Nativity [Christmas Eve 2019]

The Rev. Jeremiah Williamson

Luke 2:1-20

Nativity

Every year, one simple family interrupts the entire whirling world – introduced each December, encased in an impossible porcelain innocence.  In the hustle and bustle of our Christmas chaos, there is something about that simple nativity scene that causes the swirling scramble of life to take pause, to take notice.  It is a simple scene that somehow carries a story so ancient and mysterious that it defies even time – a story at once steeped in cosmic grandeur but so intimate that it hugs your soul warm, if that makes sense to you.  So intimate that, on this special night, it feels like we might be able to cradle a miracle in our hands.  

The scene is like a desert fairy tale preserved in snow globe preciousness.  There’s that beautiful baby face.  And the young mother with her shy smile.  And the new father, both nervous and proud.  And the curious animals that frame the scene.  And that star – shining so impossibly bright that it must have felt as if someone poked a hole in the very thing that keeps heaven from spilling into earth.

We visit the scene every year at this time.  And no matter what is happening in the world beyond those big wooden doors - the suffering that haunts the news, the pain we hide in our hearts – this scene never changes; it is something timeless in world of perpetual motion.  And if for only a moment, every Christmas Eve, it promises us the possibility of escape, escape from the stress of the bustle, into the comfort of an old, old story, painted in the most tender of sepia tones, and everything feels OK.  OK because of a baby and his mother and father and the animals and that impossibly bright star. 

The simple manger scene glows like an oasis of warmth in a frigid world.  It beckons us to abandon the isolation of our age for an intimacy that looks like salvation.  It feels like if we could just cozy up forever in the corner of the stable, just behind the friendly sheep and the stern, old cow, and be soothed by the holy baby’s coo, and listen to his mother whisper lullabies, we would be safe and sound; we could rest assured in the warm nostalgia of that holy night. 

But always it moves through our fingers like ether.  It floats through our souls like a dream.  That warm, nostalgic feeling will, we know, soon give way to the chill on the breeze, and to the enormity of life - just like it does every year.  But for a moment, just a moment, in the darkness of the night, in the warmth of such tenderness, this story kisses our world.  And it is beautiful, impossibly beautiful.  

But it never lasts.  The sun comes up the next morning and Silent Night fades.  The scene, like the story, is carefully wrapped in fraying tissue paper and placed back in its box until next year.  The feeling flags and life goes on.  And so it goes.

As the star’s blaring spotlight fades from the scene, we are reminded that this romantic story is set in a decidedly unromantic world.  In fact, the morning sun reveals something that the soft glow of starlight always seems to obscure: this baby and his supporting cast awake to a gritty world of dirty shepherds, endless wars, violent tyrants, and afterbirth.  Not in some fairy tale land, not once upon a time, this story happened in history, in the very world we inhabit, our world – a world haunted by suffering and broken by pain.

The miracle of Christmas is hidden in the nativity scene – obscured by sanitization.  The miracle of Christmas is not that the baby came out squeaky clean or that Mary seems to have lost the baby weight instantly; the miracle is that this is where we find God.  It is miraculous because we don’t typically look for salvation in the gritty manger of a peasant child, neither do we look for hope in the womb of an unwed teenage girl, or reflected in the faces of some shepherds living, in this case, literally, on the margins of society.  That is why the angels tend to steal the scene; they are the only thing here that looks remotely like our picture of Heaven.

But while the angels danced far beyond the reach of mere mortals, a weary world held its breath, desperate for something to make contact, to touch the parched earth that so selfishly laps up every human tear, every drop of sweat, every ounce of blood.  We needed a God who would touch our pain, and cry our tears, and defiantly scream into our darkness.    

        

And that is what we find in the light of day.  The night is beautiful.  But the next day, after the endorphins have worn off and the guests have left town and the panic has set in, God is still there.  The angels fade back into the heavens and the star dims, but the miracle remains. 

The beauty of the nativity, the beauty of this story, the beauty of Christmas, the beauty of our messy world and our messy lives, is that God is right here, right in the middle of it.