Dr. Rodney Plunket

Our shepherd has just told us a great and wondrous story, a story that stands at the beginning of the greatest story ever told.  We need to stop and realize the surprise generated by the fact that the announcement was made to a shepherd.  Why was that a surprise?  Listen to what R. Alan Culpepper in his commentary on Luke tells us:

Shepherding was a despised occupation at the time.  Although the reference to shepherds evokes a positive, pastoral image for the modern reader and underscores Jesus’ association with the line of David . . . , in the first century, shepherds were scorned as shiftless, dishonest people who grazed their flocks on others’ lands.  Against this background, it is possible that Luke gets double duty from the shepherds––first, developing further Jesus’ connection with David and Bethlehem, and, second, graphically picturing Jesus as one sent to the lowly and outcast.  It is to some of their number, shepherds, that the birth is announced (R. Alan Culpepper, “The Gospel of Luke,” in The New Interpreters’ Bible, ed. Leander E. Keck and others [Nashville: Abingdon, 1995], 9:65).

Yes, our shepherd has just told us an incredible story.  But the shepherd himself is pretty incredible because his presence indicates that God’s Good News was told first to a group of persons from a class that was not trusted but disparaged.  They were lowly; they even were outcasts.

But there is, I believe, an even greater surprise in the account of Jesus’ birth in Luke’s Gospel.  And Luke knows that surprise is extremely important.  As a result, he keeps reminding reader of it.  In Luke (Lk) 2:7 he tells us, “And [Mary] gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”  Just five verses later, in Lk 2:12, we read, “This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”  And in Lk 2:16 we are told that the shepherds “went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.”

We should be aware that the Bible is not a book prone to much repetition.  Here, as in many such occurrences, the purpose for repeating something is similar to the purpose today of using italics, underlining, or bold type.  In the Bible, repetition is used to emphasize, to highlight.  Luke wants to make sure that the reader knows that being born in a manger is extremely important to the message of Jesus’ birth.

Why is the manger important?  Because the manger conveys a truth related to the one conveyed by the presence of the shepherds.  The manger is one of the early indications that the divine and holy Son of God, the Son of God born of a virgin by the power of the Holy Spirit is born into poverty and lowliness.  And this message of lowliness is not only conveyed at Jesus’ birth.  As an adult, Jesus says, “‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head’” (Matthew 8:20 & Lk 9:58).  Remember that Jesus was buried in a borrowed tomb.  He left no estate from which a tomb could be purchased.  Laid in a manger as a baby, nowhere to call His own as an adult, and owning no place to be buried––the holy and divine Son of God teaches us that God works through the lowly.  God works through those who sacrifice grandness for the lowliness of humble, self-giving service.

This makes me aware that Christians should not look at the birth of Jesus as the world does.  As I listen to the messages from the world concerning the birth of Jesus it seems to me that the significance/the impact of the birth of Jesus is vague in the world’s presentation.  Sometimes I suspect that the reason for the world’s much more emphatic interest in Jesus’ birth than in His life, death, or resurrection is because the infant Jesus does not seem to the world to challenge as much as does the adult Jesus with His words and actions that shake to the core.  The baby Jesus can seem benign in contrast to the Jesus who rocks His nation and, through His followers, rocks the world.

What I want us to see this morning is that Jesus’ birth is every bit as radical and life-transforming as is His life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension to the right hand of God.  Jesus’ birth says that when God sent the holy and divine Son of God to this earth, God sent that Son to be lowly and humble.  As Jesus makes clear in Mark 10:45, He “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great Christian thinker executed by the Nazis near the end of World War II wrote:

Who among us will celebrate Christmas right?

Those who finally lay down all their power, honor, and prestige, all their vanity, pride, and self will

at the manger,

those who stand by the lowly and let God alone be exalted,

those who see in the child in the manger the glory of God

precisely in this lowliness (“The Mystery of Holy Night).

My purpose this morning is to call upon us all to be molded by the manger, to be shaped by the manger into persons who commit themselves to lives of humble service, lives devoid of pride and haughtiness, lives characterized by self-giving.

Please children and adults, as we open our presents this week, as the glitter and the splendor of those presents sparkle before us; let’s not forget that the glitter, the glory of Jesus’ holiness was embodied in a humble life of lowly service.  As the apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 8:9, “For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”  Christ became poor for us.  That poverty is noted from the start when Mary gives birth and that newborn Son has to be laid in a manger.

So for me, the manger is at the heart of the Christmas story––that reminder of Jesus’ poverty, that reminder of the fact that God encased holiness in lowliness to give us new life, to give us His very Son.  May our lives be like that.  May we allow God to so indwell us by the Holy Spirit that we are holy due to God’s holiness.  And may that holiness be like the holiness of Jesus.  May it show itself in humility & meekness, poverty of spirit & absence of pride.  May God lay our hearts, or souls, our spirits, and our minds in that manger and cause us to be more and more like God’s unique and holy Son.  May our lives, indeed, be molded by that manger.

Yes, Jesus, the Son of God, was born of a virgin and lived a holy life of lowly service.  He was crucified because of His radical obedience, His radical message, and because God foreordained that He would be crucified for the sins of the world, but God authenticated the saving power of Jesus’ life and death by raising Jesus from the dead.  And now Jesus sits at the right hand of God and serves as a mediator, a high priest for all who call upon and trust Him.

If you are here this morning and are far from God, Jesus calls to you.  His sacrificial is more than able to forgive you and bring you into the warmth of God’s gracious love.

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