Monday Morning Music Ministry

12-24-18

I invite us to think of the manger scene, the Nativity creche, which despite the hostility of judges and hatred of some types of people, we all still see uncountable times throughout this season.

But let us try to think of the real Nativity group – not the shiny plastic, bright colors, or even inflatable angels, shepherds, animals, and Babe. How humble it was. How very humble. The root word of manger means “to eat”; and even if new straw was placed in the stable’s manger to receive Jesus, there likely were bugs and dirt and spittle that received Him too.

Aside from the fulfillment of prophecy, why did God orchestrate a situation where Joseph and Mary were rejected in all the inns? (In a city where the census was planned and held, I have often wondered if innkeepers did not want an unmarried young pregnant girl in their rooms…) Why were lonely shepherds and random animals the witnesses to Jesus’s first cries and naps? Could Mary have wondered, for a second, that the Savior of mankind deserved something a little less… humble?

The child she carried was conceived supernaturally. Behind the shepherds and next to the animals were angels. There were miracles aplenty in that lonely stable. But…

Jesus the Messiah could have descended from the clouds, just as, thirty-three years later, He would ascend to the Father.

God could have sent His only-begotten Son into the world full-grown, with the shout of angels and sound of trumpets, as He will come His second time.

The Christ did not necessarily have to be a Christ-Child; He might have appeared as a man from the wilderness where, after all, He often would go to pray.

Such appearances surely would have affirmed His divinity, no? Perhaps the world might have received Him better, believed in Him more, not be so skeptical.

Is that so? Think ahead to those thirty-three years, when even His disciples, who lived and ate and traveled with Jesus, and saw miracles and healings and raisings from the dead… they abandoned Him when things got tough, scattering like dry leaves on a windy street.

No, we should consider it a miracle that the Incarnation – Jehovah, God-with-us – was in the most unlikely Form possible. It was not God’s sense of humor or irony, but the most gentle yet powerful means of reminding the world that He identifies with us. God Almighty, Creator of the universe, Holy and August Lord… reached down.

At that moment, that first Christmas as we call it, God did not need to remind us of how omnipotent He was… but how humble He could be.

Indeed, no other Jesus could have laughed and cried and thirsted and hungered and loved and been disappointed as He was to be. No other Jesus could, later, have suffered betrayal and endured pain like we experience. No other Jesus would have submitted to crucifixion.

Another Jesus – still looking ahead to the Easter counterpart – might have summoned 10,000 angels as He loosed Himself from the cross. But He didn’t; God’s way is always the right way, and instructive to us, if we listen.

How pathetic that the world shakes its collective fist, and spews hatred, at scenes that remind us of a humble Baby in crummy, smelly, yet holy, hay. How mysterious that the most humble setting and circumstance of the Nativity yet thunders though the centuries: the nexus of history; the reminder of God’s identification with us; the confirmation of His love.

How much like Him, however; right? As he chose humility, and Jesus ultimately was humble, even unto the cross, we are humbled by His workings.

Merry Christmas, and Humble New Year!

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