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PROGRAM D-7992
It’s almost Christmas and that gives us a good reason to take a fresh look at the Christmas story. I’m looking at the traditional Christmas story through Middle Eastern eyes. We have seen that it was highly unlikely that Jesus was born in a cold, damp stable, but most likely a humble home that had a manger in the home for its few animals, which were brought in for the night.
But Luke 2:7 states that Jesus was laid in a manger “because there was no room for them in the inn.” The Greek word does not refer to a “room in an inn” but rather to “space” as “There is no space in my house for a piano.” Most homes then, even humble ones, would have a guest room—a space to welcome family and strangers.
Joseph and Mary traveled to Bethlehem where they were no doubt received into a private home, where someone else was already in the guest room or space. Therefore, they could have used the family room area, near the manger. Jesus was born, wrapped in cloths—which is traditional to this day—and most likely put to bed in a clean manger in the family room.
What about the shepherds? Shepherds in first century Palestine were poor, and rabbinic traditions labeled them as unclean. They were lowly and uneducated. If this baby was the Messiah, would his mother and father ever allow shepherds, of all people, to visit him?
The angels told the shepherds they would find the baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger. It doesn’t say he was in a stable or a cave, just that he was lying in a manger. We’ve added the stable and the animals through our own westernization of this story. Why does Luke give us this detail? Because this would tell the shepherds that this baby was in a humble home like theirs, not in a mansion. This was a sign that the angels gave them—the lowly shepherds—to know they would be welcomed by Mary and Joseph.
Clearly, they found the holy family in adequate accommodations, not in a dirty stable. If it had been otherwise, they would not have just left there “praising God for all the things they had heard and seen” (Luke 2:20). They would have insisted on finding a better place for them to stay.
Jesus was born for the likes of the shepherds—the poor, the lowly, and the rejected. But he was also born for the rich and the wise.