When Luke next places his birth “in a manger,” (Luke 2:7) and, moreover, soon to be acknowledged by simple shepherds, Jesus can no longer be referred to with monarchical language, nor can his meaning be restricted to a particular nationalism he earlier referred to as being “saved from our enemies” (1:71) and “rescued from the hands of our enemies.” (1:74) All eschatological expectations ←41 | 42→will have to be re-thought on the basis of Jesus’ birth. In fact, but this is one more of the many anomalies in the gospel of Luke, when the angel appears to the shepherds he says that the news he brings is “good news of great joy for all the people” (2:10). “All people” could not have been readily understood; everyone lived according to specific identities, attitudes, and beliefs. Universality may be proclaimed; no one, however, could understand its meaning, group identities were too rigid and interests too narrow. They will first have to overcome the imposed limits of their social world to begin to reconceive a future humanity. His death will begin the universal process of a human unity – a task, most obviously, revealed in his life and now moving towards its still distant and inconceivable fulfillment.
It is difficult to imagine a young couple (and most especially an expectant mother) being turned away by an in-keeper without inquiring whether other lodgings were possible; hospitality was an important virtue, especially when considering a pregnant mother-to-be. Mary was no doubt apprehensive, more so when her labor pains began; it is again difficult to see her alone, with no one but Joseph to help her. It is much more likely Mary was attended to by a village mid-wife, along with other women who would have been present to help with the birth, the cutting of the umbilical cord, washing the body of the newly born as well as taking care of Mary, comforting her perhaps with medicinal herbs. Whatever the actual events surrounding Mary’s parturition, Luke creates a narrative that ignores the realities of childbirth – as do classical scenes of the crèche with Mary fully clothed and standing beside Jesus. Denying the full humanity of the scene has been unfortunate if understandable. Being born in a manger, though reflective of his humility and as distant as possible from a royal house, has the added meaning of being homeless – a state in no way indicative of deprivation or destitution; on the contrary, to be without home at the moment of his birth means, for everyone, that Jesus will live so as to re-fashion the idea of a home in a family and a particular people. To be born in a manger, surrounded by animals, is antithetical to the pretension of a royal birth, in the “house” if David, in a palace, and being nothing more than an inheritance. Jesus could not be born in a residence. He had to be homeless (as “the son of man” will proclaim to be necessary) out in the world and without comfort or safety, estranged, out of place. Despite Luke’s genealogy, Jesus’ birth in a manger amongst domesticated animals and watched over by shepherds makes him completely opposed to being in any way related to the house of David and its royal line. Luke allows the reader to think the difference between a manger (a feeding-trough for animals) and a royal palace. The full humanity of Jesus must continually be affirmed; and he can only be a revelation when he begins in a birth-place better suited for animals, ←42 | 43→a sense of creation to its foundations, amidst the natural world and in the triadic relationship of animal, human being, and God. The body of Jesus is in close proximity to the human and animal world; his body re-affirms the majesty of the natural world as well as the body of his mother Mary who now claims for herself a designation reserved for Eve, Chavah, “the mother of all living.”
In Luke 2:21, we are told that “he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb.” The name is also a calling. Jesus the man will call himself into the world out of necessity. The name Jesus, also translated, or its significance explained, is by no means self-evident in meaning or consequence. The name is first uttered by an angel, a hermeneutic being, in other words, who translates the language of God and makes it comprehensible for human beings to understand. To “save” the people (not simply his people) from their hamartia has the sense of recollecting what all people have, until now, missed. Jesus comes into the world so as to call humanity back to a beginning they have relinquished and missed; the symmetry between Jesus’ life and God’s act(s) of creation leads to a new future. The sense of hamartia as what has been missed involves recollecting what, until now, has been made ineffectual (powerless) by the actuality of the world – that is, its finite reality; and this is the reason Jesus will be murdered with extreme violence and, shortly after his birth, persecuted by a king, Herod, who can only understand anything at all from the limited perspective of his social place – the place he has been assigned, by a royal birth and Roman appointment, to hold with tenacity and dread for as long as possible, with a double-threat perpetual and terrifying: usurpation or death.
After Jesus’ birth, abiding in a manger due to an inn being full, Luke presents a scene involving shepherds tending to their flocks and an angel (a messenger and a translator) appearing to them with an announcement. Luke, the writer, does not have the authority himself to make such a claim – the reason an angel, with access to God and his message, becomes necessary in the narrative. Luke depends on an angel since he cannot grant himself the authority of being directly related to God much less have the authority to proclaim his message. The angel appears to the shepherds who are, understandably, afraid, and makes several announcements, first about Jesus’ purpose in the world, to bring good news and that he will be called a “Savior,” (soter) (2:11) a word the shepherds understood to be deeply personal, someone who takes care of life and rescues from threats and danger and death. Luke must sense, or know, that there are now two different and perhaps incompatible, certainly ambiguous aspects to the account of the birth of Jesus. Caesar Augustus may be the emperor of Rome and the de jure leader of Judaea and Galilee, with his proxy Herod, but the arrival of Jesus as someone whose individuality will affect the future will have much more lasting ←43 | 44→consequences, most especially in his influence upon “all people.” He cannot be understood as being limited by an identity he necessarily inherits (though does not adopt – as we will see) because of a soon to be evident self-understanding. As a new-born infant, he can in no way determine the traditions of his father and mother. He cannot, for example, comment on his circumcision, on his mother’s situation and the time for their “purification according to the law of Moses,” (2:22) or on the mandatory visit to Jerusalem to offer the appropriate sacrifices after the birth of a child. The observances are traditional and, for his family, a duty to respect and fulfill. Jesus, as a new-born infant, cannot determine any observances, as he will so adamantly do during his ministry. The man will act to restore to the child (and all children) a freedom to determine themselves for his teaching rather than tradition. The world Jesus is born into may claim and raise him but no history or culture, however binding, can determine