I’ve spent part of the last few evenings packing things up from Christmas - the lights, the trees and ornaments, the snowmen and Santas and various decorations scattered throughout the house. And the nativity scenes - about a dozen of them. Being in my line of work, it’s not an uncommon gift to receive from family and friends when they see one that stands out in some way. And I’ve purchased a few of them myself, with favorites being from mission trips to Mexico and Ecuador and one I bought this year in Bethlehem.
The truth is, I love nativity scenes… which is kinda funny, given that I have doubts about the historicity of the scene they depict. Like the Creation stories that begin the book of Genesis, I read the Christmas stories less as literal tellings of “here’s what happened” than as a spiritual revealing of “here’s who we are.” They are less about fact than they are about truth - which ultimately, for me, makes them that much more powerful.
I don’t mean to be controversial by suggesting I don’t read the Creation and Christmas stories literally. But I think it’s important to state it, for a couple of reasons in particular. First, because if we hope to become authentic in our spirituality, we should be honest. And second, I think we are more apt to experience the Bible as needed food for the soul if we approach it with a heart searching for deeper truth rather than a mind that just asks, “Did that really happen?” So when I read the Christmas stories seeking truth, what I find is not just a story about a miraculous birth of a singularly miraculous man, but a story of the intimate relationship between God and humanity - a story about a God who dwells with us, and indwells in us.
Richard Rohr writes, “One great idea of the biblical revelation is that God is manifest in the ordinary, in the actual, in the daily, in the now, in the concrete incarnations of life, and not through purity codes and moral achievement contests, which are seldom achieved anyway.” Or as Mary Beth Ingham puts it, “In the most concrete we discover the most ultimate. That is what it means for God to become one of us. The concrete individual who lived in the Middle East 2000 years ago, Jesus of Nazareth, was both divine and human. So what does this mean for us? We are called to see the greatness of God in the smallest of things. We see divinity within humanity. We discover in ourselves a light within, and we discover in every human being… and in everything that exists, an inner light that is a gift from God.”
This is Incarnation - God becoming flesh - and it is key for me. It’s why, while I’m currently packing up Christmas, each year I leave one of those nativity scenes set out. It serves for me as a reminder that this is how God comes most powerfully - in the midst of the darkness and stench of a stable, in the outback of life, where ordinary people gather in hope of something new, something more. It reminds me that the Divine is most often revealed thru people - even us.
It reminds me that while I’ve packed up most of the Christmas decor, in some way, Christmas is packed up in me.
Daily prayer: Joy to the world, the Lord is come… to me, and in me.