The Manger by Rev. Dr. Jay Marshall Groat – December 22, 2024, at Mount Vernon, Ohio, based on Luke 2:1-20

Well, this is it, the fourth Sunday in Advent, we’re getting closer. If you’ve been here at least one of the Sundays you hopefully remember that during Advent I’ve lifted up at the beginning of every one of the four messages, and I’m doing it today, there are two of the four Gospels that contain what we call birth narratives, Matthew and Luke. The first two Sundays of Advent we looked at Matthew. Last Sunday and today we’re looking at Luke. The title of the message is “The Manger.” And thank you, Luke, for giving us the image of the manger, because he’s the only one who does. Matthew doesn’t do it. Luke is the only one. In his birth narrative we have this wonderful notion of shepherds out by night keeping watch over their flock, and if you weren’t here last Sunday, glad you’re here this Sunday, because I want to lift up to you, because you didn’t get to hear it last Sunday, that as much as it cuts against the grain of what a lot of us think in modernity, shepherds at the time of Jesus were mostly a despised profession. They were outsiders and people avoided them. One of the reasons was those sheep would often eat on land where they weren’t welcome. People had to chase them off. Luke tells us these shepherds are out at night in the dark, and there appeared before them in some way angels, and as is always the case when people are visited by the angels in the Bible the shepherds are afraid.

One of my favorite moments ever since I’ve been your interim pastor is Sunday morning when I get to sit in my office and for better or worse I’m ready for worship, I’m ready. It’s almost always for better, I think, and I’m sitting there, it’s about five after nine, and just across the hall the choir starts to warm up and to sing. Most of the time I really like what they’re singing and that was true this morning and I was listening, and I was even inspired to the point where I got my bulletin and I thought, “Oh, I like that, what’s the title of that?,” because I’m a big title guy. And the title of the anthem was, “Sing With the Angels.” That’s what we heard this morning. It’s like I had this temptation to go in and interrupt the choir right in the middle of the piece and say, “When do you come to the scary part? You say you’re singing with angels, you’re listening to angels, when do you come to the part of the song where you’re scared to death?” Well, I didn’t.

If Christmas is about anything at all it’s about the fact that we all know about darkness. And we all know about the gift of light. And we all know every one of us from time to time are afraid. This is one of the greatest gifts that the ministry has given me in 37-plus years. When I started out as a guy in my late 20s, I can see now, I didn’t know anything. I actually thought that the more successful you were and the more money that you had, the less darkness and problems you had in your life. I actually thought this. I served this church in suburban Chicago as an associate pastor in one of the most affluent suburbs in Chicagoland. Some of you know Chicagoland, it was Riverside, the First Presbyterian Church in Riverside. There wasn’t a poor person in there. I found out that everybody knows about the struggles of life, and everybody knows about darkness and everybody knows what a gift light can be, that light is.

The meaning of the manger. I disciplined myself this week as I prepared to deal with you, I said to myself, “Groat, you get excited about these images. I wish I could have an audience with Luke and say, ‘Thank you, Luke. Thank you for giving us the image of the manger.’” What does the manger mean? Most of us can agree that one of the meanings of the manger is humility, the gift of humility. If you look at the world with eyes of humility, you’re more likely to see the people who need the light.

I shared with you last Christmas, because when we talk of mangers I talk about it every Christmas, I talk about Cabrini. Is there a more beautiful name on earth for a high school girl than Cabrini? Cabrini and I came in touch on Facebook, she was a member of a youth group back in suburban Chicago. She was a high school student. Our senior high youth group, most of the kids were from our church, some of them were friends who came from other congregations. Cabrini was a good Catholic girl, she still is. Now she’s a good Catholic girl I think in her mid-40s. Cabrini came from a family such as this – when she was a baby they were living in this affluent suburb but it was just her, she was newly born, and her father left her and her mother, just left. Cabrini’s mother had this newborn baby, she lived in one of the few apartment complexes in that suburb. Her husband left, took all the money. You know this happens, right? We know this stuff happens. Somehow it came up naturally. Cabrini was not in crisis at the time, we were in some sort of normal conversation, whatever that means, and Cabrini told me something that changed me. It changed the Christmas story for me. I think of her every Christmas. She works in admissions at a really nice, solid Catholic institution in northern Wisconsin. She’s made a career in university administration. She told me that when she was a baby her mother couldn’t afford a crib. She had a big, antique dresser. We’ve got one of these at home, I bet that many of you have too. You know these old dressers that have drawers in them that would fit like three to five people, right? Cabrini’s mother couldn’t afford a crib, so she put her baby in the top dresser drawer. The manger’s about humility.

My life also changed when one of my mentors said, “Remember, Groat, whenever you preach a sermon about humility half of the people that you’re preaching to have too much.” Right? Some of you have too much, you don’t need anyone to speak up for you. That’s up to you to decide. But some of us need to be reminded daily what a gift the manger can be, what a gift humility can be. The message of the fourth Sunday in Advent. 

I want to tie things up with this. I know at least one of you, let’s have a show of hands of the people who were at the Ohio State-Tennessee game last night. Some of us were home watching, right? Let’s have a show of hands from those who attended yesterday at noon at the University of Mount Union the Division III football playoff game between Mount Union and Johns Hopkins University. How many of you were there? I was. Anybody else? I didn’t see you. I was there. I’m a graduate of what was Mount Union College, it’s now the University of Mount Union. Those of you who might follow sports know that Mount Union is quite a dynasty when it comes to Division III football. I try to go to at least one game a year. Yesterday was the day, and I went by myself.

My great-grandparents, Howard and Maddie Cook, Quakers from Beloit, which is down the road from Alliance, they’re buried, their gravestones are in the Alliance City Cemetery. Their gravestones are right here, those were my grandmother’s parents. In front of them are my grandparents’ gravestones, Harry “Mac” Groat, who died of a heart attack in 1953, five years before I was born, my grandfather. And my grandmother, Helen (Cook) Groat, my dad’s mother, who died in 1974, her gravestone is there. My Aunt Mary, my dad’s older sister, who died too early of leukemia, a World War II veteran, died in 1974, her grave is there. Before the big game I went and visited them. It was 12 degrees wind chill. It was a short, meaningful visit, and I did what I always do, I talked to them. I don’t always say the same things because I’m a different person. You know, time changes us, hopefully improves us a little. I took whoever I am at this point, and I was all by myself – believe me, there wasn’t anybody there – and I asked them essentially the same question that I ask them every time. I said, “Well, tomorrow’s the fourth Sunday in Advent, it’s the Sunday of joy. I’m going to read something from Isaiah about light shining in darkness.” I asked my great-grandparents, who I never knew, and I asked my grandparents, I knew one of them, and I asked my Aunt Mary. I knew her, she was wonderful. I said, “Tell me what I need to know. Tell me what I need to know.” And every time they tell me. They do. 

I left the cemetery, and I went to the game. Mount Union won. We’re playing in the national championship on Sunday, January 5 in the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl. I know you’re all going to watch it, it’s on ESPN. It’s in Houston, Texas. I’m not going. I was on the visitor’s side at halftime, it was freezing, and I walked up to the top of the bleachers. I put my back to the field, I turned around, and I said to myself, “Tomorrow’s the fourth Sunday of Advent.” I spent four years of my life on that campus as an undergraduate student and three years as an admissions officer before I went to seminary. That’s seven years. That’s a biblical number. I looked around and made sure nobody was around me. I looked down and that was the sidewalk I took three times a day to walk down to the Campus Center to go to meals. I said to myself, “These shepherds were visited by angels. If I look out at this sidewalk I wonder if I’ll see myself walking down that sidewalk as a frightened freshman in college pretending that I wasn’t afraid. I wonder if I’ll see myself.” Did I? You better believe it. So, I shouted to me. I said, “Hey, how you doing?” And I looked up at the sky at the football game and I said, “Who are you?” And I said, “I’m you. How are you?” And I looked up at the sky and I said, “Good. How are you?” And I said, “Well, tomorrow’s the fourth Sunday in Advent, and light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it, and every day is a manger.” That’s what I said to myself, a freshman. I said, “Every day, buddy – don’t forget it – is the manger.” And he looked up at me and he said, “O–K.” And the game was over, and I came back here to be with you. Happy fourth Sunday in Advent. Today is the manger. Amen?