This is where God bends low?

19 Dec

Series: Getting Ready for An Aussie Christmas
By WJ de Kock, ThD
Educational Consultant to Partners in Ministry
Professor of Practical Theology at Palmer Theological Seminary of Eastern University

Christmas Day is now only a few days away. The shopping centres are in full chaos; people circling car parks like seagulls fighting over chips, trolleys abandoning their posts mid-aisle, the checkout queues stretching into eternity. Everyone's in a frenzy. Buy more, do more, perform joy even if you're barely holding on. And somewhere in the middle of all that frantic energy, you're standing in your church, wondering: How do I invite people into something real when the entire culture is screaming at them to perform?

The temptation, of course, is to try and compete—to make our church services more spectacular, our carols more moving, our welcome more dazzling than the Boxing Day sales. But you can't out-perform a culture that has perfected the art of the spectacle. The answer isn't to shout louder. It's to whisper something truer, more real.

Over these five weeks of reading these blogposts, you've been moving toward something that runs counter to all that noise. You've been learning that the incarnation doesn't happen once, sealed away in history. It keeps happening. It's happening now—around tables, in the stories your people are learning to speak, every time you gather and let the pretence fall away.

And that brings us back to where it all began: the manger.

Here's a question: What's the equivalent of a manger today?

Not a feeding trough for animals, but something thrown away, repurposed, deemed unusable by the mainstream. Think about it. In first-century Bethlehem, sleepy ng in a manger was what you used when you had nothing else. It was the object you reached for when all the proper channels had closed their doors. It was improvisation born of necessity. It was making do with what was at hand.

Today? The manger might be the worn-out community centre that's been scheduled to close. The church hall with the flickering fluorescent lights and carpet that's seen better decades. The kitchen table in the Housing Commission flat. The park bench where the rough sleeper sits. The support group meeting in the basement of a weathered pub. The online chat room where lonely people find each other at 3 a.m. The school chaplain's cramped office. The prison visiting room.

These are our mangers—the spaces the culture has written off. The places nobody calls "impressive." The venues that don't photograph well. The moments that won't go viral. The gatherings that won't make the news.

Luke tells it simply: "While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them."¹

Notice what Luke doesn't say.

He doesn't say, "Eventually they found somewhere better.”
He doesn't say, "This was temporary."
He just says: here. In the place that was left. In the space nobody chose.
That's where the birth happened.

The angel tells the shepherds—those blokes on the night watch, those people nobody invited to the fancy inn—a sign: "You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."² Not a throne room. Not a five-star venue. A manger. The very place the culture would pass by. The very sign that says: Here. This is where God arrives. In the overlooked spaces. In what's been cast aside.

And here's what changes everything: if the manger is the pattern—if it shows us where God actually works—then maybe the spaces we think are too small, too damaged, too "not impressive enough" are exactly where Christ is being born right now.

That worn-out community centre? That's a manger. That's where a young mum finds community when she's drowning in isolation. That basement support group? That's a manger. That's where someone speaks their addiction for the first time and discovers they're not alone. That flickering-light church hall where you've gathered people to tell their stories for five weeks? That's a manger. That's where Christ is being born in their testimonies, in their vulnerability, in the fact that they showed up.

When Jesus taught, he said something that shattered every assumption about power: "Foxes have holes and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."³ He wasn't seeking out the prestigious venues. He wasn't waiting for the right infrastructure. He was moving through the world as a guest, dependent on welcome, always showing up in the spaces the powerful had abandoned.

The arc from manger to cross tells the whole story: a God who keeps choosing the overlooked places, dwelling with those the world has discarded.

And here's where everything shifts: if the manger is the pattern, then every table where you gather in truth becomes a manger. Every circle where the vulnerable are welcomed, where pretence falls away, where someone speaks their story and is actually heard—that becomes Bethlehem. That becomes the place where Christ is born again in our time.

Not because you've done something perfectly. But because that's where Christ says he'll be. In the spaces we thought were too broken. In the gatherings we thought were too small. In the moments we thought weren't "big enough" to matter.

Picture the woman living in her car who sits at your worn-out church table and suddenly realises: I'm welcomed here. I'm known. That's Bethlehem. Picture your home when you open it not because it's perfect, but because it's real—dishes in the sink, kids loud and honest, your own vulnerability sitting alongside theirs. When pretence drops and truth gets spoken—that's Bethlehem. That's the manger, happening again.

We've trained ourselves to believe that more is better. Bigger events, more impressive services, more decorations. We wrap our churches in tinsel like we're competing in a shopping centre. We photograph it all and post it, and for a moment we believe we've captured something holy. But here's what the manger teaches: God doesn't need our upgrades. God doesn't wait for us to have the right venue, the right program, the right aesthetic. God shows up in the spaces we've already written off.

Incarnation has nothing to do with spectacle and everything to do with presence. With simplicity. With showing up in a place that's been forgotten and saying: This matters. You matter. God is here.

This final week before Christmas, as the temptation rises—add one more decoration, one more event, one more thing to make it "special"—what if you stopped? What if you didn't upgrade anything? What if you simply opened the doors of whatever imperfect space you have and said: This is enough. You are enough. Christ is here.

Christ is being born in us. In our stories. In our presence with one another. In the moments when we're truly known. In the vulnerability we've risked. In the table we've shared. In this worn-out, overlooked, ordinary space. The Christmas miracle isn't finished. It continues.