born in a manger

While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them. (Luke 2:6-7)

Some more thoughts on that stable.

Hotel rooms were well known in that day, as they have been in other cultures, as b3ing flea-bitten, louse-ridden dens of thieves.

It was a favor to Joseph and Mary that they got to stay in a stable instead of a hotel room.

The stable was warm, there was plenty of straw to sleep on, the animals provided warmth. Contrary to the song, the manger was probably not cold, nor was the child shivering.

And more than likely, there were more than just Mary and Joseph there. Since everybody had to come home to register, there were a lot of  people in town, all looking for a place to sleep. And since there was no birth control, probably several women were pregnant. Add to that the fact that people traveled in groups for protection from thieves. There were probably a lot of people with them, a regular caravan.

Chances are high that Mary and Joseph shared this manger with other families and other babies were born that night.

That is the point of this humble birth. Jesus, the book of Hebrews says, was just like us. 1 Peter 2:22 says his lone point of difference was he committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.

That was his difference. His Father, after all, was God. He had both humanity and divinity in him. Colossians 2:9 said: For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form. Yet he was also human, born to a human mother and laid in a manger.

If it were otherwise, if he were totally divine and the birth was just a sham, then the life was just a sham, as was the death. And the book of Hebrews, when it says, For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin (4:14), and Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered (5:8) is worthless, a meaningless shadow play devoid of any real humanity.

Instead, God the Father wanted to touch humanity and participate in the experience. He wanted humanity to know that he understood what they were going through. So he sent God the Word to become manifest in the flesh (John 1:14) and be with us, live as we lived, be born as we are born, die as we die, yet do something we could not do – come back to life.

And in that coming back to life, he gave us also that ability to come back to life from our own death, to be with him in perfection, to approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. (Hebrews 4:16).

That is why he was born. Again, what a strange way to save the world.

things jesus said that were strange

Leaving that place, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon. A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.” Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said. He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Then Jesus said to her, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment.  (Matthew 15:22-28)

Some of the things Jesus said were so strange. This is one of them.

A woman who was not Jewish came asking for a miracle. Jesus, in essence, likened her to a dog. Her response: even dogs have feelings and needs. At this response, Jesus granted her request.

Why would Jesus say something so ugly? It seems completely out of character with a man who, the Bible says, was the living embodiment of God’s love. This did not sound loving.

In this chapter, Jesus just got through telling people that it is not what they eat that hurts them, it is what they think and what they say. He goes from here to a place where he feeds four thousand men along with their wives and children from just a small bit of food.

In other words, he goes from a place where he tells everybody that what they say will hurt them and then he says something that seems so unkind. He goes from there to a place where he feeds everybody present, yet he at first doesn’t want to feed this woman.

Jesus is a study in contradictions in many of the things he says. Here is one good example.

And one thing is for sure, I do not know why he did this exactly. You can read 17 commentaries on Matthew 15 and its parallel passage in Mark 7, and you can see 17 different ideas why he said this. They all differ on points and everyone of the writers got a check, but they still do not know why.

Deuteronomy 29:29 says The secret things belong to the LORD our God. And that is absolutely true. There are many things in the Bible that make us scratch our heads, or that seem almost incomprehensible. Some things get better the more we meditate on them, and some don’t. They remain hard.

When Peter wrote his second epistle, he made mention of the fact that the apostle Paul was hard reading at times. He said: His [Paul's] letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:16).

That applied to Paul and it applied to others. Peter was in general pretty simple, but there are a lot of things that you just do not understand. His own chapter 2 of his second epistle is not exactly easy stuff itself. People who do not understand what they are talking about make a lot of these passages and in doing so, merely show their ignorance and their instability. Unfortunately, they are the ones who so often get published.

It could be that Jesus was using this to show everyone around that this was a woman who truly believed in the power of God and was persistent like he told us to be in petitioning God. I do not know if Jesus, the man, had this much power to see things or not. But maybe he could see that this was not an ordinary woman.

Maybe his human side disregarded her at first and he just dismissed her. This was what the apostles kept telling him to do. He could have walked away and no one would have said a word about it, including the woman. She wasn’t, after all, a Jew in the first place.

Maybe God spoke to him about her. Maybe it was a morality play on faith. Maybe he was foreshadowing the turning to the Gentiles. Maybe a lot of stuff, but whatever the reason, he rejected her, then accepted her.

But whatever the reason, it was odd wording. But he still was from a God who loved us.

That much we know.