Epiphany: The Mystery of the Manger
Yesterday was the 12th Day of Christmas and though there were no drummers drumming, pipers piping or lords a leaping, there was a question that bubbled up for me as I read Luke 2:8-20. “Where is God?” I didn’t realize until this morning that I’d written about the same question on Epiphany 2021. That year I was contemplating the wise men following a star to the manger. This year it’s the story of the shepherds.
God’s angel appears and speaks.
God’s glory blazes.
Light dispels darkness.
Man is afraid.
God’s angel says, “Don’t be afraid.”
God’s angel says it’s GOOD NEWS that causes great joy!
God’s angel announces what IS and issues an invitation: “Go”
God’s angel gives specific instructions about where the Savior will be found, down to details about blankets and a feed trough.
I wonder if any small story contains the whole of The Story if we stay with it long enough.
In the above narrative sequence humans have done nothing except be afraid. (That sounds familiar.) In some sense, I hear echoes of the story of Moses at the burning bush, Paul on the way to Damascus, and Mary before she conceived. God has done all that needs to be done. He interrupts a life with an announcement and an invitation. Into the human heart drops longing. This is a call narrative for the shepherds. Our lives get interrupted. Rays of light break into our dark places and we are invited to search, to go and see. “Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened.”
I suspect, like the shepherds, we’re also told how to find Him, but like the twelve disciples (to whom Jesus said over and over he was going to die and be resurrected) we can’t hear or see the realities pointing the way because our vision and hearing are so clouded or distracted by how we think it’s going to look or how we want Him to be. A baby wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger. This is small and almost hidden, a pearl of great price. One must look, seek, knock. How many babies were in Bethlehem that night? And though I don’t believe it, my son often says, “All new babies look the same.” Was it hard to find him? Where is God? They asked.
A tiny face peeking out from blankets, tucked into a straw bed. Weak and vulnerable, dependent on the body of a human mother for his very survival. It was exactly as the angel had said, but not as one might expect a Savior to look. How can something so small and vulnerable be strong enough to save us? How can such a miniature body in a manger become the bread of life? How could this hungry newborn satisfy the hunger of mankind? How can this be? This is the question Mary asked of the angel. This is the question we ask when we sense God’s leading in our lives.
Epiphany, January 6th, marks the anniversary of one of the major interruptions in my life. Hidden in a terrifying experience was an invitation to stand in the light, to have my story illuminated by God’s glory, to live with longing, searching and asking, and to somehow be met and fed by the mystery of the manger.
The shepherd’s story asks us to seek him, to see him and then to spread the word about him. It asks us to embrace the unexpected, the small, almost hidden gift, and to believe He is enough. Thirty-three years, a death that looked like failure of a mission, and then a resurrection and ascension all had to happen before what the shepherds found that night would make any sense. This story asks us to trust the slow work of God.*
As the light of Epiphany dawns this year, may we be willing to kneel at the mystery of the manger and trust in the slow work of God.*
*Years ago my spiritual director gave me this prayer by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you;
your ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.
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