Twice Wrapped and Laid
How Cloths Framed the Life of Jesus
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I don’t know where I first heard what I’m going to share with you. I’m certain it was from a preacher, and I’ve seen it in Luke commentaries as well. I just can’t remember the first time I heard it. But it’s an observation that I absolutely love, and I bet you’ll love it too.
In Luke 2:7, Mary “gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”
The scene is a gentle one. Jesus is the newborn, and he is swaddled snuggly in cloths. The reference to a manger is a surprise, but the guest room (which is what “the inn” refers to) wasn’t available. So there, in a manger, lay the newborn Son—the promised king.
Wrapping and swaddling a child was customary. In fact, people still do it! And the need is obvious, because the newborn cannot take care of himself. He needs to be swaddled, given his dependent state.
This scene in Luke 2:7 is near the beginning of the Third Gospel. This same Gospel tells another scene, much later, involving Jesus being wrapped in cloths. In Luke 23:50–51, there was a man named Joseph from Arimathea, and he had not consented to the Sanhedrin’s decision and action that had put Jesus into the deadly hands of the Romans.
After Jesus’s death, Joseph of Arimathea “went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down and wrapped it in a linen shroud and laid him in a tomb cut in stone, where no one had ever yet been laid” (Luke 23:52–53).
This scene, like the one in Luke 2:7, seems gentle, but there’s also a grotesque element. This is no newborn body. The body of Jesus, in this case, has been crucified, and would be a ghastly sight. The blood, the visibility of muscle and bone from the flogging, the emaciated appearance—such a sight would have been overwhelming and sorrowful to take in.
Joseph asks for Jesus’s body, despite its condition, and he wrapped it in a linen shroud and laid the body in a tomb (Luke 23:53). You can picture the care and forethought being expressed. You can appreciate the boldness and perseverance of Joseph, who was known to be a good and righteous man (23:50) and was now preparing the body of Jesus for burial.
Birth and burial. In Luke’s Gospel, the scene of Jesus’s birth involved him being wrapped and laid, and the scene of Jesus’s death involved him being wrapped and laid. Mary wrapped him in Luke 2:7, and Joseph of Arimathea wrapped him in Luke 23:53. In 2:7 Jesus was laid in a manger, and in 23:53 he was laid in a tomb.
In Luke 23:53, we’re told that the tomb was “where no one had ever yet been laid.” If I might take that expression and apply it earlier in the Gospel too, I think we can assume that the same expression is true for the manger. The manger was for holding food, not babies. So, surely, the manger was also “where no one had ever yet been laid.”
Yet in these two places, the newborn body of Jesus and the crucified body of Jesus lay, wrapped by others with such care and devotion.