The Unlikely King

I have a crèche set similar to this one. Mine is on the top shelf of the linen closet. Each year I take it out, check the figures for chips or breakage, put the small wooden frame together with two screws, and then put the characters into their expected and respected places. Wise Men from the East, they all stand together, each ready to offer a valuable gift to the infant. Shepherds have their formation on the opposite side with a lamb or two for effect. Camels and cows are relegated to the back row, because they really don’t have a part in the story and because they’re too big and would take up to more space in the front row. Then, of course, there are the characters that get stage center: Mary, Joseph and the infant they named Jesus. They are placed on the wooden platform in the exact center of the assembled characters. Add a little straw or maybe some greenery in the back, some blinking lights and a long red ribbon to provide some color.  And there you have it, the manger scene we carry in our minds and imaginations as a prelude to the angels’ announcement of the child’s birth. Angels! I forgot the angels who have landed and are walking around in the group. And, finally, also lost to my aging memory, the star hovers over the manger, the well traveled star that led the Wise Men on their long journey to see the face of God.

I have a feeling, unsubstantiated by fact or reason, that the real scene was not as neat and tidy as the one on my dining room table. In the first place, these people gathered around the manger would never have found common ground in real life. Kings and shepherds. Smelly animals and stinky straw. I think there was a lot of coming and going, people arriving to take a peek, people passing through and then leaving, Wise Men who had traveled many hundreds of miles to meet a king only to find a baby in a barn. The shepherds must have been thinking: I’ve got to get back to all those sheep waiting in the pasture for my return. There might be wolves in the area and here I am watching a baby sleep. Manger scenes depicted on greeting cards are neat, tidy, well arranged, and very pleasing to the eye.  As I said, I can’t prove it, but the Bethlehem scene was not like this at all. And if that’s the case, I’m glad. It’s just too perfect, too orchestrated, a bit overdone. Show that card to one of the original Wise Men and he would not recognize it at all. Over all the centuries since that Bethlehem event, we have taken the Jesus born into danger, threat, social upheaval, poverty and oppression and made him into the Jesus of institutional loyalty. The world I inhabit still boasts of power, domination and self-centeredness and only the Jesus who was born in and lived in those circumstances, not the advertisement for perfection, can help me sort out the messes and the successes of my life. I welcome Jesus on the eve of his birth as the one who has walked the road and calls me to follow in his footsteps, threatening and challenging as they were. I welcome the child born into the chaos of his world so that he could help me deal with the chaos of my world. Move over Wise men. Give us some space shepherds. We’ve come to meet the unlikely king.