The Master's crib

While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.  -- Luke 2:6-7

 

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hen I was a child visiting my grandparents in northwest Indiana, my brother, cousins and I looked forward to accompanying Grandpa when it was time to feed the cows out in the fields. He would drive the tractor, and we would ride atop the flatbed trailer filled with bales of hay. Once we arrived alongside the feeding trough, Grandpa would start cutting the bales of hay and tossing them in.

The cows never had to be called for dinner. They came galloping to meet us. They knew what the sight of the tractor meant, and what the trough was for. They knew who fed them.

Compare this image to these words from the prophet Isaiah, lamenting on God’s behalf: “The ox knows its owner and the donkey its master’s crib [or feeding trough]; but Israel does not know, my people do not understand” (Isaiah 1:3). That’s quite an indictment! In other words, stupid and stubborn beasts know who feeds them, but God’s own people, created in his image, do not.

Luke’s Gospel proclaims that, with the birth of Jesus, this woeful situation has been reversed for all who heed such good news. The symbolism of the manger is important for Luke. After giving birth, he writes, Mary laid the infant Jesus in a manger (2:7). Luke goes on to mention this detail two more times—when nearby shepherds hear from an angel the good news of the Messiah’s birth, and then go to Bethlehem to see for themselves the child in the manger (Luke 2:12, 16).

Beginning with those shepherds, God’s people now know their “master’s crib.” And it is God himself—in the Word Made Flesh who came among us, and who is with us always in his Holy Spirit—who closed the gap of understanding. In so doing, he began fulfilling Jeremiah’s prophecy of a new covenant: “I will be their God and they shall be my people … They shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah 31:33-34). This movement by God was finalized some 30 years later with Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, and continues today in the church’s faithful.

The manger, the ox and the ass in the Nativity scene serve as a reminder: It is God who feeds us, both spiritually and physically.