© Eric M Schumacher – Preached Christmas Morning 2011 at Northbrook Baptist Church, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
How many of you have, somewhere in your house during the Christmas season, some representation of the manger (a physical manger, a nativity scene, a picture or Christmas card, etc.)?
How many of you have a cross displayed in your home (on jewelry, a picture, knickknack, etc.)?
There are two scenes that we, as Christians, are fond of creating displays to physically represent: the birth of Christ and the death of Christ. We have Passion plays and Christmas pageants. We put up Nativity scenes and hang crosses on our walls. (If these are rivaled by anything—it is probably displays of the flood that we put in our children’s hands; but that is a different sermon!)
On the edge of the town that I grew up in, sitting on the highway, is an old farmstead, complete with a giant barn. Every year, around Christmas, they had a “live nativity.” There would sometimes be a man and woman, holding a baby, sitting outside to greet the passing cars. But the best part was inside the barn.
Every year we would go inside to watch the live nativity. As the events recorded in the Gospel were read, characters in costume would appear, accompanied by live animals. There were horses and sheep, cattle and goats, and always a donkey. There was an angel in the hayloft, playing a trumpet. There were shepherds, and a Mary and Joseph. But the part that always captured my attention was the manger—and who was in it. I wondered every year—“will there be a doll, or a real, live baby!?” And as soon as it appeared, I lost attention in everything else. Until it was time for cookies and cocoa, my eyes were fixed on the manger.
Every year, on the piano in our living room, we set up a nativity scene. The pieces are exactly what you would expect. Mary, Joseph, shepherds, animals, an angel, a stable scene, and the Christ-child, who is, of course, wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.
I’m still fascinated by the manger in nativity scenes. What does the baby Jesus look like? I’ve seen nativity scenes with characters (and a baby) that were Asian, African-American, Caucasian, blond-haired and blue-eyed. I’ve seen depictions of the nativity set in sand and in snow.
There is, of course, no biblical mandate in Scripture to depict the crucifixion or the nativity in physical form, nor any example of it. (Though, we should add that the New Testament expects us to imitate both with our lives of faith!)
We know very little about the actual physical circumstances of Christ’s birth. It is debated whether the “stable” was the courtyard of a house, the lower-level of a home, a separate stable-building or a cave. And, we have no idea what the physical manger looked liked. And, apart from a few details, about the manger and shepherd visitors, we really know nothing about how the night unfolded.
Nevertheless, this scene has fascinated children and adults, poets and painters, for ages.
And, the manger, an almost incidental element in the story of Christ’s birth, has become an icon that is almost synonymous with Christmas.
Why does it fascinate us so? I thought that, to answer that question, we might think through one of the most beloved Christmas carols of our culture—“Away in a Manger.”
