“What kind of sign is that?”
December 21, 2025
Luke 2:1-20
David A. Shirey
St. Paul AME Church
Manchester, KY
Is it fair to say the Christmas story as Luke tells it and we recreated it is one of the most familiar and beloved stories in the Bible? If I’ve heard the Christmas story and seen a Christmas pageant once, I’ve heard and seen them a hundred times. But this week one verse caught my attention to the point I put my Bible down, sat back in my chair, and said out loud to nobody in particular, "Hmm. What’s that all about?” The angels say to the shepherds, “Be not afraid, for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord." Then follows the line that caught me up short: "And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger" (Luke 2:10-12).
I thought to myself, “What kind of sign is that?” The angels’ announcement is of the birth of a Savior who is Christ the Lord. And what is the sign that accompanies an event of such earth-shaking, world-changing, life-transforming magnitude? (Drum roll, please) … a baby in a layette in a feed trough. I ask you: is that kind of sign proportional to that kind of announcement?
I looked up the word "sign" in a Bible dictionary and found this definition: “Sign: a significant event or act that betokens God's presence or intention.” Is a baby in a wooden crib wrapped in strips of cloth “a significant act that betokens God’s presence?” Before you answer that, let me put things in perspective. Do you recall some of the other signs in the Bible?
For instance, rain for forty days and forty nights (Genesis 7:12). Now that's a significant sign of God's displeasure with human waywardness. Followed by a significant sign of God's merciful promise never to destroy again: a rainbow painted from horizon to horizon (Genesis 9:13). There’s two signs for you: forty-day flood and technicolor rainbow. How does a baby in a feed trough compare?
Or how about when Moses was facing off with Pharoah and trying to convince His Stubborn Highness to let God’s people go? Think of the signs Moses did to try and convince Pharoah that God meant business (Exodus 7:8-11:10) – frogs, flies, cattle plague, boils and locusts, thick darkness. Those are some significant signs!
We're talking signs here – God-sized signs to accompany God-sized actions. But when the angels announce the climactic event of all time – the birth of the Son of God – what is the sign that accompanies it? Baby. Diaper. Feed trough. Is that all?
I've been thinking about what it might mean to ask Is that all? in response to the angels telling the shepherds that the sign of God with us is a peasant’s firstborn wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. I’ve concluded it indicates a faulty assumption about how God reveals himself to us. What I mean is this – if when we go looking for signs of God at work in our world we look only for the grand and glorious, the major league miraculous, the jaw-dropping spectacular, our God sightings will be rare because while we’re waiting for super-duper stuff we’ll never look in everyday ordinary places like mangers where God tells us to look and where God can be found. The angels are whispering a hint: Want to see God at work in this world? Don’t look up. Look down and out! God is to be found in the ordinary – in ordinary people in ordinary places. Among nameless shepherds: blue collar workers on the night shift. God’s extraordinary love can be seen in ordinary people like the one you look at in the mirror. Like the person sitting a few pews away from you this morning. Does God appear at The Crystal Cathedral in Los Angeles? At St. Patrick’s in New York City? At Westminster Cathedral in London and all the other multi-thousand seat palaces of stained-glass splendor around the world? Well, sure. But most often God appears in ordinary places like the building at 151 Town Branch Rd, Manchester, KY 40962, among a couple dozen down-to-earth people like you and me.
Speaking of ordinary, where was the Son of God born? Bethlehem of all places. Micah prophesied:
“But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,
though you are small among the clans of Judah,
out of you will come for me
one who will be ruler over Israel” (Micah 5:2)
I learned this week that the Hebrew word translated “small” has connotations of “insignificant.” Small sounds a lot better than insignificant, doesn’t it? I’d be more apt to say “I was born in a small town” than an insignificant one. What does it say about God that of all the places God could have chosen for God’s Son to be born, God chose the insignificant town of Bethlehem? Jerusalem is five miles away – a significant place if there ever was one – and yet God chose a crossroads five miles off the beaten path: Bethlehem. If God operated the same way today Frankfort or Louisville or Lexington would be the expected choice for a royal birth but generations later people would be singing “O Little Town of Manchester.” It’s a refrain throughout Scripture: God chooses what appears insignificant to do significant things. Jesus was born not in a palace, but a manger. He was born not to a princess, but a peasant. Not in Jerusalem, but in Manchester.
Do you remember the Charlie Brown Christmas special? (It came out in 1965!) Charlie Brown is commissioned to find a Christmas tree and he comes back with what we now call “a Charlie Brown Christmas tree.” When he brings back his scraggly nondescript tree, the gang says,
“Boy, are you stupid, Charlie Brown!”
“What kind of a tree is that? You were supposed to get a good tree!”
“Can’t you even tell a good tree from a poor one?”
“I told you he’d goof up!”
“You’re hopeless, Charlie Brown. Completely hopeless!”
The Peanuts gang was not pleased. Why? Because they had their minds on “a great, big, shiny aluminum Christmas tree.” Lucy said, “Get the biggest aluminum tree you can find, maybe painted pink.” And Charlie Brown came back with the Christmas tree equivalent of a manger.
Part of the meaning of Christmas is that God chooses and uses plain old ordinary people like you and me to accomplish God’s purposes in this world. Pardon me if I offended you by calling you ordinary. You may be a “great big shiny aluminum Christmas tree” sort of person. A legend in your own mind. If so, I beg your pardon for calling you ordinary. But if I’m reading the Bible correctly, God chooses ordinary folks like you and me at churches as unassuming as a manger to show forth God’s extraordinary love. As St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Consider your call, brothers and sisters; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth; but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong…” (1 Corinthians 1:26-28). St. Paul’s is not exactly “a great, big, shiny aluminum Christmas tree” kind of church, is it? But it’s exactly the kind of church God chooses to do mighty significant things. When Rembrandt set out to paint his rendition of the Nativity, guess who he asked to be his models? The local townspeople. Their names? Who knows? The local butcher, baker, and candlestick maker were all invited to gather around the manger. The master artist chose the ordinary to create something extraordinary. And now this morning we were all chosen by the Master – Almighty God – to participate in the telling of the Christmas story once again.
Says the angel: I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger” in a church on Town Branch Road in Manchester, KY, surrounded by some extraordinary ordinary people.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
