The Christmas Cow

“The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.”  Isaiah 1:3

My mother’s nativity set is porcelain.  It was a rather optimistic choice for a family of three curious boys, and the figures received their share of battering over the years.  None of them so much as the cow.  The cow in the Michael family nativity set is missing at least one horn.  The glaze is scuffed off in a few places, and the hindquarter has a long brown seam, carefully mended with adhesive after a precipitous fall.

That was my fault.  When I was four or five I went through a cow stage.  Some boys memorize the starting lineup for their favorite baseball team or the Air Force fighter plane fleet.  But growing up in the country, with two farmers for grandfathers, my obsession was cows.  I knew all the breeds, where they had originated, which local farmers raised which kinds.  I could tell you the strong points of Guernsey milk and Angus steaks, and I knew all about those “hairy coos” in the Scottish highlands.   

And Christmas is the perfect holiday for a little boy drawn to cattle.

 I had a favorite carol, Away in a Manger, because the cattle get a mention in the second verse.  And right in the middle of our living room, there was a cow in gleaming porcelain.  He may have been intending to adore the Savior of the world, but when mom wasn’t looking, the figures could be artfully rearranged, for many sorts of dramas, with the cow at center stage.

I was very surprised, when I came to read the Christmas story for myself, that Saint Luke never thought to mention the cow.  His trough is there to be sure.  “She brought forth her firstborn son, and laid him in a manger.”  The cow gets a mention in a number of the carols, and no Renaissance painting of the Nativity  would imagine leaving him out.  

This isn’t just about lending a bit of realism to the stable scene.  The cattle, and the donkey  too, for that matter, point back to the words of a prophet from centuries before.  Isaiah, the most prolific of God’s spokesmen in the Old Testament, “The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel doth not know.”  The master’s crib--St. Luke uses the same word for the manger in the Bethlehem stable.  It’s a rare term, unmistakably pointing the listener back across the centuries.

The ox and the ass trust the one who feeds them, Isaiah is saying.  They come when he calls.  They are eager to receive the good things he brings to them.  They bend down into the crib, the manger, and they feast on the good things he has prepared for them.

But God’s people do not know Him.  They ignore the words of his prophets.  Their hearts are hard.  God told Isaiah to warn Israel about the judgment that was coming, the invasions they would suffer, the way all they held dear would be taken from them.  There was still time for them to turn to God and ask for mercy, still an opportunity for a new start.  But Isaiah can see that when he speaks, people just seem puzzled.  The ox is stupid, the donkey is stubborn, but neither can compare with the ignorance of God’s people.

It is as if God is just too far away, as if he speaks in a language they cannot understand.  One moment the people seem to fear him, and the next they act as if He takes no notice.  The prophet, for all the brilliant power of his words--and they are among the most arresting in literature--he can see that they will  not go far enough.  God’s people are in a fog, a haze of self-deception and destructive habit.  Sin has got hold of them, made them into beasts,

But what if God came even closer to us.  Would that be enough to break the spell?  What if He spoke not just in thunderclaps and fiery visions, but face to face? What if God lived among as one of us, to show us God’s true intention?  What if God set aside all His power, renounced all that would terrify and compel?  What if He came as a baby, and a poor one at that, laid in the manger of a cow?  

Well then, perhaps, we could listen and watch in a different way, and recognize God for who He has always been.  He made us in love, and longs for us to love Him in return.  He gives wisdom and strength, and hopes we will receive them and use them for the life He has intended for us all along.  He makes us new,  eager to welcome our Master, content to trust Him.  Once we were as stupid as oxen, as stubborn as donkeys, but when we meet Jesus we reclaim the dignity and purpose of creatures made in God’s own image.  Once beasts, we become human beings.  

You can see it that day at the manger.  The legends say that the donkey and the cow bowed before him first, and so they might, for He is their master too.  The Scriptures tell us shepherds, common men who stumble in from the field.  They bow low, and when they have seen Him, they are filled with an inexpressible joy.  Wise men would come in time, scholars from a distant land, speaking in strange languages, and they would do much the same.  So it happened over and over again in the thirty three years of his earthly life, and after his resurrection even until this night.  Men and women have met Jesus, and the spell was broken.  They trusted Him, and followed Him, and their lives were changed forever.  

He comes this night to break the spell of sin and awaken hearts to deeper faith.  He comes to bring peace to troubled souls and a warm welcome to the wanderers.  And He comes to feed us, like a good farmer feeds his cows.  

His sacred food will soon be spread here for us,  His own Body and Blood.  The Altar is the Master’s crib.  The miracle of Christmas unfolds for us anew when we feed on Him who is our Lord and our life.  A poet once greeted Him with these words:

Now God is flesh, and lies in Manger pressed
As hay, the brutest sinner to refresh.
O happy field wherein this fodder grew,
Whose taste doth us from beasts to men renew.