This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

• Luke 2:12

On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.

• Matthew 2:11

SPOILER ALERT WARNING

If you intend to read this book, the following may give away the mystery

Not much here.

“The whole effect and character of the play depend on its being played in an absolutely natural and realistic style. Any touch of the ecclesiastical intonation or of ‘religious unction’ will destroy its intention. The whole idea in writing it was to show the miracle that was to change the whole course of human life enacted in a world casual, inattentive, contemptuous, absorbed in its own affairs and completely unaware of what was happening: to illustrate, in fact, the tremendous irony of history. It may be found advisable to make this point clear to the actors before they start, lest some preconceptions as to what is or is not ‘reverent’ in a Nativity Play should hamper the freedom of their performance. I feel sure that it is in the interests of a true reverence towards the Incarnate Godhead to show that His Manhood was a real manhood, subject to the common realities of daily life; that the men and women surrounding Him were living human beings, not just characters in a story; that, in short, He was born, not into “the Bible,” but into the world. That an audience will take the play in this spirit is proved to me by the various letters I received after the first broadcast. As one man in a country village put it, ‘It’s nice to think that people in the Bible were folks like us.’ And another correspondent: ’None of us realised before how much we had just accepted the story without properly visualising it. It … brought home to us as never before the real humanity of Jesus.’ There will always be a few voices raised to protest against the introduction of ‘reality’ into religion; but I feel that the great obstacle in the path of Christianity today is that to so many it has become unreal, shadowy, ‘a tale that is told,’ so that it is of the utmost importance to remind people by every means in our power that the thing actually happened- that it is, and was from the beginning, closely in contact with real life.”

• Dorothy L. Sayers, He that Should Come, Introduction, Four Sacred Plays

“WIFE: Then run and tell Father Joseph supper’s ready. You’ll find him out at the back. And have a look up the road to see if your Dad’s coming.
ZILLAH: Yes, Mother. (She runs out, calling) Father Joseph, Father Joseph!
WIFE: Now, Mother Mary, let me take the Baby and lay him in the cradle while you have your bit of supper. Come along, lovey, aren’t you a beautiful boy, then? There! Now you go off to sleep like a good boy. But he’s always wonderful good, ain’t he? Never cries hardly at all. Happiest baby as ever I see.
MARY: He is happy in your kind home. But when he was born, he wept.
WIFE: Ah! they all do that, and can you blame them, poor little things, seeing what a cruel hard world it is they come into? Never mind. We all has our ups and downs. Here’s your good man. Come along, Father Joseph. Here’s a nice dish of broiled meat for you. I’m sure you need it, working so late, too. I wonder you could see what you were doing.
JOSEPH: It’s a grand night. That great white star do shine well- nigh as bright as the moon – right over the house, seemingly. I’ve mended the fence.
WIFE: Isn’t it a real bit of luck for us, you being such a fine carpenter? And so kind, doing all these jobs about the place.
JOSEPH: Well, that’s the least I can do, when you’ve been so generous and shared your home with us.”

• Dorothy L. Sayers, The Man Born to be King

Boilerplate

In this mini-series, I will fulfill a promise.  Some time ago, published 14 January 2025, I wrote a brief synopsis of the book, Subversive by Crystal Downing.  The post is called A Subversive Christian.  In that book, I talked about the three books in the photo above.  And I especially wanted to do a mini-series on the book on the right, The Gospel in Dorothey L. Sayers.

Note that the title uses the preposition “in.”  Dorothy L. Sayers did not write a fifth gospel.  She did not write as if inspired directly by God.  The canon of Scripture is complete.

But in stating what this is not, then what is it?  All Christians have the Holy Spirit within them, guiding them.  When being a Christian is something you have inside you and through you, then your life will reflect that.  This book is how you can see various aspects of the Christian life in the works of Dorothy L. Sayers, mystery novels, plays, letters, and essays.

After the Introduction, it starts with Whose Body?  The editor’s attribute of a Christian that she focuses on is “Conscience.” Whose Body? is her first detective fiction novel featuring her main character, Lord Peter Wimsey.  Then in Death Must Advertise, we find Lord Peter has a couple of middle names.  His full name is Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey.

But we will stay in the Introduction for more than a week.  There are at least a half dozen quotes just in the introduction that look interesting.  I am not in a hurry to speed through this book.  I was not in a hurry to start it with me being over a year since I promised to make it into a mini-series.

But I would hope people could read my short stories and see the gospel being acted out in the characters in my fictional stories.  Deviled Yeggs grew up in a family of safe crackers, robbing from others.  He set out as a policeman, and then homicide detective, to redeem the family name but learning each person must have Christ redeem them individually.  Deviled’s wife, Trinity Naomi Tesla (TNT) Yeggs, was nicknamed “Nitroglycerin” (Glyce for short) by her parents because she was explosive when shaken.  But she found calm and peace in her husband’s arms, and eventually she found the same comfort and peace in the arms of Jesus as she faced “shaky” experiences.

Even when not writing about Jesus directly, the Good News (Gospel) appears in many ways in what a Christian writes.  Let’s enjoy this journey with possibly my favorite author (outside the Bible with C.S. Lewis in a tie with her), Dorothy L. Sayers.

Discussion

It is intriguing that Ms. Sayers had to argue for reality in her religious (sacred) plays.

Hollywood puts whatever they want into a movie to get it to sell.  I am sure it is the same with Broadway.  Biblically accurate films and plays rarely run on the major stages or huge movie theaters.

And when it comes to the birth of Jesus, just about all the Nativity scene is extrabiblical and mythology.  Much of it is argued by scholars who know the Holy Land and have been to archeological digs of that period.

My theory that is supported by Ben Witherington III and Kenneth Bailey is that Jesus was probably born in the home where David grew up in Bethlehem.  But since there was no room in the Guest Room (the Upper Room), Joseph and Mary stayed with the owners of the home in the main living quarters.  Without a crib, they used a manger (a dug-out hole in the floor, since the animals lived with the family, slightly lower floor – split level).  This meets everything that the Bible says.  There is no need to move after the baby is born to be in a house as Matthew states.  It matches the modest family dwellings of that time (and still used by some today).  And Joseph is not a social and familial idiot, in that the family knew he was coming and Joseph would know where to go and that he was welcome.

But without some of that information, Ms. Sayers was trapped by the idea of the barn.  The “Wife” in the dialogue from The Man Born to Be King is the wife of the Shepherd.  The Shepherd knew the significance of a baby wrapped in cloth and laid in a manger.  That’s what he did for the Passover lambs that had to be perfect to be acceptable.  And any person with a heart would make room for a poor family with a newborn.  And since Joseph was a carpenter, he repaid their kindness by fixing things for them.

In other words, put yourself in the shoes of the people that the Bible mentions and logically think of what they would really do.

I think that the pushback from the church was that they wanted to keep the Nativity antiseptic.  They wanted to portray Joseph and Mary as being god-like.

I love how the dialogue talks about Jesus crying.  I have asked people about the carol, Away in a Manger.  They had heard the song since their birth and believed it to be Biblically accurate.

One line is as follows:

The cattle are lowing
The Baby awakes
But little Lord Jesus
No crying He makes

For one, in the Bible, no animals are mentioned except for the sheep that the shepherds are tending in the countryside, not the “barn.”  But then, I would ask how Jesus communicated.  The verse says He did not cry.  I give an alternate means by slipping into a baritone voice and saying, “Mother, I require sustenance.”

If not crying at all is not a bit frightening to the young, inexperienced Mary, a baby speaking would cause her to faint.

In Ms. Sayers version, now that the shock of birth is over, Jesus rarely cries.

I have often thought about that.  A newborn cries for a variety of reasons, but the Bible hints that Jesus understood His deity early on.  Thus, He would have only cried, and then softly, when hungry or in some way soiled (wet or dirty).  Crying for attention would be self-centered, which all babies are naturally.  But Jesus would know to not unduly upset His mother. Note: My feeling about that.

But Joseph and Mary were real people, probably really poor people.  And there conversations would be about food, clothing, and shelter, not theological discussions.

Closing Prayer

Father, guide me.  We believe that Jesus was born of the virgin Mary.  We believe He had humble beginnings.  Luke says that He went to Nazareth after He had been in the temple and subjected Himself to His mother and father, not a rebellious teen.  But He was real, and He had a real life.  That means that He knows what it is like to be a human being.  It was absolutely not antiseptic.  Help us take heart in the fact that Jesus knows what it means to stub a toe.
In Thy Name I pray.
Amen

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.