The sign to the world that God had come to dwell among us and that a Savior has come to redeem us was that the shepherds would find this savior lying in a manger. A manger is just a common, ordinary feeding trough. It could have been made of wood, or maybe even a stone that had been carved out or worn away to make a simple trough, but no matter what it was made out of, it was most likely dirty. While mangers would have been cleaned out occasionally, they would never have been scrubbed down and ready for an infant, and in the crowded city like Bethlehem at the time of the census, chances are this manger wasn’t even clean. So the sign for the Shepherds that they had found the Messiah was that he would be the child lying in a messy, dirty feeding trough – that says something about the heart of our God.
That God chose to enter this world and be laid in a manger tells us that God loves us so much that he is willing to enter into the chaos of our world and the mess of our lives. When we look around at the world today we see a lot of chaos. There is economic instability and a financial future that is really troubling. There continues to be violence and instability in places from North Korea to Afghanistan and even as a nation we are deeply divided in our social, economic and political viewpoints and the chaos of the coming election year will only make this situation worse. We live in a pretty chaotic world, so when God chooses a manger as the first place to lay his head, God is making a bold statement that he loves us so much that there is no chaos, no uncertainty, hopelessness, fear or anxiety that will keep him from us. That’s part of the good news of great joy that the angels sing about.
God is willing to enter directly into the problems of our world and he does it to bring the needed hope and peace. God enters our world in Jesus to show us a different way of living, a way that gives us the hope and strength we need to overcome the problems and rise above the chaos we see around us. The good news tonight is that God is willing to enter directly into the chaos of our world but God’s love is also very personal and so he is willing to enter directly into the problems of our own lives and the fears of our own heart. The manger doesn’t just stand for the chaos of our world it represents the mess of our lives. Last summer a group of us went to Harrisburg for a work camp and three of us spent an afternoon cleaning out water troughs for horses. After emptying out the water, we literally had to scrape out the mold and milder that had accumulated over the months and because these were huge 100 gallon tubs, at times it seemed to make more sense to clean them from the inside of the trough.
That experience will always stick with me because it seems to me to be exactly what Jesus did on the night he was born. Jesus not only entered the world, he loves us so much that enters into the mess of our lives. Through Jesus we see God patiently, powerfully and persistently working to scrape away the hardness of our hearts so we can experience the life God wants for us.
For some of us, the mess of our lives is years of pain and sadness that God wants to scrape away so that we can experience lasting joy. For some of us there is deeply entrenched sin that needs to be blasted away with the forgiveness and grace of God so we can experience freedom, and for some of us there is just the hardness of a heart that is skeptical and critical of all of things spiritual. Many of us just have a hard time believing that there really is a God who loves us. I think that was what the shepherds faced that night, wondering if there was a God out there who really loved them.
Shepherds were looked down upon in their community, they were not trusted and because their work kept them ritually unclean they often found themselves on the outside of church and the outside of society looking in. The circumstances of their lives made them outcasts and therefore maybe skeptical of a message that God loved them and cared for them. Like many of us today, they may have had a difficult time believing that there was a God who was willing to come and redeem them, so they may have needed the years of hardness scraped out of their heart to experience this love and the acceptance of God. I have to wonder what they thought that night as they saw the Messiah, the one who comes to save, lying in a dirty manger. Did seeing that manger tell them that God was willing to enter into the mess of their lives? Did it tell them that the love of God was for them? In so many ways the mess of the manger represents the mess of our lives and the good news for us tonight is that it doesn’t matter what that mess is, God is willing – even wanting – to enter right into it so he can clean it up and clean it out bring salvation and life.
So how do we allow Christ to enter into our lives and bring about this cleansing and transformation? The angels give us the answer. The angels tell us that salvation and life isn’t found in knowledge about Jesus but in a relationship with him, so we need to make our own journey to find Jesus and once we do we need to accept him and ask the power of God’s love to enter our lives and not only fill us but to change us. Now our journey to find Jesus won’t take us to Bethlehem and we don’t even have to come to this manger or any manger, our journey is a spiritual one where we need to just stop and ask God to enter our hearts and lives to forgive us.
A relationship with God begins by simply asking Jesus to meet our spiritual needs and fill us with spiritual food. You see, a manger was not just a messy place, but it was a place where animals came to get food. If you have any kind of pet, you know it doesn’t take long to train an animal to go to their own manger or food dish when they are hungry. I feed my dog in the basement and when he is hungry he doesn’t go to the kitchen for food he goes to the basement and he stands right in front of his dog dish because he knows that is where the food will be placed that will fill him up and meet his needs.
Our spiritual hunger will be met in Jesus and so we need to turn to God and ask him to fill us up and meet our needs and stop looking to the world around us. The world can not meet our deeper spiritual hunger. Presents under the tree and the food on our tables will not fill us and feed us spiritually. History has shown us that the world can not bring lasting peace or hope and joy, but God can. God can offer us a forgiveness that frees us from the power of sin so that we can experience the fullness of life and God can establish a lasting peace in our lives and in our relationship with one another and this peace will give us the strength to move forward no matter what our past may be and it will give us the power to live life the way God meant it to be lived. God can bring us peace and joy that will endure no matter what goes on around us.
The manger tells us that God is willing to enter our lives no matter how dark and messy and sinful they may be and the manger tells us that no matter what we hunger for: forgiveness – acceptance – joy – strength – peace – hope – whatever it is, God is here to fill us up. All we have to do is come to the manger, come to Jesus, and accept the grace and love he offers. The shepherds found Jesus in the manger and when they saw him, they found what they longed for. They found acceptance and redemption and life and it says that they left the manger praising God for all they had experienced – their lives were changed. Tonight I still believe that our lives can be changed because the invitation of the angels to find in Jesus all that we long for still stands.
God invites us, all of us, to come to the manger, to come to Him, and find all that we really hunger for. Whether it will be for the first time, or the 100th time, it doesn’t matter, I just want to invite you to come to Jesus and find forgiveness. Come to Jesus and find the hope you need for broken hearts and dreams and relationships. Come to Jesus and find hope for an uncertain future. Come to Jesus and if you ask him into your heart and life and into your world – you will find a joy that will remain long after the presents are opened and the food is gone. So come to Jesus and find real love and everlasting life. That is the gift that has been given to us all.
