A pastor sees a beautiful Nativity set on the table of a family she is visiting. It is an absolutely exquisite porcelain manger scene.
Pointing to it she asks the 5 year old in the family, “Do you know what this is?”
The little boy replies, “Yes, it’s breakable.”
This fun little story makes me think.
Our kids pick up what we really focus on at Christmas, or at any other time of the year for that matter.
I imagine that child’s parents would have preferred he knew more about Jesus’ birthday and what it means, rather than that the Nativity set was breakable.
With all of the busyness at Christmas we run the risk (even pastors) of missing the real point or of sharing something other than God’s wonderful Christmas gift of hope, peace, joy and love that is born for us at Christmas.
Something else comes to mind too.
Manger scenes that are too pretty and can’t be touched sort of miss the main point of Christmas.
At Christmas God’s love in Jesus is born into a smelly barn. God’s son is placed to sleep in a manger, which is a feed trough for animals.
Christ the newborn king is born to a desperate young family who can’t even find a proper place to stay the night, let alone give birth.
Dirty shepherds straight from their work in the fields are the first visitors to come pay their respect, and maybe even hold the baby.
Manger scenes are meant to remind us that at Christmas God enters into the messiness of lives and families just like ours.
Lives and families filled with good and bad, easy and hard, joyful and sad. At Christmas God’s love comes down into the real world we know, which sometimes is filled with joy and wonder, and at other times seems so filled with hate and prejudice and greed.
I wonder how manger scenes would sell if they came complete with all the sounds and smells, the sights and textures of the real thing?
I have also often wondered where Mary and Joseph might have ended up if they were looking for a place to stay in 2016 as refugees in the violence torn Middle East?
Or what might happen if they were looking for a place right here in Southeast Michigan? And what if they knocked on my door?
Mary and Joseph might have ended up at a homeless shelter. If they couldn’t find their way to a hospital somewhere, who knows, maybe the baby Jesus would have been placed in a cardboard box and wrapped in swaddling newspapers or some old clothing.
That is the kind of real and desperate situation Mary and Joseph faced. And the kind of messy situation in which Jesus, the newborn King, came into as he entered our world.
This is what God chose – it was part of the plan. For you see, when God decided to “put skin on” and to be born in a manger, it was so he could get close to us – real close in our real and often very difficult lives – no matter who we are, where we’ve been, what we’ve done, or how things are going for us today.
For once we have found God in a barn, we can be sure that God is always with us in all of our joys and struggles. God’s holiness is found in the lowliest and least likely places, like in a stable…and on a cross.
The real Christmas story assures us that God is with us and loves us no matter what. This is the Good News we celebrate at Christmas!
“All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). Matthew 1:22-23
The Rev. Jonathan Heierman is Senior Pastor of Calvary Evangelical Lutheran Church