The Moral Way of the Manger
A Reflection on God’s Nature as Revealed in Jesus’ Birth
If you were with us on Sunday, you heard me say in the sermon that we’ve spent far too much time domesticating the manger—turning it into a sentimental little diorama instead of letting it confront us the way it once confronted the world. In the sermon, we spent time with the political and social edges of that wooden trough: a kingdom born from the bottom up, shepherds as the first evangelists, God’s solidarity with the poor and the forgotten. But there’s another dimension that Advent invites us to recover—one that goes deeper than social class or political posture. The manger is not only a sign of where God chooses to show up; it is a revelation of who God is morally. And if we pay attention, it exposes who we are meant to be.
The first thing the manger teaches us is the moral humility of God. It is not simply that Jesus happened to be born in a stable; it is that God willed it so. God chose smallness, obscurity, powerlessness. God chose to slip into the world through the womb of a teenage girl, in a borrowed feeding trough, among animals and strangers and the smell of hay.
If we had been in charge of the Incarnation, we would have held a series of press conferences that said almost nothing, dominated the headlines over a holiday weekend with slow leaks of information, maybe even staged a dramatic private flight from Oxford, Mississippi, to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, over being justifiably called out for our lack of clarity or loyalty to people who counted on us.
Or perhaps we would have chosen a palace, a royal lineage, and at least one round of angelic fireworks over Jerusalem.
God wanted none of that. Instead, He takes the lowest place so that no one—no matter how poor, broken, weary, or ashamed—would ever believe they are too low for Him to reach.
It is hard to admit this, but the humility of God is often more than we know what to do with. We are used to a world that celebrates the big, the loud, the powerful, the impressive. Yet Advent pulls us back to this simple truth: the God we worship prefers the lowest seat in the house. And if we are going to follow Him, sooner or later we are going to have to learn to prefer it too. That’s the moral claim of the manger—not simply that God became humble, but that humility is now the posture of every real Christian life. We cannot worship a Christ in the straw and then live as though we believe prestige will save us. The manger will not let us off that easily.
But if humility is the first moral lesson of Bethlehem, vulnerability is the second. I don’t mean fragility or weakness; I mean the kind of holy, self-giving vulnerability that refuses to protect itself at the expense of love. God becomes a baby. God becomes dependent—on Mary’s arms, on Joseph’s protection, on the kindness of strangers. God makes Himself touchable, interruptible, woundable. The Creator of the universe willingly steps into the world in the one form that can do nothing but receive.
This is a staggering moral vision. It means that at the heart of God’s character is not dominance, but self-offering. Not force, but invitation. Not coercion, but love that risks itself again and again. In the manger, God teaches us that love—real love—cannot be lived from a distance. It must come close enough to be hurt. Advent forces us to ask: Where in our lives do we need to risk vulnerability again? Where have we armored our hearts? Where have we allowed cynicism, fear, or disappointment to calcify us so thoroughly that the Christ child could knock on the door and we would be too self-protective to open it?
These two truths—God’s humility and God’s vulnerability—are not just abstract doctrines. They form the moral center of the Christian life. They are the reason Christianity is not an ideology but a way of being. And this is why the manger matters so much, especially as we move toward Christmas and also toward the return of Christ. The Judge who will come again in glory is the same God who once lay wrapped in cloth, unable to lift His own head. So if we want to be ready for His coming—either in Bethlehem or at the end of days—the first step is not fear, but formation.
We prepare by letting the manger re-teach us what goodness actually looks like. We prepare by learning to bend low, by loosening our grip on pride, by giving up the game of appearing put-together, by being willing to be seen in our fragility, by choosing compassion over control, mercy over mastery, generosity over self-protection. We prepare by letting Christ’s humility become our humility, and Christ’s vulnerability become our courage.
This Advent, my prayer for Christ Church is simple. I want us to recover the moral teachings of the manger. I want us to be a people unafraid of taking the lowest seat, unashamed of loving tenderly, unembarrassed by the small and simple ways God still enters the world. I want us to honor the manger not by admiring it from a distance, but by living in such a way that people who meet us glimpse something of the God who once chose straw over power and vulnerability over safety.
If we can do that—if we can let the manger form us—then we will be ready not only for Christmas morning, but for the Christ who comes again.
Pax et Bonum!
Fr. Ben +
