When was a boy we had a manger scene that was brought out every Christmas to a place of honor in whatever place we were living at the time. Wherever we put it, the scene had to be low enough so that I could reach it.
In physical terms there was nothing remotely special about the manger set. There was a little plaster-of-Paris manger. And there were little figures that I could move around and play with. I would imagine actions and conversations and fights in the ways that only a small boy can.
I'm not sure if the whole thing even came as a set. Perhaps my mom had just assembled the group from various sources. When I get to heaven, I'll have to ask her.
Practically nothing about the scene was an accurate portrayal and yet the story of Jesus birth leaped out of it into my heart and soul.
An angel hovered over the scene, at least for the first couple of years, but then I broke the wire it hung on. Forever after, then, the angel sat on the roof of the stable, canted at an odd angle.
Mary wore a blue robe and seemed very composed. She was a full grown woman, not the child the real Mary probably was. On that real "midnight clear," the real Mary was young, in a strange place, far from home, and wracked with the roaring pain of labor.
I've read commentators who say there was no pain, but that cheapens things for me. I think the majesty of Christ's coming is that it was human, with all the messy fluids and ripped nerve endings. If Jesus was coming to be human, it seems to me it only counts if He's really human. I want Him to get tired and sick. The majesty of His coming is more powerful for me if it's wrapped in real childbirth.
My daughter, Debbie, was 18 when she gave birth to her first child. She's become my model for what Mary must have been like, scared, hurting, overwhelmed by the whole thing. Struggling through the clouds of the pain toward a miracle. When I was a boy, though, I didn't know about that stuff. Mary was Jesus' mother and that was enough.
Joseph was more interesting to me. Joseph had a brown robe in our manger set. He was also praying, just like Mary. In fact everybody seemed to be praying except Jesus, who was, by the look of the position his arms and legs, screaming his little heart out or singing some kind of post-partum hymn.
Joseph doesn't get a lot of ink in the Gospels. We know that he was a carpenter. We know that he's important, because he's connected to David's line. And he's important because he took about the hardest step-dad role imaginable.
Still, Joseph was really a minor character for centuries. Then came communism. The communists exalted the worker and professed atheism. Every May Day, they lauded the common working man and preached their own, seductive message.
That got the church energized. The Roman Catholic church transformed Joseph into St. Joseph the Worker and moved his feast day to May 1 to balance the godless communists with a worker of their own on a day to match their May Day.
I see Joseph in simpler terms, though. I imagine Joseph thinking about the details of how things would work. He's thinking about the lines at the census registration and how he's going to pay the innkeeper and how they're going to get back to Nazareth.
And maybe he's scared, too, thinking about what it's going to be like having the Son of God around the house. I mean, how do you tell the Son of God to pipe down when He's making too much noise? Do you dare to set a time for Him to come home from a party? And, talk about blended family!!
Somewhere in my Sunday School days a teacher with a gift for storytelling, painted a word picture of Joseph teaching Jesus about carpentry. I keep that image with me. I see Joseph's hands, big, strong hands scarred from splinters and knives. I see Jesus hands, too, strong, but young. I imagine Joseph placing his hand over Jesus, showing how to accomplish a task. I wanted to be a dad like that.
Shepherds were all over the manger set. They wore a variety of costumes, with and without sheep ready to hand. I always wondered why they brought the sheep. Were they gifts? If so, what would Mary and Joseph do with them? Would they slaughter them? Or use them as a way to pay for better accommodations or a place at the front of the line?
I wonder if the shepherds left someone behind to tend the flock. What would he tell his kids later in life? "Hey, I could have gone to see Jesus that night, too, but someone had to tend the flock." How would that feel?
It's seemed to me that the shepherds and pretty much everyone else was far too mild in the stories of my youth. One of the shepherds in our set had a lamb on his shoulder. I asked a Sunday School teacher how much the lamb would weigh. She told me it didn't matter.
When I got home I asked my mom. She had her usual response to questions like that. "Let's look it up." When we'd figured things out, I thought, "Wow, that guy must be pretty strong!"
They all were, no matter how we portrayed them. The manger set and most of the Bible stories of my youth left out the humanity and the strength and the emotion. Even heaven was shown as a place where we'd sing songs. I didn't want that, I wanted to play games.
Of all the characters, though, the Wise Men were my favorite. They were regal, dressed on robes that portrayed their station and power. I would bounce them across the table top to converse with other characters, with appropriate back and forth motions supplied by my hands. They'd be the ones who said the wise things. Well, of course.
The word for "wise men" is often translated as "Magi." In the original language the root had a very precise meaning. It was used for a Persian priest versed in magic and astrology. They were learned and devout and powerful. It was a very big deal that they traveled all that way to see Jesus.
As I grew older, three things about the story of the Wise Men intrigued me.
Where did they actually visit Jesus? The Wise Men are told to go looking in Bethlehem but we're not sure where the star actually led them. We do know that the text says they went into the "house" rather than a stable, so maybe Jesus, Mary and Joseph were back in Nazareth by then, or they'd taken up residence in Bethlehem. Joseph was a carpenter, after all, and could probably find work almost anyplace, and being of David's line, he probably had relations in Bethlehem.
Then there's the star. Was there one? Attempts to prove and refute the idea of the Christmas star have raged back and forth and I've read them all avidly. It really doesn't matter though. Whatever the vehicle was that drew the Wise Men, it was Jesus they came to see.
That's the third thing. For all of the Bible up to this point, it's been God and the Jews, the Chosen People. Now, suddenly in the second chapter of Matthew there's Gentiles, non-Jews, folks like me and most of the world.
A God for all people. Up till then, Gods were pretty much territorial. But this God is for all of us, every one, every place, every time. And, more than that, it's a God that is willing to take on our frailties for our sakes, unlike any other God in any legend.
There is Jesus, at the center of the story and the center of the manger scene. There is Jesus who would get cold like us, and feel pain like us, and be tempted like us, and then die for us. That is the wonder of Christmas, the story my manger scene told and told well.
Why did that, sort of cheesy, historically and scripturally inaccurate manger scene speak to me? I think part of the answer lies with where it was.
The manger scene was on the table in a home filled with love of God and each other. We don't receive instruction about God in isolation, we receive it from people we love and whose actions speak to us as well as their words.
And the inaccuracies and design flaws didn't matter either. God doesn't need perfection to speak to us. God knows we can't do it ourselves or He wouldn't have had to come that first Christmas night. No, God uses what's available, a flawed preacher, an imperfect bit of writing, or, even a cheesy manger set to tell the story.
The Shepherds and the Wise Men brought gifts to the baby Jesus, in Bethlehem and in my dining room. But the real gift can from that baby Himself. It was and is God's gift of grace, of forgiveness, of love.
Thank you, God, for the most wondrous of all gifts, the gift of Yourself.
