It is a very familiar story. All the players are there, Mary, Joseph, shepherds, angels, and of course, most importantly, the baby Jesus, tucked safely in a manger “asleep on the hay.” This evening we began with a procession to the manger to lay the baby Jesus down. And as one would expect from the Savior of the world, the baby Jesus has laid there quietly throughout the beginning of the service, and will continue to stay quiet and calm until we are through. Like the old carol proclaims, “the little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.” Of course, in this case the little Lord Jesus is a doll, so, you know, that helps with the whole “no crying” thing. Live infants are rarely so accommodating.
Processing to the manger with the baby Jesus reminds me of another procession involving a different infant, this one not as accommodating as the baby Jesus has been this evening. Some of you were here a few months ago when my best friend and her family came to visit and you met her daughter Emma. Emma is now seriously pushing three, a bundle of boundless energy, blonde ringlets, and a mind of her own. The curls are a recent addition, the independence she has had since before she was born.
When Emma was just a couple months old, I was staying with them while I was scheduled to preach at my home church. Worship was at 10:30, and we made plans to be at church around ten. Emma, however, had other plans. I won’t go into detail, other than to say that I put my alb on in their car while Emma’s dad took a liberal read to traffic rules, bailed out of the car as it slowed to a stop in front of the church, walked in as the presiding minister said the amen following the confession and forgiveness, and sidled into my place in the procession as the organist struck the opening chords of the gathering hymn. As I struggled to catch my breath, my pastor handed me the lapel mic, eyebrows raised. “Emma,” I whispered, to which she, the single mother of her own charmingly rambunctious nine-year-old, smiled, gave a knowing nod, and took her own place in the procession.
Babies, children in general, are unpredictable. As anyone who has ever tried to schedule anything with a child in tow knows, they have their own way of doing things. Our baby plays his role well today, but had we a live infant in the manger; it is safe to say that by this point in the evening, we would probably have an empty manger and a rather annoyed live infant somewhere in the hallway.
In fact, if you think about it, there’s actually something a little bit off about the entire manger scene. Let’s break it down. We’ve got Mary and Joseph standing adoringly over the manger, both looking calm and collected, Joseph holding a lantern or a staff, or some other mark of manly protection over his little family. Surrounding the domestic scene are snow-white sheep, kneeling shepherds, a precious moments angel, and three kings bearing gifts, despite the glaringly obvious problem that the kings show up much later in Matthew’s Gospel, and not at all in Luke’s. And in the center of it all sleeps the baby Jesus, oblivious to the chaos around him, peacefully arranged on a bed of itchy hay as if it was a pillow of clouds, arms outstretched in a cosmic embrace. The whole thing is quiet, serene, and smells ever so faintly of the orange-scented cleaner Co-op used to mop the floors yesterday.
What’s odd about this picturesque little scene is that it bears very little resemblance to any actual experience of delivering a baby in a barnyard. Or delivering a baby anywhere, really. Jesus, for one, would have way less hair. And what hair he had would be mixed with hay and goopily plastered to his red, blotchy, misshapen head. Mary, rather than looking like she just delivered a baby on a made-for-TV special, would be tired, sweaty, and red-faced herself. Blissfully happy maybe—probably—but likely not quite so calm and collected. And Joseph? Well, I cannot imagine many first-time dads whose children were just delivered in a barnyard with the composure to calmly hold a lantern. As for the precious moments angel, remember his first words to every single person he met was basically to try to keep them from running away screaming. The actual manger scene probably had quite a bit more “what do we do with the Son of God now” and “look out, I just stepped in sheep poop” than it had fluffy clean sheep and quiet adoration.
The nativity was messy, and I’m not just talking about sheep poop. It was a time before paternity tests, but already the questions were circling about who was the father of this child, born in a stable because his parents could not provide a home for it, despite their best efforts. Attended on by shepherds, outcasts of society, dirty and forgotten. And if we expand our gospel to let the wise men into this strange little scene we also have to let in King Herod, the crazy, violent dictator so threatened by this child that he calls for the death of all children under two and forces the holy family to become refugees in Egypt. The clean, well-lit, orange-scented manger scene is nice, but the story we read in the Bible is way more messy.
Which is good I think because life, like the nativity, is messy. And like the nativity, we often try to create a story for ourselves that glosses over the darkness in exchange for a cleaned up version of the light. But the scriptures invite us to come as we are, bearing our own fears, our own scars, our own shaky insecurities. To come with our moments of “I can’t take the pain” and “whatever will we do now” and the piles of sheep poop that we avoid or not with varying levels of success. We try to clean up these varying versions of ourselves, with results that feel like white-washed sheep around a manger. Maybe, like Joseph, our hands shake this evening as we try to hold the lantern, for the work of keeping it all together is exhausting.
So while it may feel like an odd exercise to clear away the sentimentality surrounding the manger scene, and it probably wouldn’t sell many Christmas cards, but it will do something else. It will help us see that there is space in the story for us. For our hands, dirty as the shepherds, for our fears, wide as King Herod’s. For our stories of things unexpected and prayers for children who didn’t come.
The nativity scene is not something we stand at the edge of, it is something we are intimately a part of. We belong at the manger. We with our pain, our brokenness, our confusion and aloneness are the story. That is what Christmas is all about. The promise that God reached out to humanity and laid divine hands on us, on our sweaty foreheads and tear-stained faces, on our shaking hands and our fearful hearts. Reached out with an angel that left us quaking in our boots and said to us, “Do not be afraid. For to you is born this day, in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” We come to this night not as observers but as participants in a holy miracle. The miracle that Christ was born to us, in us, and that in his birth, death, and resurrection we are made new.
This is hard, and it’s different, to see the story in this way. But I invite you this night to come. Come as you are, come who you are, because to you the Christ child is born. It may feel unfamiliar at first, like a toddler’s first few steps wobbly feet, to approach God in this way. But come, because the hand of God reaches out to steady those steps. And as you come, maybe offer to hold the baby for a bit, to take the Christ child for a walk so that Mary and Joseph can get some sleep. It’s hard work, this being born anew. But we’re all in it together. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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