Merry Christmas! May the love and joy and peace and blessings of Christmas be with you all. Amen.
When Jesus was born, his Mother Mary laid him in a manger. What is a manger, and why is that important?
A manger is the place where the feed for animals is put. Sheep and cows and horses and goats can come there and eat hay or oats or corn. We can find the manger in a barn or stable, or perhaps in a corral. We are told that Mary laid her child in a manger because there was no place in the inn. In other words, the hotel rooms were all full, but they were allowed to sleep in the shed. Then Jesus was born and laid in the hay. Perhaps the straw was clean and fresh and it surely smelled sweeter than the rest of the barn: the mud and filth and smelly animals.
A person might think that a stable would not be the appropriate place for the Son of God to be born, but actually, it was the perfect place! Let’s see why that is important.
The message, the meaning of Christmas is that in the Baby Jesus Christ, the Son of God Almighty took human form and lived on this earth. He came as a simple person, not rich or fancy or luxurious. Why? Because that is not the way most people in the world are. He came to be one of us. In his later ministry, he was with all sorts of people: rich, poor; healthy, diseased: happy, sad; conceited, humble; greedy, generous; honest, and even thieves on the cross. He experienced what we experience, the joys of life and the sorrows, the pains and even death. And he experienced resurrection, which we will experience in the future some day. He understood why people sin, although he never sinned. He felt temptation, although he never gave in to it. He had the full human experience because he started at the manger. He took all that was human upon himself; he even took our sin upon himself. Therefore when he died on the cross, he was the sacrifice to forgive our sin. His resurrection is the beginning of our new birth.
Jesus was laid in the manger. We need to make our hearts into a manger for Jesus to lie in our hearts. We need to make our homes and our lives into mangers for Jesus to live in our lives. The manger is the symbol that God is with us. In our humbleness and ordinary life, he is with us. The cross is also the symbol that God is with us. He is with us in our pain and loneliness and sin and failure. And the empty tomb is the symbol that God is with us. He gives forgiveness and new life. These are symbols of God’s love that give us hope and courage and peace. Jesus was born and laid in a manger. He is also in our hearts and in our lives.
Merry Christmas! May the love and joy and peace and blessings of Christmas be with you all. Amen.
Michael Nearhood, Pastor
Okinawa Lutheran Church
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