Mary and Mangers

Last week I shared Nadia Bolz-Weber's sermon on Mary, the mother of Jesus. You can find that sermon here: Sermon on Mary. An especially poignant piece of that sermon for me was this:

"She [Mary] got something I really struggle to understand: that getting a blessing is not the same as getting a present. She said yes not based on the expectation of things being awesome for her but based on the expectation that God can create something out of nothing. And the thing is: we just never know simply based on how our life feels if it is filled with blessing or not."

What we don't really know about Mary's story, despite all the sermons and nativities and paintings, is how or where or with whom she labored and gave birth. Kenneth Bailey and other scholars have raised some questions about our traditional Western interpretation of the word "manger" and our understanding of "inn."

"The text tells us, “She gave birth to her first son, wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger.” The traditional understanding of this verse in the Western world moves along the following path. Jesus was laid in a manger. Mangers are naturally found in animal stables. Ergo, Jesus was born in a stable. However, in the one-room peasant homes of Palestine and Lebanon, the manger is built into the floor of the house. The standard one-room village home consists of a living area for the family (Arabic mastaba), mangers built into the floor for feeding the animals (mostly at night), and a small area approximately four feet lower than the living area into which the family cow or donkey is brought at night (Arabic ka’al-bayt)." (Kenneth Bailey's The Manger and The Inn)

And from the same article...

"In Luke 2:7 kataluma is best understood as “guest room.” ... Joseph and Mary arrive in Bethlehem. They find shelter with a family whose separate guest room is full, and are accommodated among the family in acceptable village style. The birth takes place there on the raised terrace of the family home, and the baby is laid in a manger."

How might it change things, if we consider that Jesus was born, not in isolation and loneliness, but in community? What does it mean if Mary's story is not one of bravely facing the unknown alone (well, with Joseph...but he often gets a back seat, too...)? Within our own cultural context, are we actually more comfortable with the "brave and alone" story than we are with a story that involves community? Personally, I think it's a bit of a miracle that Mary was brought out of a potentially dangerous and extremely isolating circumstance (carrying a pregnancy and giving birth in her own community as an unwed mother) to a place where the Messiah could be born safely and in peace, among his own people.