“A Manger That Feeds the Hungry” with Kenton Kinney performing “Believe” | December 25, 2011

    I would imagine that if we surveyed each person this morning, we would have some interesting answers to these questions.  And who knows, maybe it wasn’t simply the food that made the meal so great; maybe it was the company we were with at the time as well.

    Now, what if I asked this question…what are the 2-3 worst meals you have ever eaten?  Where did you eat them?  What did you eat?  Who was with you at the time?  What made this meal so bad that you would remember it to this very day?

    Meals…the food we eat…the company we are with?  A substantial part of our lives revolves around such things.  And so we come to a place of humble meals.

    I wonder what Joseph and Mary ate that night when they arrived in Bethlehem.  They had been on the road for nine or ten days.  With Mary so close to the hour of her delivery, perhaps she wasn’t hungry at all.  They had to be exhausted.  They didn’t have the luxury of a warm bed prepared for them, and there certainly wasn’t a table of food lavishly laid out for them at the stable.  The first thing they probably had to do was to move out some of the animals so that Mary could have a comfortable place to rest.  We have many mothers with us today, but it is doubtful that any of our mothers walked for ten days before their delivery, much less had their delivery in a stable or barn.  Our son Zach and his wife, Kelly, delivered our latest grandchild somewhere between the front door of the hospital and the elevator that was about to take them to the delivery floor.  But they were surrounded by nurses, not donkeys and cows.  Christmas begins in the most humble of places, with only Joseph and Mary to help themselves…and this was their first child at that!

    But it’s not just the stable that catches our attention here.  Three times the Scripture tells us just where Mary laid her newborn baby after He was born:  Luke 2:7 tells us that the child was laid in a manger; then Luke 2:12 says that the angel announced to the shepherds, “This will be a sign to you:  you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloths and lying in a manger”; and in Luke 2:16, the shepherds found the child “lying in the manger”.

    Perhaps the manger was not only a sign to the shepherds, but for us as well.  The manger or feeding trough is not just a symbol of Jesus’ humility.  A feeding trough is where God’s creatures come to eat.  It is a detail that Luke, the Gospel writer, includes to point toward something greater.  Moses said, “One does not live by bread alone” (Deuteronomy 8:3).  Moses knew that there was something deeper we hunger for.  Isaiah the prophet once asked, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy” (Isaiah 55:2).  Isaiah was pointing, with Moses, to a deeper hunger we have as human beings, but also to our tendency to spend money and to work hard for that which cannot ultimately satisfy our hunger.  Jesus perhaps alluded to these two verses when He said, “I am the bread of life.  Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35).  And at the Last Supper, Jesus took bread and said, “This is my body, which is given to you” (Luke 22:19).

    He who later would call Himself the “Bread of Life”, who alone can satisfy the deepest longings of our souls, was born in the town of Bethlehem—the “House of Bread”—and was laid to sleep on that first night in a trough where God’s creatures ate.  And keep in mind that this baby’s parents might not have had anything to eat that night at all.  But it would be their baby who one day would say, “I am the bread of life”!  There is much irony in the Christmas story as we come close to the stable and to its manger.

    But here’s something to think about and it’s a different approach to the Christmas Season altogether, and who knows, it just might reach beyond the artificial boundaries of secularism.  What if we promoted, not at the neglect of Jesus’ birth, but what if we promoted Christmas as also being the source of literally “feeding the deep hungers of the human soul”?  Jesus is not just a Saviour who saves us from our sin; He is also the Saviour who satisfies the yearnings of our spirit, the hungers of our soul, and the emptiness of our self-hood.  He can bless us where we feel abandoned, touch us where we are the weakest, strengthen us where we are frightened, and renew us where we are used up and exhausted.  The holiday tree can’t feed us this way, neither can the winter break from school, nor can the festive ornaments in the shopping mall in the windows of each store.  It is obvious that those who want to find an argument with Christmas will always do so.  What we can emphasize is that Christmas is about a baby who was born in a feeding trough for animals and yet turned out to be the one who can feed the deep hungers of the human soul.  Our response to those who presently object to Bethlehem should be this:  Are you against feeding the people where they have the greatest hungers?  Do you not want hungry people to be nourished?

    Christians unite at this time of year to share their resources that will put food into the stomachs of hungry people—even starving people—around the globe.  No “holiday tree” observance does that one!  Let Christians all around the world unite at this time of year to promote the “feeding of the human heart”, “the feeding of the human mind”, “the feeding of the human spirit”, “the feeding of the human soul”!  Because the truth is, every human being regardless of race—color—or creed will someday discover their own hungers of the heart and mind and spirit and soul.  No one, regardless of their means, is immune from these hungers.  And certainly not you or myself.