Worship - 25 December 2025

Summary of the Christmas theme

Where was Jesus born? The Bible tells us it was in Bethlehem. But beyond that, the details are sparse. Not in an inn, because there was no room. Instead, we are told he was laid in a manger. That image has shaped centuries of imagination: warm wooden beams, soft light, gently breathing animals.

But the landscape of first-century Palestine suggests something different. Bethlehem sits in the rocky hills of what we now call the West Bank, a region defined by stone rather than timber. Many homes were built into caves, with living space toward the front and animals kept toward the back at night. Stone mangers and troughs were common. The word translated as “inn” is better rendered as “lodging place,” the family sleeping area. With Bethlehem crowded for the census, it is likely that Mary and Joseph were offered the back of such a cave dwelling, where animals sheltered and a manger was available.

In one sense, this detail does not change much. But in another, it changes everything. It reminds us that God in Christ is born in a particular place, at a particular time, with all the constraints and textures of real human life. The incarnation is intensely particular—small, vulnerable, located. Creating galaxies may be easier to imagine than God entering the world as a newborn child. Yet if this is true, then every human life has a point of contact with the Creator. God is not distant or abstract, but present, close, and involved.

Luke’s nativity story insists on this closeness. The angel announces good news to the shepherds, and the Greek grammar matters here. The “you” in “I bring you good news” is in the dative case—personal, direct, addressed to someone specific. This is not a general announcement to the universe. It is good news for you. God for you, with you, beside you.

That this announcement is first made to shepherds matters. They occupy the edges of society, much like the animals in the back of the cave. Lowliness is not an obstacle to God; it is the setting God chooses. From those shepherds, the promise extends to “all the people,” including us.

The challenge of Christmas is not simply to admire the story, but to engage it—to know God not as an idea, but as a person. The story begins in a cave and will end in another, a tomb that proves temporary. Between those two caves lies the hope of Christmas: that God enters human life as it actually is, and that this life, even in its fragility, is worthy of divine presence.