Christmas Calling. Christmas Prayer.

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. This was the first enrollment, when Quirin′i-us was governor of Syria. And all went to be enrolled, each to his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city 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 enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to be delivered. And she gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

Luke 2:1-7

Manger is a fancy French word for feeding trough. A manger is where farmers put the feed for their barn animals.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was quite literally born in a barn.

Why was Mary forced to give birth under such conditions? Scripture tells us there was “no room” available elsewhere. To me that sounds like a rather politic way of saying nobody in Bethlehem cared enough about the needs of a pregnant woman to make room for her.

To the people of Bethlehem, Mary apparently was just another young woman, someone of no consequence. The people of Bethlehem apparently did not give her situation a second thought.

The people of Bethlehem just didn’t care.

We can be fairly certain that the governor of Syria, in ordering the “enrollment”, gave no thought to the burdens he was placing on the people of Israel and Judea, let alone to the challenge given to Mary, who was with child, of having to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem.

Quirinius just didn’t care.

We know the shepherds who had been told of Jesus birth cared. We know because they left their fields and their flocks to visit Bethlehem, to see the infant Jesus laying in that manger.

We know the wise men of the east—the Magi—cared. We know because they traveled an extraordinary distance to see the infant Jesus and pay Him homage.

Did anyone else care? Did anyone else even pause to celebrate the birth of Mary’s first child—an indisputably special event in any young woman’s life even now?

We do not know. Scripture does not say.

What we do know from Scripture is that Jesus, the Son of God, sent by God to redeem all mankind, was born in the meanest of circumstances because mankind, in large measure, simply didn’t care. The people of Bethlehem certainly didn’t care enough to provide suitable accomodations for a young woman going into labor with her first child.

God cared enough about men to send down to Earth His only begotten Son, and men did not care enough to provide decent shelter for the hour of Jesus’ birth.

Irony abounds in the story of the Nativity.

One wonders what it must have been like for the young Mary. Were there any women available to serve as midwife, to help guide her through the birth of her first child? Did she have to endure the rigors of labor and delivery on her own, with only Joseph her husband at her side?

We do not know. Scripture does not say.

Luke tells us only that Joseph traveled with Mary to Bethlehem. Whether they were part of a caravan of travelers we do not know. Scripture does not say.

What we do know from Scripture is that welcoming the traveler, showing hospitality to any guest, was embedded in ancient Jewish morality: Leviticus 19:34 commanded the people of Israel to receive “the stranger who sojourns with you” as one might friends or family.

It is rather hard to imagine that anyone would desire that their friends or family take shelter for the night in a barn.

Yet Mary and Joseph, two travelers to Bethlehem from Nazareth, were welcomed and received by the people of Bethlehem by being put with the livestock in a barn. There was “no room” for them elsewhere. Luke tells us this directly—and so tells us that the barn and the manger were Mary’s “last resort” for shelter as she went into labor.

Is that how God commanded His people in Leviticus to receive travelers?

Could one make the argument that the more Godly response by the people of Bethlehem to the arrival of Mary and Joseph would have been to make room for her and not push her off to sleep with the animals in a barn? I will confess that argument is tempting.

Yet it is curiously fitting that the people of Bethlehem be casually indifferent to Mary’s condition. It is strangely appropriate that the people not care.

We are called by God to love our neighbor even as we love ourselves. Jesus Himself would teach the Pharisees that such is the second of the two Great Commandments, co-equal with the first that we are called to love God with all our heart and all our soul and all our mind.

As God calls us to love one another, when we fail in this we fall short in the calling to love God as well. Is not the beginning of all sin therefore this fundamental failure to both love God and to love one another?

Is this failure not the very thing for which Jesus was sent down to Earth by God? Is this failure not the very thing from which Jesus redeems us all?

Would Jesus have sent a pregnant woman into a barn to give birth because there was “no room” in the regular house? Such a stance to my mind seems at odds with how Jesus is revealed in the Gospels. Every miracle Jesus would perform in His ministry here on Earth is fundamentally an act of caring and compassion for someone.

Would not Jesus therefore have shown caring and compassion on a young woman in Mary’s condition by putting her in better shelter than the corner of a barn?

How appropriate it is that when Jesus entered into the world, the world responded mostly with a lack of caring and a lack of compassion. How appropriate it is that when Mary brought Jesus into the world, the adoration of shepherds and Magi were noteworthy by being the exception rather than the rule.

I will confess that I am inferring that lack of general adoration from Luke’s silence on the matter, as well as Matthew’s. That the adoration of shepherds and Magi should be worthy of note while a general adoration by those already present should not seems unlikely—it certainly seems far less likely than a general lack of adoration by those already present at the hour of Jesus’ birth.

That general lack of adoration also is more of a piece with what is said elsewhere in the Gospels, such as in the first chapter of John, where we are told that the world knew not the Son of God.

Jesus, the Son of God, was born into a world filled with darkness, a world made dark by the hardness of men’s hearts. Jesus, the Son of God, was born into the world to be a light of caring and compassion shining in that darkness, that He might redeem men’s hearts from that hardness.

The indifference and disregard of the people of Bethlehem at Mary’s pregnancy is exactly why the world needed Jesus, the Son of God, to be born into the world. The indifference and disregard of the people of Bethlehem at Mary’s pregnancy is the foundational expression of sin from which Jesus came into the world to redeem mankind.

Indifference and disregard is the foundational expression of sin from which mankind needs redemption even today. If there has been one constant in the world from then until now it is man’s indifference and disregard for the trials and travails of our neighbors. One need only look around the communities in which we live, see the struggles of so many around us, to see that, time and again, people do not care.

On this Christmas Eve, as people around the world gather in imminent celebration of the birth of Jesus, the Son of God, I pray only that the people’s eyes be opened, and that the hardness of their hearts be dissolved.

I pray that each of us will find within ourselves the caring and compassion for our neighbor which God has for us.

Merry Christmas, and God bless you.