A Walk to the Manger

Rev. Dr. Christopher Carlson

You are what you eat…at least that’s what they tell us. If that is true, around this time, I’m turkey and ham and potatoes and sweet potatoes and cookies and ice cream and you name it. I don’t know about you, but I tend to gain about 5 pounds this time of year at least. I remember that someone noticed I had gained a lot of weight after Christmas and they came up to me and said, “Pastor, it takes a lot of guts to put a front like that on.” No pun intended – well I guess there was a pun intended. I think Christmas is about eating in a sense, really about feasting on the One who we call the Bread of Life, the One who is born in the City of Bread, Bethlehem, the House of Bread, the One who has been born to save us. This morning I have chosen two scriptures for you – Luke chapter 2 and then another from John chapter 6, beginning at verse 35. As you listen to the one from Luke, notice how it mentions a place to eat in. I’m not talking about Bethlehem, I’m talking about something else.

Luke 2:1-7   In those days, Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria). And everyone went to his own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 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 room for them in the inn.

John 6:35-40   Jesus says, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”

Did you notice the place I was talking about, the place where people eat in – or things eat in, if you will? Of course, it is a manger. If you look up the word in the Greek it is a place where animals eat. And that is what a manger was. I remember Cyndi and I went to Israel for just a short trip and our guide pointed out a stone trough-looking thing and he told us it was a manger; they made them out of stone and certainly they also made them out of wood. What is particularly interesting about the wood ones is that they were made in different sizes and they would have wooden slats on them and you put straw in them and the straw could kind of leak out between the pieces of wood. With a manger, the tall animals could reach down and the small animals could reach around and it was a place where everybody could eat. I don’t think it’s an accident that Jesus was born in a manger, a place to eat. Even the English word “manger” is actually borrowed from the French language and it means to eat. Jesus is the bread of life. We are hungry people, all of us. We need to eat regularly – physically for sure – but we also need to eat mentally and spiritually. We are pretty good at taking care of our physical needs – some of us are too good at it. When we bored and we need something, we need to stimulate ourselves mentally, and we do a pretty good job of that as well. But when it comes to spiritual things sometimes we are not as good because of all the ways we feed ourselves, of all the needs we have to eat, the spiritual side is most easily ignored. And sometimes we really do ignore it. Some of us are starving spiritually. I often wonder if there could be a mirror that could show us spiritually…if we could do that, what would we see? If you’ve ever seen a starving person, you will never forget the sight. I know we’ve seen them on TV or on posters, but if you really see a person who is starving, and you see their bodies and face, I can tell you from personal experience you will never forget it…their eyes, the despair, all of it. I wonder if we could see ourselves spiritually, would we see that blank hollow thin person when we on the outside look quite nourished? Some of us, I think, are starving spiritually. We need to come to the manger. We need to come to Jesus. Some of us here may never have come to Jesus. I would just encourage you; pray a prayer and tell God that you want Him in your life. Even those of us who know Him are hungry. We need to feed ourselves regularly and in the bustle of life – not to mention Christmas when we have many places to go – it is easy to forget to feed ourselves spiritually. It is easy to get out of the habit of feeding ourselves. Again, I don’t believe that it is without reason that God chose a place like Bethlehem and like a manger to put His Son in. It is so symbolic – and it is so real. Jesus, the bread of life, in a manger where, if you will, the high and the low can eat and be filled and nourished. It is also not without reason that Jesus was born in Bethlehem. Bethlehem is an old, old city and has been around for a long time. It literally means “the house of bread.” An ancient city that has its fame from David being born there – the house of David – and of course, Jesus is a descendent of David. It all has connections. Bethlehem…there is no accident there. We see that in the scriptures how you have Caesar wanting to make a tax and he makes everyone go to their city of ancestry. There was no reason for Joseph to pack up and move, especially with a pregnant almost-wife – to go all the way there and yet he had to. Why? Because God had an appointment with that place to show that His Son is the bread of life. I shared with you last week that Bethlehem is just four miles up the road from Herodium and I told you last week how King Herod was kind of a Caesar wanna-be and he built these amazing cities. He even built the magnificent temple of Jerusalem and there was really nothing like it in the entire world, an incredible building. They have some models of it; it was just an amazing place. He also built these fortresses all around Judea to protect himself from invaders and Herodium was the star, the crown of them all, on a huge hill that he actually made bigger. He had a palace that gleamed in the distance with gold and marble and 200 marble steps leading up to it. This was the life that Herod thought he could give; this was life to him. Just down the road was real life in a little town. So many people – all of us – you know the old song, “Look for love in all the wrong places,” we look for life in all the wrong places. It might be riches or it might just be our career; we want to be the captain of our own ship. That’s life for us. But life is in Jesus. In the passage in Matthew we are told that Jesus is Emmanuel, God with us. God has rigged it; He has made us, to feed on Him. We are made for that. There is nothing that you can do about it. We try, but there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s the way we are made; we are made to find our nourishment in God and Jesus is God with us, the bread of life. That’s why it’s called the bread of life. I have been interested in the discussion lately of taking the word Christmas out of our language. Some of the stores are not moving to “Holidays” – there are holiday trees. They are taking Christmas out of it. But you know that’s really nothing new. For a long time, we have been trying to take Jesus out of Christmas, and now we are just trying to take Christmas out of the world. I don’t think they are going to succeed but it is going on. As I was walking around last week and looking at all the crèches out in the atrium, one of you shared with me how in California, people were selling crèches without the baby Jesus because they said they didn’t want to offend anybody. Obviously you can’t have Christmas without Jesus, but it’s happening. I don’t think that we need to go out of our way to offend people but Jesus was pretty offensive. We tend to think of Him as just being a nice person – that He wouldn’t offend anyone. But you don’t go and get yourself crucified if you haven’t been offending some people. Just read the Gospels once more with an eye toward whether it is a nice, peaceful Jesus – the Jesus who turns over tables, who talks to people with a little bit of a sharp edge, sometimes baits them for a good purpose. Even in the passage from John that I read today, when He talks about being the bread of life, it comes out of a context in which He has just performed a miracle, He has fed the five thousand and everyone has had their fill. When He leaves, people follow Him; they are trying to find Him. Why? Because they want more food; they want the physical bread. That’s what their minds are focused on. And Jesus looks at them and asks, “Why are you following me?” Then He says, “I know why you are following me. You want bread to fill up your bellies. Don’t seek bread like that; seek bread that will endure for eternal life. I told you that but you still don’t listen to me.” Then He says, “I am the bread of life.” In the modern world, that is offensive. Jesus is claiming to be the be-all, end-all of life. In our modern world, if we believe that, it is offensive. If we believe that Jesus is the Savior from our sins, that He has died for us on a cross to pay for the penalty of our sins, that is offensive because people want to think they can pay for themselves. If we say that Jesus is the way and the truth and the life and that no one comes to the Father but by Him, that is offensive. We are not going out of our way to offend people, but that’s offensive in this modern world. And yet, it’s the truth. I’m not saying we go out of our way to offend people, I’m just saying that if we take the offense out of it, we’ve taken the gospel out of it and we can’t do that. Because Jesus is the bread of life; people need Jesus. We need Jesus. Jesus says, “My Father’s will is that everyone who looks to me, puts their trust in me, shall have eternal life.” That’s what life is – certainly we need all the other things but this is what life is. What better time to think about these things than Communion Sunday, the Lord’s Supper? I read a story this week by Willimon. He’s a theologian down at Duke University. He was trying to get his Protestant students to think a little more about communion, the Lord’s Supper, and to place a little more significance on it. To get some advice on this, he went to a Roman Catholic priest friend. He asked, “How do I do this? How do I get these Protestant students to think about the Lord’s Supper more broadly, more deeply? How do I get them to see the significance?” The priest just looked at him and said a rather odd thing. He said, “You need to get them enrolled in a cooking class. Until they have the joy of feeding hungry people, they won’t get what the Lord’s Supper is all about.” This time is a time of feeding because we come remembering what the Lord has done for us. We are also promised that He is present with us as we take it. It is much more than just a symbol – it’s a symbol of the Lord’s broken body and shed blood, what a powerful thing it is. But we remember also that Jesus is the bread of life. Jesus is the source of all our nourishment. Jesus is the source of eternal life; He is everything. If you don’t know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, He holds His hands out to you right now and says, “Come and see me.” If you do, wonderful. We join together as family, eating together, real food, but sharing in the Lord as well because we are hungry people and we will never be filled totally until we get to heaven so we are to continue to eat, continue to enjoy, continue to be nourished, continue to remember, continue to celebrate the babe born in a manger in the city of bread, our Savior and Lord.