December 25

He Could Be Looked At

Animals eat with their heads down, pushing and jostling at whatever holds the feed. A feeding trough has to take that, and it stands among the animals at the height of their mouths. Whatever is put in it stays there, within reach of anything that comes past.

A birth is an ordinary event in the world, whoever is being born. Luke reports this one in a single sentence, and it holds a firstborn son, a wrapping, a laying down, and the reason he was laid where he was.

This day rests on a short account of something that happened in a body, in a place, to people with names.

She gave birth to her firstborn son, and wrapped him in strips of cloth, and laid him in a feeding trough, because there was no room for them in the inn. When the angels went away from them into the sky, the shepherds said to one another, "Let's go to Bethlehem now and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us." They came with haste, and found both Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the feeding trough. But Mary kept all these sayings, pondering them in her heart.

The Word became flesh, and lived among us. We saw his glory, such glory as of the one and only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Luke 2:7, 15-16, 19; John 1:14

The men do the talking here. They put it to one another as a plan, to go and see this thing that has happened, and by their own account it is the Lord who has made it known to them. What they find is Mary, Joseph, and the baby lying in the feeding trough, and they had to get up and go to see any of it.

Mary keeps all these sayings and ponders them in her heart, holding on to them to have them later and going over them slowly and more than once. She is doing both with the child already in front of her.

John's Gospel gives the same person in a line of its own. The Word became flesh, and lived among us, and the glory reported there was seen in him. The one it calls full of grace and truth is the child who had been wrapped and laid down.

God took a childless man outside and told him to count stars. He answered a boy's question about the lamb with a ram caught in a thicket, and he gave a fugitive a stairway at a place the man had not chosen. Blood on a doorframe kept a household safe, and a dried staff came into bloom. The glory of God was seen at a canal in Babylon, a long way from the temple. What he left with each of them was something to hold on to.

What the men found was the same God, and they could look at him. He was born. Hold what you have heard of him, and go over it while the day takes its course. You have the whole of today with him.

Lord, your Son was born and laid in a feeding trough. Give me love for him, and let it reach the people you set beside me. Thank you that he could be found.