Welcome, to a Christmas themed blog. Next week’s is the last one before a Christmas/New Year break until January 16th
Where was the manger? And why it might matter.
‘Once in royal David's city
stood a lowly cattle shed,
where a mother laid her baby
in a manger for his bed.’
Actually, no. There was no ‘cattle shed’. The manger was in a house because in first century Palestine the animals shared the house, though a separate part of it, with the people. The place where there was ‘no room’ for Mary and Joseph (Luke 2:7) was the ‘guest room’ of the house, most likely because other members of the extended family were already staying there because of the census.
Our Christmas cards and our carols have got it wrong. Jesus was not laid in a manger in a draughty stable, having been refused a comfy room in a b & b by that villain of our children’s nativity plays, the inn-keeper. Rather, most probably the manger was in the animals’ section of a warm Bethlehem home. The debate hinges round the meaning of the Greek word ‘kataluma’ in Luke 2:7, traditionally translated as ‘inn’, but better translated as ‘guest room’. Jesus was not rejected by a cold, heartless society, but welcomed into an inclusive but very crowded extended family. Kenneth E Bailey in ‘Jesus through Middle Eastern Eyes’ (pp 25-38; SPCK 2008) gives a fuller corrective to the traditional misunderstanding.
And why might it matter? Because it shades our understanding of how the gospel works in our world today. Ian Paul (in his Psephizo blog for 24/11/2023) expresses the contrast:
In the Christmas story, Jesus is not sad and lonely, some distance away in the stable, needing our sympathy.
Rather, he is in the midst of the family, and all the visiting relations, right in the thick of it and demanding our attention.
There is a significant contrast then between ‘Nativity A’ with Jesus and his parents alone, uncared for in a cold draughty stable, and ‘Nativity B’ with Jesus and his parents welcomed into a crowded, convivial extended family home. In ‘We Proclaim the Word of Life’ R T France spotlights the problem with ‘Nativity A’: The problem with the stable is that it distances Jesus from the rest of us. It puts even his birth in a unique setting, in some ways as remote from life as if he had been born in Caesar’s Palace. But the message of the incarnation is that Jesus is one of us. He came to be what we are, and it fits well with that theology that his birth in fact took place in a normal, crowded, warm, welcoming Palestinian home, just like many another Jewish boy of his time.’ Perhaps like also some crowded family gatherings this Christmas, with one or two having to sofa surf.
The contrast raises the following questions:
1. How do we conceive society to be?
Nativity A portrays a cold, heartless world where people can be excluded and get pushed to the margins. A world where we need to be suspicious of the selfish and uncaring. It is easily conducive to a two-sided division of society: powerful and weak, rich and poor, privileged and under-privileged, ‘us’ and ‘them’. A society where you need to take sides, and where outcomes are normally zero sum.
In Nativity B society is basically a good place. We assume friendliness, decency and welcome in others. It is marked by what has come to be termed as ‘pro-sociality’ – an assumption that strangers can be co-operated with. (I learned it spending summers hitch-hiking around Europe). Society is seen as a continuum. Its divisions are not insuperable. There can be incremental improvement so that people who were once poor, weak and under-privileged can prosper.
2. What is the church’s calling?
Clearly, in Nativity A, to be on the side of those in the stable. It is called to be caring to the homeless and the hungry, and tends to see its proper place as running food banks and night shelters, of speaking up for asylum seekers and refugees. Beyond caring, its ministry also needs to be prophetic, urban warriors speaking truth to power; to be revolutionary and heroic. As in the tv series ‘Rev’ we may seem to be small and marginal, but we are caring for those society chooses to forget.
In Nativity B the emphasis is pastoral rather than prophetic. We are part of the fabric of the society where we are set, seeking to help people find a living faith and to develop loving relationships. Growing bigger churches is a valued goal because it means more people sharing in the joy the family and offering that joy to others. Set in that network we share both its strengths and weaknesses whilst seeking to transcend them by the grace of God. We seek the small encouragements of seeing people develop their gifts for God, whilst always at the mercy of others’ responses.
3. How do we see ethnic minorities?
In Nativity A they are right there in the stable, along with the homeless, the hungry, the refugees, and other minorities. They are one particular focus of us doing good. They are part of the ocean of need around us, and their experience of rejection and racism make them a people who call out our concern. We are angered by disparities of outcome; we feel the burden of our privilege.
In Nativity B they are in the home along with everyone else. One element in the complexity that makes it a good place to be. Often indistinguishable, sometimes bringing enrichment through specific gifts, sometimes suffering from the greed or arrogance of others in the household. But just elements that help constitute the overall melee.
The above, of course, is an imposed schema. Whilst to its credit Nativity B is closer to the historical truth, nonetheless people who draw up contrast schemas are doing so to drive their own agenda, so the above distinctions which are set up to advocate the mind-set of Nativity B (but reflecting a ‘two sides’ approach more typical of Nativity A!) need questioning and qualifying.
One obvious rejoinder is that nine months previously Mary had sung the Magnificat expressing a ‘two sides’ view of society, celebrating a God who lifts up the lowly and feeds the hungry whilst bringing down the powerful and sending away the rich (Luke 1:52,53). The prologue of John’s gospel captures the ‘outsider’ marginalised Jesus: ‘He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him (1:11).
Yet the bigger picture is ‘the Word became flesh and lives among us’ (1:14). As with Jesus’ birth, so with his childhood. He grew up obedient to his parents (Luke 2:51). He became a carpenter and was part of a recognised and respected family, established not marginalised (Mark 6:1-6). Yet he was also prepared to be alienated from his family and find a transcended belonging with his followers (Luke 8:19-21). Yet when Jesus is most marginalised – on the cross – his mother is there with him, and shortly afterwards his mother and brothers are with his disciples praying in the upstairs room (Acts 1:14), with his brother James becoming the leader of the Jerusalem church. In reflecting on Nativities A and B, we need to reflect the changing emphases and the nuances of the outsider/belonging polarity. In his ministry he ‘belongs’ with the crowds and the people, and yet the spectre of being rejected and isolated grows stronger, so that the cross resembles more the abandonment of the fictional stable rather than the huddle of the family gathering. The upshot is to produce communities of believers, united by the Spirit of God, outsiders to the values and goals of the world, yet still rejoicing to be part of the family of humankind.
Any contrasting schema like this one is bound to simplify. It can’t cover the multi-dimensional nature of both our society and the shape of the church’s ministry and witness with it. Nonetheless the misunderstanding about the specific location of Jesus’ birth, and the high-minded but rather simplistic applications that have come from it points to a reappraisal. The Church of England is in danger of fantasising that it has a ‘Nativity A ministry’ – an heroic and prophetic ministry speaking for, and then with, the marginalised and outcast, when its reality is that what we are for the most part doing is ‘Nativity B ministry’ – evangelistic and pastoral concern for ordinary people in everyday situations that is small scale and endlessly demanding. (Which is why it can never make honest but also interesting tv programming). The picture of Jesus’ manger being in the midst of a crowded family gathering, including the animals that were a major source of food and income is a positive encouragement to value, serve and witness to ordinary everyday lives.