It is not the beginning we expect. No Christmas story, no baby in a manger. We are not even in Bethlehem. Like Genesis and St John’s gospel, St Mark insists this is indeed the beginning; it is the ...

And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. The reader concludes: The gospel of the Lord.