She brought forth her firstborn son,
and wrapped him in swaddling clothes,
and laid him in a manger;
because there was no room for them in the inn.
That’s it right there, the Christmas story, right?
It’s the iconic Christmas image: one infant, snugly wrapped, slightly glowing, asleep in an animal’s feed box.
The other characters vary from image to image: cattle, angels, shepherds, donkey, sheep, stars, Mary & Joseph, a little modern child… But the infant in a manger rests in the center of the iconic image of biblical Christmas.
(In fact, this is the image of Jesus that I’ve carried on the back of my worship binder for months, ever since one of the kids of our church drew me a picture this summer, when Christmas still seemed miles and ages away.)
The story we retell tonight is rich with images and symbols, with details of politics and government, social realities, divine messengers and common laborers, carefully chosen to give Luke’s discerning reader a clear picture of just what world Jesus is born in, for what purpose, and how irregular it all is.
And the manger must be particularly important.
Luke mentions it three separate times.
Once when Jesus is laid there by his mother.
A second time when a powerful angel tells the shepherds how to recognize the Savior born for them in Bethlehem.
A third time when the shepherds actually see the child lying there.
In 2025, it might feel familiar to you and me to hear that the Savior born for us, God’s own self with us, is lying in a manger.
A common animals’ feed trough.
It’s endearing and it resonates with sweet tunes of Christmas carols and hymns.
Luke certainly emphasizes it for its original shock value, though.
God coming with enough power to save us all – the long-awaited savior of God’s people – should not fit in a manger. God should appear in places of power to be most effective at saving the world. Not in insignificant, undignified places, easy to overlook.
But here’s God, now. An insignificant infant in a makeshift crib, basically housed with the working animals.
It's God thumbing God’s nose at expectations. God ridiculing the powers that be.
God deliberately messing with our minds.
(Gee, thanks, God)
And I suspect that Luke didn’t just emphasize the manger to shake our socioeconomic and theological assumptions, but also to prickle up our sense of the ordinary.
Because a manger is so profoundly utilitarian.
Nobody would gild a manger.
No social media influencers want to show you their brand new, special, improved animal feeding trough.
It’s an animals’ food tray. Its only function is to be practical. To fuel up the working animals on whom daily life depends.
Translated into the 21st century, it’s the gas station, or the battery drawer, or the recurring payment to PSEG so that you can run your computer, keep food in your refrigerator, get your other daily tasks done at home or at work.
It’s the obligation you take care of when you are thinking about other things. So that you can do the other things.
The manger is exactly the kind of thing or place you would overlook while you are using it.
Unless you were in so much distress you don’t have the ability to fill the manger for your working animals. Or unless someone specifically stopped you, and made you look at, and think about, where you are and what you are doing.
And that’s where Jesus showed up, all those years ago.
In the functional and ordinary.
In the discounted and ignorable.
In just the place and way we could so very, very easily miss noticing God with us.
The God who wants to be with us not only on special occasions, not only in desperation, grief, or joy, but also in the most forgettable, ordinary moments, turns up in the physical manifestation of ordinary tasks.
The mighty savior of humanity and lovable infant God turns up in any or every dreaded phone call, every dollar spent or dish washed, every time you remember to use your right turn signal. God breathes in every small act of kindness, every passing conversation, every tiny forgettable or resisted attempt to repair relationships or our world.
The God who wants to be with us in all things lays claim, at Jesus’ birth, to the places and the actions in which we would never be looking for God.
And that – that profound, practical, ordinariness of Jesus’ birth – is absolutely extraordinary.
Because this is how we know that there is no detail of our life, no action or need or hope, too routine or mundane for God to bother with.
No time, no condition, when we are out of the reach of God’s love.
No place where God is not glad to spend time with us.
Which, when I think about it seriously, blows my mind.
(My mind, which is so often filled to forgetful overflowing with tedious details, small tasks, little needs and chores and facts and why did I walk into this sentence…this room… whatever.
Imagine: God born into those details)
And if your heart glows a little bit, thinking about this tonight,
or if the classic image of that infant in a manger stirs warmth, or hope, or peace, or longing in your soul,
then it is good news – very good news – that God’s manger is everywhere in our lives. In all the ordinariness of our days.
(good news) That the love of God might actually be making a place to show up in your grocery cart, as you steer through crowded aisles, not even actually looking at the cart as you fill it with weekly necessities.
That the power of God might be at work in one bland email in the flood we’re trying to wade through, day after day – even if you skimmed that particular email without really looking.
That the power of God to change and renew human hearts is able to turn up at the wall outlet as you plug in Christmas lights between one chore and another, and they start to twinkle in the darkness.
Where else might you find the birth of God in your everyday life?
What daily drudgery – what ordinary task, or place, or experience – do you need to have filled with the power and love of God?
What boring, practical thing that you do, to care for others or for yourself, needs a deep infusion of the peace and presence of God?
Tonight – with candles, and carols, and a sense of occasion – we pause to look deliberately at the holy in the ordinary.
We stop, and look, and think about what we are experiencing in the forgettable.
Look at the gently glowing baby in the practical, utilitarian manger, to feel the love and power of God tugging deep down at the base of our hearts. Sitting in the overlooked corners of our souls, just waiting for us to notice a space of peace in the ordinariness. A little spurt of holy joy and delight in the small practical tasks of life. A little pool of heart-melting love, felt or practiced in the routine work of getting through the day.
For behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day – this day, any ordinary day – a Savior, who is Christ, our God.
Christ, our God who wants so much to be with us in all things, that God shows up in a manger to claim every ordinary moment and task and thing,
every ordinary you and me,
as the center of love, and holy peace, and divine joy.
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