Read Luke 2: 1 – 20

Some of my most vivid Christmas memories as a child revolve around food.

There was a Saturday every September or October when I would go, as usual, with my mum and dad to visit my grandma and grandad to find the big dining table full of apples, and raisins, and sultanas, and currants, and nutmeg, and suet, and sugar, and lemons, and brandy, because that was the day we would all muck in as a family to make mincemeat?  Grandma’s special recipe mincemeat which didn’t have any candied peel in it (nobody in our family liked it!)

So, grandma, mum and I would set to work in front of the fire on the hearth rug with bowls, and chopping boards, peeling and chopping all the ingredients until they were ready to put through the big metal mincer that had been attached to the table. I remember trying the handle of the mincer when I was small and hardly being able to turn it at all, but over the years I got stronger and eventually assumed the role of head mincer.

The minced ingredients would plop out into a big bowl ready to be mixed and mixed until it was blended and ready to bottle.  We made jars and jars of mincemeat for all the family, neighbours, Church folks – just about everyone we knew got jars of grandma’s mincemeat.

So many good memories associated with Christmas involve food for me!  Maybe you have Christmas memories of food, prepared and eaten together?

But it’s too easy to hide the meaning of Christmas in Christmas food, in overeating – a distraction making us overlook the baby born for us and laid in a manger.

But, maybe Christmas has more to do with food than we might imagine.

Remember what Luke tells us about how the shepherds were told the good news about Jesus’ birth and their subsequent visit to Bethlehem.  As you know, writers didn’t use any more words than were necessary at the time Luke’s Gospel was written. So, if the word manger is used 3 times in 20 verses it must be significant. But why?

Well, every lowly beast of the stable knows that the manger – the feeding trough – is the source of nourishment – food for life.

And the baby Jesus, lying in the manger, grew to be the one who was given to us all for life and health and strength, to be the very source of our deepest needs for nourishing, the sort of nourishing that is not satisfied by food and drink, but a spiritual food to satisfy our spirit which needs constantly feeding with what God alone offers us through Jesus, as flesh and blood – bread and wine.

So perhaps preparing for Christmas by making mincemeat, a rich feast of fruits for winter nourishing, is not so far removed from the fruits Jesus came to remind us of – the fruits of the spirit and the nutrition we need every day to give us life and spiritual health and strength for each day.

And perhaps when you sing carols this Christmas, you’ll join me in remembering how Mary and Joseph travelled 90 odd miles from their home in Nazareth to Bethlehem – a place of oppression, unrest and conflict these days.  There, they were visitors at best in need of hospitality and healthcare. Fortunately, they were amongst a people who took hospitality for their Jewish neighbour seriously.

So, Jesus was laid in a borrowed manger in a strange town from which he had to flee – a refugee in Egypt, at about 2 years old.

The manger also, therefore, underlines his status as a stranger in a strange land, at the whim of the welcome of strangers.  And maybe these early experiences shaped his whole ministry to the poor, the outcast, the marginalised and the foreigner.

So, if you agree with, or even turn a blind eye to the deportation of distraught, exhausted human beings, seeking refuge from violence and welcome from strangers like us, you probably shouldn’t be sweetly singing songs about a baby with ‘no crib for a bed’, but laid in a borrowed manger which a stranger gave and yet in which the bread of life in all its fullness was found.

I wish you God’s richest blessings of love, joy, peace and hope
this Christmas-time and for the year ahead

Revd. Janine
and on behalf of Mike and Gwen