Christmas Eve

Summary

My mother collects crèches. You know, the little nativity scenes that usually include figurines of Mary, Joseph, the baby Jesus, shepherds, wisemen, animals and usually an angel suspended by a thread, hanging above it all. Well my Mom collects these, no, I mean really collects these, they are everywhere! Some are small and hang from various branches of the Christmas tree. Many are larger, taking up every flat space on the first floor of my parent’s house. One, which is carved from olive wood, she brought back from her visit to Israel. She has a paper crèche one from Germany. I gave her a ceramic one from Mexico. There are crèches of tin from the Caribbean, bas-relief cut glass from Scandinavia, a nativity scene made from bent straw sewn together, and even a simple pressed plastic one. It’s come to the point where at Christmas you can’t go anywhere in my parents house without the feeling that someone’s eyes are following you. Mary or Joseph perhaps!

But the one I remember the most, is one carved from rosewood. My Mom bought that one early on, when I was about six or seven. And maybe I remember it most, because when you’re young and a boy, you’re drawn to things that look cool and would seem fun to play with …like a…crèche. My Mom must have understood this having three boys, thus the indestructible plastic crèche, for it’s really not her style, but she knew her boys needed to be able to touch and play with one. But the rosewood crèche, was off limits to little fingers. Of course that proclamation only made the rosewood nativity scene even more enticing. We would get tired of playing with the pressed plastic one (“I get to be the cool looking shepherd now, you’ve played with him too long!) And go over and peer, very closely, at the rosewood one. The wood wasn’t carved so as to look like each of the figures, but rather to resemble their shapes, very stylistically. I thought they were beautiful! That nativity set always made me think of the story in the Bible and how special and important each of those people must have been for God to include them in the story of the birth of his Son. In my head I thought that you had to be uncommon to end up in the Bible like that, to be a part of God’s story you must have needed to be extraordinary. Even the little figurines who represented each of these people seemed so special, whether they were made of rosewood not to be touched or of plastic which could be, each seemed extra-special.

As I have grown older the thing that I realize that is truly uncommon and even amazing is the commonness of the people in the nativity story.

In their day, these people that God called to be Jesus’ parents weren’t anything special. As a father he called a young, overworked carpenter. Joseph wasn’t wealthy, probably didn’t own any land, and surely wasn’t a person of importance, at least yet, in his village. And he was generations away from any prestige that might be connected with his ancestor King David. Joseph was simply, as common as they come.

Mary. Well, Mary would have been very young. Possibly pretty, but we don’t know. And her worth as a person in her community was totally predicated upon her marrying a man, and then having children. Without a husband she was nothing. With a husband she was simply plain and common. In fact, she was just ordinary.

They were two common, poor people called by God to the extraordinary. A man and a woman called to play the two biggest roles in the life of a baby. They were called to be parents.

And the shepherds that we read about, who were they? They were the lowest of the workers, for they were the fellows who stayed out in the fields with those smelly, stupid animals. They were the ones making sure that the sheep didn’t get themselves killed by wandering over a cliff or stumbling into a lion’s den. A shepherd was not the guy, you looked up to and hoped to become. But you remember what the baby Jesus said 30 years later don’t you? “The last shall be first.”

Those simple shepherds shivering around their fire out on the bitter wind swept hills that night were the first. They were the ones whom were visited by the heavenly messenger and told of the simple, but amazing event of that night. The shepherds were the ones whom were serenaded by the angel choir, on that barren rocky hillside. These common folk were the ones chosen by God, to first hear the good news of God’s entrance into the world as a simple ordinary baby. These night-shift workers were the first to see and believe that this babe was Immanuel, ‘God with us’ and ‘He who saves’, Jesus the Christ. Besides Mary and Joseph, these shepherds were the first people whose lives were affected by the coming of the Messiah. They received a heavenly invitation that changed their lives. It was an invitation to the common person to experience the extraordinary… the advent of our Savior into the world.

I believe, that these dirty, smelly hillsmen, the most common of commoners, the most ordinary of all who are ordinary, understood that night, that God had come to earth for them. As Luke writes, “…the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen…”

They knew that God’s love was for them…and we must know this too!

Unlike my seven year-old self, I now understand that God comes and calls out to the ordinary, common person in love. He calls to us to hear and experience, all that he has to give, which is…life.

Jesus does not call us to perfect lives, but rather to lives filled with grace, his grace that forgives all and loves all. That baby, whom the shepherds encountered lying in the sweet, prickly hay in the manger that night, has given us the greatest gift of all time, God’s love and salvation freely. Out of the ordinary comes the extraordinary, forgiveness, grace and new life for all believers.

So this Christmas, I pray that each of you, come to understand and believe, that God’s gift is for you, freely given, and I hope, thankfully received. Go this night, in the knowledge of God’s love in your life, now and forever.

Amen, and Merry Christmas!

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