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That Jesus was laid in a manger is perhaps the most iconic element of the Nativity. This Christmas morning, as I re-read and reflected on the story in Luke 2:1-20, I was struck by how many times the story mentions the manger.
And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped him in cloths, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. (Luke 2:7)
And so the angel said to [the shepherds], "Do not be afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be for all the people; for today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger." (Luke 2:10-12)
So [the shepherds] went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the child lying in the manger. (Luke 2:16)
When an uncommon word like "manger" appears three times in a short passage—a word appearing only once more in the entire New Testament (Luke 13:15)—this usually means we should pay attention. But what exactly is the meaning of the manger in the Nativity narrative?
A Sign of the Messiah
Most obviously, the manger shows that the child set within it is the Messiah, Christ the Lord. As the angel says to the shepherds in Luke 2:10-12, the baby lying in a manger "...will be a sign..." When the shepherds find baby Jesus, the manger confirms the angel's claim that he is "a Savior, who is Christ the Lord."
As Joseph A. Fitzmyer points out, the mention of a manger evokes Isaiah 1:3 from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible—the Septuagint or "LXX"—which was popular in Luke's first century context:
An ox knows its owner and a donkey the manger of its lord; but Israel knows not me, and my people does not comprehend (Fitzmyer, 394).
The implication in Luke 2 is that the shepherds will be different from the ignorant, uncomprehending Israel of Isaiah's time. They will resemble, rather, the ox that knows its owner; like the donkey, the shepherds will recognize the manger as a sign of their lord.
Technically, the cloths in which the baby is wrapped are also part of the sign (Luke 2:12), though newborns wrapped in cloths aren't so unusual (we wrapped our newborn girls like that). If the cloths alone were the sign, it would be something like saying, "And this will be a sign for you: you will find the baby breathing." With that kind of sign, the shepherds might wonder if they had the right baby or whether he was really so special. The manger is much more particular and unusual, lending weight to the angel's messianic claim.
However, as Fitzmyer points out (pp. 394-395), the reference to being wrapped in cloths evokes the Wisdom of Solomon, a deuterocanonical book included in the Septuagint (though not the Hebrew Bible), in which the narrator is the wise king Solomon, the son of king David:
And when I was born, I began to breathe the common air and fell upon the kindred earth; my first sound was a cry, as is true of all. I was nursed with care in swaddling cloths. For no king has had a different beginning of existence; there is for all one entrance into life and one way out. (Wisdom of Solomon 7:3-6)
In this passage, Solomon is insisting he was a baby like every other to support his claim that his wisdom was not inherent to him, but rather given by God as an answer to his prayer. The point for us is that a first-century Jewish reader of Luke would hear "wrapped in cloths" and associate baby Jesus with Solomon, implying that Jesus was a son of David, a king, the Messiah.
Poverty and Status
The manger also tells us something about the socio-economic status of Jesus' family. As the story goes, immediately before Jesus was born, Joseph and a pregnant Mary traveled to Bethlehem to be counted in the Roman census. When they arrived there, Mary gave birth, but since there was no room at the inn, she birthed him in the stable, with the animals, and lay him in a manger.
Fair enough: if there's no room at the inn, you need to improvise. But if Joseph or Mary have money, you know they don't end up in a smelly, dirty place like a stable, laying their newborn in a manger. Money opens (literal) doors. The fact Mary birthed Jesus in a stable implies they were poor.
The parallels with modern American culture are painfully obvious. We relegate poor people to worse life outcomes and offer them fewer opportunities than their counterparts with means. Their neighborhoods are less safe, their educational opportunities are substandard, their healthcare is worse, and our system of justice slants against them, to list but a few examples. Sadly, the manger suggests such treatment of poor people is timeless.
More happily, though, the manger also suggests such treatment is mistaken. Jesus, the Messiah, a king, God incarnate—a high-status human if ever there was one—visited us as a poor person. The lesson: financial poverty is not a sign of true worth or status. Our regard for, and treatment of, the outwardly poor should at least be equal to, if not greater than, our treatment of those with money.
The Meaning of the Manger: Jesus our Sustenance
Finally, that Jesus was laid in a manger suggests he is a kind of sustenance. A manger, of course, is a feeding trough for farm animals. Typically, a manger holds hay or grain for animals to eat. The implication is that we, like donkeys who recognize the manger of our lord, should come and feed on its contents—the Lord himself.
Viewed from this angle, the manger evokes John 6:
Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day, for my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. (John 6:53b-55)
In this chapter of John's Gospel, Jesus chides those who follow him simply to get free bread, claiming that what they really need is him, the "bread of life." With no little controversy, Jesus suggests they eat his flesh and drink his blood as the means to genuine life, eternal life.
Although passages like this did elicit charges of cannibalism against Christians in the first-century Roman Empire, the language in John 6 does not urge the consumption of literal flesh and blood. Rather, John 6 picks up on the early church's practice of the Eucharist, the ritual consumption of bread and wine in conformity with Jesus' model in the Last Supper (Matthew 26).
Similarly, it seems the Luke-2 image of Jesus in the manger suggests the Eucharist: Jesus is the grain or bread we farm animals are to feed on if we're to live the deeper, richer, fuller, eternal lives that God intends for us.
Although the church has long debated whether the bread and wine of the Eucharist are the literal body and blood of Christ or instead something symbolic, at a minimum the taking of the elements enacts a prayer that God in Christ would be intimately close to us, part of us—incorporated into every aspect of our being just as food becomes the literal substance of our bodies.
Perhaps the most profound way to understand the manger, then, is as an invitation to commune with Christ, to feed on the Bread of Life, to take him in, to welcome him as our substance and life, just as Christians do when they partake of the elements of the Eucharist.
