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Birth of Our Lord
St Luke
2:1-14
St. Luke the great
historian and physician gives a comprehensive history of the birth, life,
ministry, crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus the Lord, Saviour
and Messiah. Birth narrative or infancy narratives are the special gift
of the writer to the New Testament Church. Luke Chapter 1 tells the
narrative of the annunciation assuring the birth of a Saviour named Jesus
to a Virgin named Mary, living in Nazareth in the town of Bethlehem.
Chapter 2 tells us the fulfilment of the annunciation of the birth of the
Lord. Emperor Augustus Caesar, the ruler ordered for a census of the
world; for all the nations of the civilized world were subject to Rome.
“No Room for birth” but “Room for Salvation”
Joseph went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of
David called Bethlehem with Mary to be registered. Joseph was full of
expectancy to find lodgings for Mary, as he entered the city of his
family, as it was the time came for Mary to deliver a child. His search
was in vain and he could not find a suitable lodging because every house
was overcrowded. Finally Joseph reached in front of an inn where he had
to hear the saddest words in history, “There was no room.”
Joseph had to find a safe space for Mary to give birth to Child named
Jesus. His search led to the creation of “manger” the safest space for
the birth of only begotten Son of God. There was no room in the inn, but
there was room in the manger. The inn is the gathering place of public
opinion, the focal point of world’s moods, the rendezvous of the worldly,
the rallying place of the popular and the successful. But the manger is a
place of the outcasts, the ignored, and the forgotten. The divine child
Jesus, the Saviour of the world was born where one least expects to find
it. The manger and the Cross thus portray the whole event of salvation.
Jesus accepted both manger and the Cross because it personifies the pain
of rejection and suffering; yet proclaims salvation. He was the divine
child in the fullest human form. God became human in Jesus Christ for the
human to experience God through Jesus Christ.
Searching the Signs of Saviour
Shepherds living in the fields receiving the ‘Word of God’ started their
journey to see the Saviour. Signs of Saviour are human child in swaddling
clothes in a manger. Swaddling clothes signifies the life in Khora
(Greek noun for a place)–state of poverty, impurity, agony, dirt, dust-
‘life of otherness’ challenging the practices of hate, bitterness,
violence and death- state of empire. Child wrapped in a band of clothes
in manger is the ‘new heaven’ on earth. Shepherds searching the signs;
witnesses the new heaven.
PRAYER
Gracious God, enable us to confess Jesus Christ as our
Lord, Saviour and Messiah at all times in all cultures. Amen.
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
Wisdom is more precious than rubies; nothing we desire
can compare with it.
Rev.
Shiby Varghese P, Mar Thoma Theological Seminary, Kottayam
Christian
Education Forum, Diocese of NAE of the Mar Thoma Church
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