Luke’s gospel comes finally to the moment we have been expecting—the birth of the one who will be named Jesus, “The Lord is our Savior.” We read the story so often, and see it represented in pageants so often, that perhaps we are no longer surprised by its emphasis upon time and space: dates, places, taxes, details like shepherds with sheep, emphasis upon the animal trough, the manger. The angels, they are perhaps expected, for they are otherworldly. But along with these supernatural beings comes the very ordinary world, things that are seen and heard, smelled and touched in a particular time and place. Some scholars question Luke’s accuracy so far as the timing of a census, and so on: we will not engage in an apologetic in this podcast (though a defense could be given!) but only say that it is clear that history matters for the evangelist. After all, he tells us from the get-go of his gospel that he has done research, and has tried, in his gospel, to put things in order. St. Luke’s emphasis on the real world is not an anomaly, but is representative of the Scriptures as a whole. Certainly, there are sections that are poetic, or visionary, or mystical. But the larger part of the Bible, both New and Old Testament, concerns those things that have, as the evangelist puts it, “been accomplished among us.” Our holy books concentrate upon God’s activity in the here and the now—in the human world.
Our Christian faith, then, gets down into the detail, the grime of human existence, especially at the point of God’s incarnation as a baby in our world. Listen for those things as we hear Luke 2:1-20:
In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. And all went to be registered, each to his own town. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the days were fulfilled for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find the baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
Our careful attention to the tangible details in the gospel, to all that they heard and saw, to the places that are mentioned, helps us to understand what St. Ambrose meant when he compared Luke with Matthew, Mark, and John:
As compared with the other Gospels, we see greater zeal devoted to the description of the events than to the expression of rules of behavior. And the Evangelist, writing in historical mode, makes his beginning in narrative form: “There was,” he says, “in the days of Herod, the King of Judea, a certain priest named Zechariah,” and he continues the story with a full and orderly description. Hence, those who think that the four living creatures described in the Apocalypse are to be understood as the four books of the gospel wish this book to be represented by the calf, for the calf is the priestly victim. This Gospel is represented fittingly by the calf, because it begins with priests and ends with the Calf who, having taken upon himself the sins of all, was sacrificed for the life of the whole world. He was a priestly Calf. He is both Calf and Priest. He is the Priest, because he is our Propitiator. We have him as an advocate with the Father. He is the Calf, because he redeemed us with his own blood. (Ambrose, Exposition of the Gospel of Luke 1.4, 7.)
It is interesting that St. Ambrose sees no discord between talking about history, and talking about theology. In Luke he finds reference to Zechariah, Judah, and other details. In Luke he also finds reference to priestly action in Zechariah, and the ultimate priestly and sacrificial action in Jesus, our High Priest and “the calf” whose blood redeemed us. For St. Ambrose, the symbolic, the historical, and the theological come together as natural parts of the gospel.
St. Cyril of Alexandria, too, speaks of the “exactness of the gospel,” noting that Luke specifies that Joseph journeys with “his espoused [not married] wife.” He also makes it clear that Jesus is “her” firstborn, without reference to Joseph. This brief detail, he says, is similar to the assertion of St. Paul in Galatians that Jesus was “born of a woman”: the tangible details carry the theology of the miraculous. Mary’s days are fulfilled, so that she brings Jesus into the world, just as human time is fulfilled, and God acts in becoming one of us. As Galatians puts it: “”When the time had fully come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4-5).
Literary critics like Auerbach have spoken about how the Biblical narratives do not give us a good deal of psychology, inner turmoil, or sentiment: those few details that they do include, however, are pregnant with meaning. Some, for example, have thought that in speaking of “firstborn,” the evangelist implies that Mary had subsequent children. However, such an assumption forgets the symbolic significance of the “firstborn,” who is always given back to God as a gift in Scriptures. And because of this unique Firstborn, Jesus, other adopted spiritual children would follow. The venerable Bede has this to say:
He calls the Lord “firstborn,” not because we should believe that Mary gave birth to other sons after him, since it is true that she was memorable for her unique perpetual chastity with Joseph her husband. But he properly names him “firstborn” because, as John says, “But to as many as received him he gave them the power to become sons of God.” Among these sons he rightfully holds the primacy who, before he was born in the flesh, was Son of God, born without beginning. However, he descended to earth. He shared in our nature and lavished upon us a sharing in his grace, so that “he should be the firstborn of many brothers.” (Bede, Homilies on the Gospels 1.6)
The strange mode in which the time was fulfilled, the coming of the God-Man as an infant in a manger, has led Christians throughout the ages to marvel. The evangelist’s words are plain and unadorned, without any exclamation point or reflection on the surprise of Bethlehem. Those throughout the centuries who have believed his words, though, have also been astonished at the implications of this unadorned story. St. Ambrose, for example, speaks of the exquisite picture of God-made-infant-man, willingly enmeshed in the very life where we find ourselves:
He was a baby and a child, so that you may be a perfect human. He was wrapped in swaddling clothes, so that you may be freed from the snares of death. He was in a manger, so that you may be in the altar. He was on earth that you may be in the stars. He had no other place in the inn, so that you may have many mansions in the heavens. “He, being rich, became poor for your sakes, that through his poverty you might be rich.” Therefore his poverty is our inheritance, and the Lord’s weakness is our virtue. He chose to lack for himself, that he may abound for all. The sobs of that appalling infancy cleanse me, those tears wash away my sins. Therefore, Lord Jesus, I owe more to your sufferings because I was redeemed than I do to works for which I was created…. You see that he is in swaddling clothes. You do not see that he is in heaven. You hear the cries of an infant, but you do not hear the lowing of an ox recognizing its Master, for the ox knows his Owner and the donkey his Master’s crib. (St Ambrose, Exposition of Luke 2.41–42).
Similarly, the venerable Bede and St. Cyril of Alexandria are amazed the life-changing humility of the God-Man:
It should be noted that the sign given of the Savior’s birth is not a child enfolded in Tyrian purple, but one wrapped with rough pieces of cloth…. Though he was rich, yet for our sake he became poor, so that by his poverty we might become rich. (Bede, Homilies on the Gospels 1.6)
He found humanity reduced to the level of the beasts. Therefore he is placed like feed in a manger, that we, having left behind our carnal desires, might rise up to that degree of intelligence which befits human nature. Whereas we were brutish in soul, by now approaching the manger, yes, his table, we find no longer feed, but the bread from heaven, which is the body of life. (Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Luke, 1.33).
Both fathers of the Church find in the scene of Jesus among the animals the deep union of God with us, that we may be made one with Him. The All-Powerful becomes poor, the sublime dwells with the beasts, in order to lift us up.
In recent days, some Biblical scholars have questioned this traditional emphasis upon the Highest becoming the most humble. They have questioned whether the shepherds were really poor, and whether Mary and Joseph actually needed to try to find an inn so that they ended up in a stable or a cave. They have argued that the Greek word that Luke uses, translated “inn” in most English texts, really means “guest room.” Their argument is that the holy couple came for the census, along with other relations from elsewhere, to stay at a relative’s house in Bethlehem, but that there were too many guests, and the usual upper-floor guest room was already full. As a result they had to stay in the downstairs double room, which at night was both a bedroom for the humans of the house, and a shelter for their animals in inclement weather.
Excavations have indeed shown houses with upper rooms (used for storage and guests) and a lower floor, used by the family, and in the winter, animals.
All this is possible, for we are given the very smallest of details in Luke’s story. He doesn’t stipulate that the holy family was in a stable or cave, but only that Jesus was laid in a manger, because something—either an inn, or a guestroom—was full. However, the themes of inhospitality and poverty are taken up very early in Christian homiletic history, and the mention of a cave is very early indeed—by the early-second-century Justin Martyr, to be precise. As he says, when debating with Trypho, “Joseph, because he could find no place in the town where to lodge, went into a certain cave near the town. And while they were there, Mary brought forth Christ.” This “cave” was important to his argument, because he has been referring in his Dialogue to rocks and caves mentioned in Daniel and in Septuagint Isaiah as foreshadowing the place where the King of all would dwell.
Several possibilities for our understanding emerge, not simply one traditional one and this new theory. Many homes in Bethlehem were actually built adjacent to or on top of rock or caves, in which animals also were housed, with the humans in the section or sections above. It is thus possible that, there being no room due to an influx of guests, the holy family did stay in a place associated with animals, but adjacent to or part of a relative’s house. It is also possible that some of the family was not as understanding of the situation as Elizabeth had been, and that Mary and Joseph were shunned because of the irregular pregnancy, forcing them to seek shelter elsewhere, and eventually finding their way to a cave-stable. We don’t know. What we do know is that Luke emphasizes the “no room” and the “manger,” with few extra details, and that the announcement of the angels was made was to laborers, whatever their economic status, not to noblemen. The evangelist is clearly saying that this baby was “for all the people” (regardless of rank) and was contrasting Jesus’ true stature as ruler of all (as we have heard from Zechariah and the Theotokos) with the lowliness of a manger. Whether in an independent inn, a cave in the wild, or a cavern that was part of a home, the heavenly King was certainly not welcomed by human beings in the same appropriate way that he was celebrated by the angel choir. Yet He brings peace.
Our Gospel, then, touches into the nitty-gritty of time and space. And it proclaims a God who comes from the highest into the humbleness of our condition. It is sometimes said that while Western Christians emphasize the Crucifixion, Eastern Christians stress the Nativity. This is not inaccurate, though of course the holy Cross and Pascha are also of ultimate importance to Orthodox. But because the Nativity is accomplished at the fulness of time, and changes everything, the fathers lead us to concentrate on its utter significance. St. John Chrysostom reminds us:
It would be no mistake to call [the Nativity] the chief and mother of all holy days. What feast is that? It is the day of Christ’s birth in the flesh…. It is from this day that the feasts of the theophany, the sacred Pasch [Passover], the ascension and Pentecost had their source and foundation. Had Christ not been born in the flesh, he would not have been baptized, which is the theophany or manifestation. Nor would he have been crucified, which is the Pasch. Nor would he have sent down the Spirit, which is Pentecost. Therefore, just as different rivers arise from a single source, these other feasts have their beginnings in the birth of Christ.
(Chrysostom, On the Incomprehensible Nature of God 6.23–24; FC 72: 174-175).
Yes, it seems that St. John would be happy with the language used by C. S. Lewis in our day, who, taking his cue from St. Athanasius, called the Incarnation “the Grand Miracle.” Everything hinges on this Light in the darkness, this turning of the ages, this condescension (literally: “coming down of God to be with humanity”), this taking up of humanity into the very nature of God. When God walked with Adam in the garden, this perhaps was preparatory for the greatest communion of all—the joining of the divine and human natures in Christ, so that we could truly gain God’s likeness. The Holy Theotokos sees all these things: the humility of the special child, the lack of welcome that He received, the homage of the shepherds, the shepherd’s stories of the angels, and then (in Matthew’s gospel) the coming of the Magi. She holds and treasures all these things in her heart, waiting for everything to unfold from this tiny beginning. Here, in the Nativity, we see God entering time and space, and reversing— indeed transforming!— everything so that it becomes what it always should be. Here, at the manger, we see the center of God’s story with those whom He loves —not simply a dogma to recite, or a timeless precept to follow, or a stern ethic to understand, or a marvelous glimpse of other worlds. Here we are astonished to understand how much God our Creator deeply cares about time and space, and loves those of us conditioned by these things, so that He comes to be with us, Immanuel, and to lift us to Himself. All this began to happen when the days were fulfilled. The wonder of the seventeenth century poet Richard Crashaw may help us to treasure this, as did the Theotokos:
Welcome, all wonders in one sight,
Eternity shut in a span,
Summer in winter, day in night,
Heaven on earth, and God in man:
Brave little one, whose all-embracing birth
Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heaven to earth.
Edith M. Humphrey 