Emmanuel, God with us
the ugly present under the tree
I am resharing this post I wrote last year in the hope that it might speak to you like it does me. It is just a small reminder of how difficult it was for the Son of God to be with us, and the reason he came.
This time of year it seems all we talk about (understandably) is Emmanuel, God with us. But I wonder if we see the real story or if we are blinded by all the twinkling lights and shiny tinsel.
The story began with young Mary hearing directly from the angel Gabriel. Remember when he appeared to her? He started out with, “Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.”
How would you react if the top angel showed up and said that to you? Remember, this is right after 400 years of silence on God’s part, and he shows up to a mere girl and tells her she is “highly favoured”? The Bible says Mary “was troubled.” No doubt. It says she “cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be.” Her mind was racing. Who is this? What does he want? What is he saying? What do I do? Do I stand here? Run away?
But Gabriel continued, telling her she would conceive in her womb and have a son and that he would be great and would be called the Son of the Highest and would sit on the throne of his father David and of his kingdom there would be no end.
Can you even imagine? That’s a lot for a teenage girl to take in. So she asked the only practical question she could think of: How can this be seeing I know not a man? Even she knew there were physical hurdles to be gotten past.
Gabriel reassured her that it would all be from the Lord, not to worry. “For with God nothing shall be impossible.”
That satisfied her, and she said in so many poetic words, “Roger all.”
Maybe it’s been discussed before, but this is the first year I remember ever hearing people talk about what the Nativity must really have been like. It wasn’t the calm, sanitary scene we always picture. Being a keeper of a few cows as well as a mother of five children, I have some thoughts about it.
Just this year I’ve heard references to a teenager giving birth in a filthy, smelly stable. Last week I heard someone talk about how the stable must have been full of noises with all those animals. But do we know there were animals there? The Bible doesn’t say. Maybe with all the travelers in town we can make that assumption. And if there were, was it really as the song says, “The cattle are lowing . . .”?
Have you ever heard cattle when they are disturbed, as must have been the case that night? Assuming there were cows in the stable, they were all tucked in nice and quiet, chewing their cud, when two people came barging in, frantically looking for a place they could make somewhat comfortable. The animals would have been nervous at this interruption to their silent night.
Then there’s the “lowing” thing. Cattle vocalizations are not normally peaceful. Sometimes our bull does this low-pitched moaning thing, usually because he’s communicating something to the herd. The mama cows often make little grunting sounds to their babies to keep them nearby for the first few weeks. But these aren’t “who’s in my barn in the middle of the night” sounds. That would be more like Thelma, who is our resident bigmouth. Whenever there’s anything to be agitated about (like the need for more hay), Thelma lets out bellows so loud you can literally (in the literal sense) hear them in the next county. She is often answered by a herd a few miles away. It is the exact opposite of a silent night. If that were going on in the stable where Jesus was born, it was deafening. Talk about birth trauma.
Then there’s the manger. I’ve often heard it said that “Jesus was born in a manger,” and let me tell you that would be tricky at best. Did you know the manger is not the same as the stable? The stable is a small barn-like structure. It may or may not be open on one side, but it has a roof and sides to keep the animals in. Stables used to be attached to one side of the house. We picture it as having a nice layer of clean hay on the dirt floor, but maybe the animals (if there were any) had eaten it all. Or maybe it was so full of manure and urine they wouldn’t eat it; that’s what typically happens when you put hay on the ground. They eat some but also mess on it while they’re eating, so some gets wasted. Either way, it was probably not Mary’s preferred place to lie down.
The actual manger we hear about was a small trough that animals ate out of. It would have been too small for hay, but maybe someone threw grain in there, or food scraps, and it kept the food from being stepped in and the mess from being spread around. The word manger comes from Anglo-French word mangure (to eat), and from Latin manducare (to chew). It’s where Italian grandmothers get their favorite word mangia, as in “Mangia! Mangia!” meaning “Eat! Eat!” Jesus wasn’t born in a manger, he was laid in a manger. Mary used it like a little bassinet.
Have you ever wondered why she needed a place to lay him down? Why didn’t she just hold him? Having given birth without medication five times, I think I have a pretty good idea: she was utterly exhausted, even if everything went perfectly. Without getting too graphic, let’s just talk through this.
Mary was a teenager herself; I’ve heard anywhere between 14 and 17. Her body was still growing up. When I think back to myself in that age range, I am stunned that she even survived without dying of panic. I know our cultures are very different and girls back then were raised with the understanding that their highest calling could be to give birth to the Messiah, but still—she was a child.
Furthermore, her only attendant was a single young man. How much did he know about childbirth? Probably not much. How much did he know about his espoused wife personally? I’d say very little. They hadn’t had the chance to become intimately acquainted, to really know each other well, to build any kind of deep trust. Yet here was Mary, in the most vulnerable state a woman can be in, having no one but Joseph, who knew almost nothing about this girl and the process that was happening, to help. I’m thinking there was a distinct lack of confidence on both sides of the situation.
In those days, when a woman was in labor and giving birth, she would be surrounded by other women: neighbors, friends, family members. Aside from Eve (for obvious reasons), women did not labor alone and they didn’t labor with men present. Dads in the delivery room hadn’t been invented yet. A laboring mom had support and help from other women who had been there, done that and knew what to expect and how to help. Mary had none of that. She was very much on her own and no doubt apprehensive (that’s putting it mildly) about how it would go. Also, it was not unusual for women to die in childbirth back then, and surely that was in the back of her mind.
So the time had come for Mary to give birth. They had traveled to Bethlehem to be taxed because even back then the government couldn’t help but interfere in every important life event. But God had told the Jews their Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, proving that God can use even man’s stupid laws to work out his perfect will.
So there they were, Joseph and Mary, in a town more crowded than New Orleans at Mardi Gras. There were no available hotel rooms, and suddenly Mary was in labor. What to do? They found the only shelter they could—a stable.
And Mary labored. I imagine since it was her first baby the labor did not go quickly. Three centimeters. Four centimeters. The hours were crawling. Five. Six. Did they even know about centimeters of dilation back then? And who would have checked her progress? Seven centimeters. Eight. Now she’s in transition. Her legs are shaking. She feels nauseous. So much pain. She is desperate for it to be over. Is this what it feels like to die in labor? Will this baby ever be born? She was on her own. No attendants other than a nervous guy who didn’t know much about female physiology and how this whole thing worked. I don’t imagine he was calm about it, seeing things he’d never imagined and watching this sweet, mild-mannered girl turn into a mighty-warrior-mama pushing out her first full-term baby.
There would be blood and body fluids and an afterbirth and afterpains. Why did no one tell her about the pain that came after the birth? Someone had to cut the umbilical cord—with what? Did Joseph have his carpenter’s tools with him? Tin snips? A pocket knife? Did he know how to examine the afterbirth to make sure all of it came out, ensuring part of it was not retained that would cause an infection? Did the cows eat it like they do their own?
This business of Jesus becoming God With Us was way more messy than we like to think about. He did not come into a bright, shining world where his every want was supplied and people bowed to him like some visiting foreign dignitary. He was born exactly like the rest of us. He suffered the pain of teething—those first molars are a beast. He fell and scraped his knees. Smashed his thumb learning how to use a hammer. He became flesh—it must have felt like a prison to him—and dwelt among us—who have absolutely not one single thing of value to offer him.
Yet there he was, God With Us. A miracle in human form, here of God’s own doing.
I heard it said recently that God came to us, he came for us, and he came like us, and that’s the part that is so hard to fathom. That he came like us.
Jesus, God With Us, stepped into the wreckage of my life and made all things new. He took my robe of sin and gave me his robe of righteousness. He swapped my record of perpetual failure for his perfect one.
For he [God] hath made him [Jesus] to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him [Jesus].
He became my sin. I became his righteousness. He traded places with me because he loved me. I didn’t deserve it, didn’t earn it. It was his choice, all for love.
The songwriter asks, “Mary, did you know . . .” and the short answer is yes, she knew her son was actually the Son of God. She knew the Jews were waiting for the Messiah to come, and she knew what the angel Gabriel had told her.
But I wonder if she really understood the eternal ramifications of what took place when she delivered that little baby all by herself in the filthy hay and wrapped him in not-so-sterile cloths and laid him in the animals’ feed trough.
I’m thankful she was willing.
You must have a cow named Louise?