Hope

The Inner Meaning of The Manger

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Photo: Roger Talbott

No, this isn’t my Christmas tree. It belongs to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art; and, yes, it is a real showstopper.

Jacquie and I visited the museum to look at Nativity scenes for a project Jacquie was doing for our church.

I’ve been contemplating what we saw ever since. The two that stand out for me are the one above and this one:

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The Nativity and Annunciation to the Shepherds. Carving from the portal of an unknown church ca. 1275–1300. The New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Quite a contrast!

Yet, both are recognizable as “manger scenes.”

It may surprise you that there are few depictions of Christ’s birth before the 1200s.

Peter, Paul, and other early Christians celebrated Easter every Sunday. However, no one celebrated Christmas for the first two or three hundred years after Jesus’ birth. It wasn’t until the fourth century that a church council set the date of the Feast of the Nativity on December 25.

Almost a millennium later, St. Francis of Assisi (d. 1226 CE) popularized the manger scene.

We seminary graduates like to talk about “incarnation” at Christmastime. Ask us what incarnation means, and we will quote John’s gospel, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Ask us what that means, and we will open our mouths . . . and nothing will come out.

A linguist once said, “A word only has meaning if you can put your hand over your mouth and point.”

St. Francis didn’t talk about the Incarnation; he lived it. He also pointed to it when he saw it. And he saw it in the birth of Jesus. Instead of preaching to the poor about what St. Paul meant when he wrote, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19), St. Francis created what the French call a crèche. Thus, he put his hand over his mouth and pointed to the baby in the manger.

Soon, Francis’s followers were creating these scenes all over Italy during the 12 days between the Feast of the Nativity (December 25) and the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6), when the Wisemen offer Jesus their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

What moved people was not simply seeing the scene. It was being part of it. Like the shepherds and the Magi, they, too, came to the manger.

The Met’s 17th-century Neapolitan figures and the children that I inadvertently caught in my photo remind me of an experience I had forty years ago.

The church I served then had a tradition of creating a live outdoor manger scene every Christmas. The scene included cows and sheep, shepherds and kings, Mary and Joseph, and a doll—the only thing that wasn’t alive. This was December in Northeast Ohio, after all.

People came from all over the area to see it. Some just drove by. Others parked and came over, their coats from LL Bean, Walmart, or Goodwill mixing with our shepherd’s costumes. They were like the people of Bethlehem who heard about the angels and the birth from the shepherds and “were amazed” (Luke 2:17-18 NRSV).

The museum’s carved Neapolitan figures represent all the characters from the Bible stories. They also depict folk tales that have grown up around the birth of Jesus. The artists used their seaport city’s multi-ethnic, multicultural residents as models.

This picture shows the meaning of some of the Bible’s most mysterious words. Jesus says, “I will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32). We seminary graduates like to call this “high Christology.”

Sadly, some of the loudest “Christians” in our country don’t believe in it. Only people who fit the Procrustean beds of political belief, gender conformity, or White middle-class Protestant respectability, can “come to Jesus.”

You probably can tell how I feel about those folks.

But the older Nativity scene confronts my contempt for them.

Look at it again. The nativity forms the left side of the sculpture. It is pretty simple compared to the cast of thousands under the tree. Joseph is standing at the foot of the bed that Mary is lying on. Jacquie says an exhausted Mary makes a lot more sense to women who have given birth than the theologically correct Mary, who kneels in reverence next to her divine son’s manger.

Above their heads (artists had not yet discovered the mathematics of perspective) is the manger with the baby Jesus. And above the baby Jesus are the heads of two animals: an ox and an ass.

The ox and ass are in every manger scene from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. They refer back to a verse from Isaiah written seven centuries earlier:

“An ox knows its owner,

A donkey its master’s crib:

Israel does not know,

My people take no thought.”

(Isaiah 1:3  Revised JPS)

In other words, folks who call themselves “God’s people” (and that goes for most of us who think we are Christians) are dumber than an ox and a stupid ass. The ox doesn’t say, “Well, I’m not going to eat from the same manger as that ass.”

All kinds of people. That’s the other thing about the ox and the ass. According to biblical law, the ox is a “clean” animal. The ass is an “unclean” animal. Bible scholars have theories, but they don’t really know why animals with a split hoof and chew their cud are clean, and those who don’t are unclean.

In other words, it makes as much sense as my not wanting to hang out with Trump voters.

The mystics of all religions say that in our spiritual development, we need binaries like good and evil, male and female, Republicans and Democrats, divine and human, and oxen and asses. These binaries create our moral consciousness and teach us to make responsible choices. That is what grown-ups do.

But on the other side of that moral consciousness is a wholeness that brings the opposites together. Only Love and Light can pull everyone and everything together. (Colossians 1:15-17) Your spiritual journey and the spiritual journey of the human race will take us all there someday.

As the Sufi poet Rumi says:

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing,

There is a field. I’ll meet you there.”

Love is in the manger. The ox and the ass know that they are sustained by love. Most of us are too dumb to know that, except maybe at Christmas.

Most of us lament the polarization and increasing hostility in our society. Is there any way to overcome it?

There is a way — in the manger.

Light in the Groundhog Hole

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Measured by the number of times I have seen and referred to it, Groundhog Day is my favorite movie. I can’t help thinking about it on February 2nd. (Spoilers ahead).

Bill Murray plays Pittsburgh weatherman Phil Connors. He and his producer, played by Andie McDowell, and his cameraman, played by Chris Elliott, check into an inn in Punxsutawney, PA, on February 1 because the following day they have to report the annual ceremony in which a groundhog (also named Phil) will see his shadow at sunrise and predict six more weeks of winter — not a stretch because February 2nd is smack-dab between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

Phil gives a lackluster description of the meaningless event and is eager to return to Pittsburgh. However, a blizzard forces him and his crew to stay an extra night. The following day, he is awakened by Sonny and Cher singing, “I’ve got you, Babe!” — the same song that woke him up the day before, and the announcer says that it is February 2nd. Phil lives Groundhog Day over and over again, and then again, and again.

I’m reminded of the movie, not just because today is February 2nd, but because, like Phil, I keep repeating something over and over again.

I am trying to write a book about the Beatitudes of Jesus — nine sayings that each begin with the word “Blessed.”

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Blessed are those who mourn.

Blessed are the meek.

These first three, especially, make no sense. What is blessed about poverty, spiritual or otherwise?

Mourning isn’t exactly “happy” (another possible translation of the word “Blessed.”)

And who wants to be meek?

So, I sit down every morning and write a few hundred words. The next day, I write a few hundred more without making any discernible progress toward writing a book.

I’m taking today off to think about Bill Murray’s Phil and what happens to him in the movie.

When the movie begins, Phil is an unlikable, arrogant bastard. He dislikes and looks down on his producer, cameraman, and all the people in Punxsutawney.

What makes repeating Groundhog Day hell for him is that he is stuck in this hick town with these dumb people, repeatedly reporting on a meaningless event.

However, over time, Phil begins to see how spiritually impoverished his life is. He has no friends. He loves no one. No one loves him. He isn’t doing anything that matters to him. This depresses him. Slowly, he starts to make some changes in his daily routine. For example, he takes a piano lesson every afternoon from a teacher who thinks he is her new student each time he comes to her door. The daily routine doesn’t change, but Phil learns to play the piano.

By the end, Phil begins to appreciate Larry, the cameraman and falls in love with his producer. He starts living a meaningful life, not by spending hours meditating or studying any religion’s scriptures, but by simply facing the fact that his life isn’t worth living and meekly (the word in the Greek New Testament means “teachable”) learning how to live a better life step-by-step.

The working title for my book about the Beatitudes is A Life Worth Living Forever.

I think that is what the gospels mean by the phrase “eternal life.”

Jesus transitions from the Beatitudes to the rest of the Sermon on the Mount by declaring, “You are the light of the world. You are the salt of the earth.” He says keeping the light under a bushel basket or for salt to lose its flavor isn’t right.

In the movie, Phil eventually gets out of his own way. He creates a community of friends that resembles the Kingdom of Heaven on a small scale. He accepts and makes amends for how he has treated his co-workers and television audience. He eventually becomes the richest man in town, measured by how much he is loved. His light shines.

I can’t seem to explain the Beatitudes, but I can point to Bill Murray’s Phil and say, “That’s what they look like.”

Like Phil, we all have a light inside of us, and Life will teach us how to let it shine if we will let it.

And thank you, friends, for reading this. I’m trying to learn to write like Phil learned to play the piano.

What to Say to a Grieving Person

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Last September I started a series of blog posts on grief. I never finished due to the fatigue that I suffer from Long COVID. I was just starting to feel better when our son called us about his diagnosis. “I am going to die,” he said. I am writing this partly to offer thanks to all those who have reached out to us with your prayers and condolences. Nothing makes it better, but we have felt supported.

A few weeks ago, Jacquie and I lost our oldest son to pancreatic cancer. He was 49. His wife and two teen-age children are grieving and disoriented from the fact that he was fine until about 10 weeks before his death. So are we.

We got a lot of cards, emails, and personal expressions of love and support from dozens and dozens of people. People told us that they were sorry for our loss. Our Jewish friends and family usually said, “May his memory be a blessing.”

Many of them admitted, “I don’t know what to say.” Some just said, “There are no words.”

In fact, we found those expressions of wordlessness the most comforting. They matched our own feelings of inexpressible grief.

The French philosopher, Montaigne, the inventor of the essay, tells a story about a king who was defeated by his enemy. To torture the king, his enemy had the king’s beloved horse brought forward and then had the horse slain in front of the king. The king cried out in dismay.

The enemy brought forward the king’s closest advisor and best friend and cut his throat. The king howled with grief.

The enemy then brought forward the king’s wife and children, and murdered them before his eyes. The king said nothing.

The enemy was surprised. Why had the king wept for a horse, howled in grief for his friend, but was silent about the loss of his family? The enemy thought he had failed to break the king’s heart.

But, as Montaigne said, “Lesser griefs weep. Great griefs are dumb.”

There are no words.

Statisticians can tote up the numbers murdered in the Holocaust. Historians can trace the development of Hitler’s final solution. But anyone who walks through the Holocaust museums in Washington, D.C. or Jerusalem leaves knowing that there are no words.

We have been fortunate not to have encountered the kind of people that Gardner Taylor, one of the Black Church’s great voices of the 20th century, used to call, “Spiritual Speakeasies.”

I used to meet them in funeral homes when I visited parishioners who had lost loved ones. They, to paraphrase Reinhold Niebuhr, always seemed to be able to describe the furniture of heaven and knew the temperature of hell. They glibly said things like, “we know (insert the name of the deceased) is with (insert the name of a dead grandparent) and they are rejoicing to meet all their other loved ones.”

Well, maybe.

The New Testament tends to describe the afterlife the way you might describe Florida to an Eskimo without the aid of photographs. All you would be able to say is, “There are no polar bears in Florida. No ice. No snow.”

So, Jesus says that there is no marriage there (Matthew 22:30). And Revelation says “there will be no more death’ nor mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

To come back to the Eskimo analogy, you could say that Florida has palm trees and white sandy beaches, but it would not mean much to someone who has never seen them. The Eskimo might take your word for it that Florida is a nice place, but would not sign up for trip there anymore than most of us want to be on the next bus to heaven.

Death, especially the death of a child, leaves us with more questions than answers, more grief than confidence.

There is a part of me that cannot believe that my son still lives. But, I have no proof of that, either.

Death is a great mystery.

Maybe when we die, we die.

Maybe our atoms return to the stars from which they came.

Maybe we get to try life all over again.

Or maybe there is something after death that is beyond all that we can ask or think. I hope so.

We do not grieve like those who have no hope. We only grieve like those who have no words.