a hard time keeping Jesus arrival in the manger. We’ve unwittingly marginalized Luke’s poignant words, “there was no room for them in the inn (Luke 2:7).” Jesus was swaddled in an animal trough so he might underscore His arrival as the promised Messiah with the paradox of redemption. That is, He who was glory from on high made His debut not in jewels, fine linen and palace walls but in hay, stench and stable surroundings. Why? Because there was no room… no reception or fanfare and though heaven and strangers from afar worshiped at His feet, Herod plotted to take His life! The Apostle John’s nativity declaration is, “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him (John 1:11).” Jesus began a manger guy and continues to be a manger guy!

Let me explain, the redemptive paradox is that God reconciles mankind not with high and exalted staging but in the weakness of a cross that declares victory in surrender! Jesus didn’t hang out with or band together with the religious elite but chose His company with outcasts and the common. His teaching was about everyday things not the theological musings of the rabbis. He spent the majority of His life in a small town with work that left Him with rough hands and sawdust in His lungs. And during His ministry He had no place to call His own but rather depended on the service of a handful of protective women. To an outsider Jesus look more like riff raff than like a Messiah. You see, Jesus has always been a manger guy… a son of man who illuminated that the glory of God was not in the vessel but the content! That every soul coming into this world can embrace the true light no matter if they are born prince or pauper. The gospel is for ALL!

Just curious… but where did we get all those animals and where does it say the Magi came to the stable? Easy enough… as Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof says, “Tradition!” I kind of like a nativity crew of characters –it makes it interesting and colorful. However, I hope we never lose sight of the manger that reminds us, “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed (Isaiah 53:3-5).” -DAN