“RIGHT HERE IN THE MANGER”
The Eve of the Christ Mass: 24 December Anno Domini 2015
Father Jay Watson SSP
Away in a manger no crib for a bed: The Christ of God was not away but was home. He had returned to the city of the Apple of His Eye, King David. The treasure of the Trinity was no longer transported by Levites bearing the gold covered arc—the carved seraphim covered tabernacle of Torah, but rather carried by a daughter of Judah, Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham—Mary of Nazareth in her flesh and blood covered tabernacle of a womb. The angels were no longer two carved seraphs but a close-by country side of the entire heavenly host! The crib that most Jews of normal means used for their new born children would not have look all that different from a feeding trough for animals. Wood, low to the ground, protecting sides, room for cloths and warming material, and readily accessible to the mother who would have to suckle her baby at her breasts.
These two beloved Saints were neither indigents nor aliens. They were not homeless or refugees. They were Jews doing what they had to do under difficult circumstances of foreign occupation. Rome, Caesar, said “go to your ancestral home and pay taxes and be counted.” Saint Joseph the Guardian of our Lord did what he had to do, what he thought he must do. He was after all the Guardian of The Lord. And to guard the enfleshed God—the en-wombed not-yet-born baby, He took and guarded Saint Mary with him. Saint Joseph of the house and lineage of David went to this city of Ephratah, the burial place of Rachel, this City of Bread. He took with him “Mary his espoused wife, being great with child” for the time of the “baking” of the Bread of Life was almost over. Like Holy Week has the “second birth” of the Bread of Life from the tomb so too this first birth, nativity, of the already Incarnate God was about to occur. Mary is great, “highly favored among women” says the archangel Gabriel, because she is great with not just a child but with THE GREAT CHILD—God the Second Person. What’s it all about? The reason for the season is Having Christ in His flock—in the womb of Mary for a while, in your mouths and souls forever.
Christmas pageants and Sunday School Nativity programs aside, God’s inerrant Word is silent in almost all the details. There’s no inn-keeper mentioned and the physical accommodations are also not detailed. Not only should Currier & Ives be dismissed but also most church publishing house artwork.
“She brought forth her firstborn son,” doesn’t necessarily mean that there was no one else to help, notwithstanding what Dr. Luther writes. We don’t know. What we do know is that The Lord God arrived from Mary, “gaudete Christus ex Marie Virginie.” The Virgin wrapped her newborn in swaddling clothes, as was the custom, and laid him in a manger. And yes, they were in some kind of accessory structure, barn, out-building, lean-to, cattle pen, cave, because of excess visitors to Bethlehem.
She might very well have used hay as it is an excellent insulator and shock absorber. And we know from God’s Word that one star did shine down upon the Messiah with a brightness so unique that it would be the guide star for the traveling Magi who were still months away. God of God. Light of Light.
Were the cattle lowing? We don’t know but why not? Were the animals talking at midnight as the old legends makes mention? In heaven you will know for heaven will be overflowing with God’s animal kingdom. If there was an ass, or a foal—the colt of an ass, in the nearby vicinity it is our felicitous desire that it knew the important service its own descendent would one day provide for The Lord’s Palm-strewn arrival not to a wooden creche but to a wooden cross.
When the baby cried, it was the perfect and sinless God/Baby who uttered sound, and thus the cries were not sinful in anyway whatsoever. If the baby did not cry, then this was another mystery of heaven which the Blessed Virgin could ponder in her heart.
But the Nativity of The Lord is not about pondering Him in your heart—that is for false teaching sects and profiteering merchants of sentimentality and kitsch. The Nativity of The Lord is about Bethlehem: The House of Bread. It is about The Bread which is Emmanuel: God with us. It is about The Sacrificial Lamb, the Fruit of Faith.
Those long-ago Christmas Eves, those special “candle-light services,” the gatherings at your parish before going back home…it’s got to be about more than that; more than feelings and memories. It must be, and IS, more to than obedience, tradition, or the “way you’ve always done it.” This babe didn’t stay a baby and we can never be mired only in our nostalgic longing for days past when we thought we were safe, at peace, with loved and cherished family, warm and fully accepted. This night is our menu and aperitif of what we are fed on the morrow: The God in the manger, The Lord on the altar, The Body and Blood of Jesus on the paten, ciborium and chalice. He doesn’t say to the naked: read more Romans or Ephesians; He covers them with His righteousness in Water and Word. He doesn’t say to fearful, lonely, and depressed: study that Book of Concord and listen to more confessional podcasts; He touches their heads in Absolution and preaching of release from sins. He doesn’t say to the hungry and thirsty: pray harder, think more deeply about 2,000 year past Calvary, and do more good deeds; He says “Take eat, Take drink.” Bethlehem, the House of Bread is His Church of Bread—His Church of The Mass, the Blessed Sacrament; The Christ Mass.
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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