Mary gave birth to her firstborn son and
wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no
room for them in the inn.
The story of the birth of Jesus –
the last birth story in the Bible – is also its most familiar. Only Luke
records the actual birth. Matthew simply tells us that “after Jesus was born in
Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came” (Matthew 2.1). He doesn’t say
how long after – it may have been anything up to two years later – and he says
nothing about the birth itself.
We don’t know how much, if any,
historical fact there is in either Luke or Matthew’s stories (they are quite
different, and cannot easily be mashed together, though this doesn’t stop us
trying to!). Both Luke and Matthew, however, set the birth in Bethlehem, and
make the point that Jesus is born to an ordinary, perhaps quite poor family –
there is no room for them at the inn. Both their stories stress that Jesus is
born against a backdrop of danger. Matthew has Herod try to find and kill
Jesus. Luke tells of them being forced by a census to make a risky journey to a
place where they have nowhere to stay. Both Gospels use the birth stories as
ways to introduce the kind of themes they will dwell on in their stories of the
adult Jesus. This is God’s son. In him, God comes to dwell with us, not
choosing a life of wealth and power, but the vulnerability of a child, born in
a world that is hostile to vulnerability then, just as it is now. Throughout
his life he will identify with the vulnerable and marginalised, and his life
will culminate in the ultimate vulnerability of death on a cross.
·
What is your earliest memory of hearing the
Christmas story? Who told it to you first? Can you remember what you thought
and felt about it?
·
As you read the story, be aware of what in it
feels like good news to you today?
·
Pray for children born in poverty today, for
whom there is “no room at the inn.”
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