Isaiah
9:2-7
Luke
2: 1-20
December
24, 2013
First
Presbyterian Church, Sterling, IL
Christina
Berry
When you came in this evening, I
hope you noticed the nativity sets on display. They’re out there in the
narthex, the big room out there beyond the sanctuary. They’re on the tables,
and on the shelves, all sorts of nativity sets from all different homes.
Did you have a nativity set in
your home, when you were growing up? (It’s okay, nothing bad will happen if you
nod or raise your hand.) Do you have one on display in your home now? I have a
LOT of nativity sets. A collection of them. I didn’t mean to collect them. It
just happened.
There is a website that every
December posts weird nativity sets – homemade clay mangers, badly carved wooden
holy families, nativity sets from all kinds of places.
But they are not lovely. They’re
just weird. Like, they’re made up of dogs, or bears, or ducks, or cowboys and
cowgirls. Or they’re made of meat. I
don’t collect those.
My favorite sets are not
necessarily the most beautiful. This little one was made in Mexico – just a
little tiny holy family, a gift to me from a friend who is from India – so it’s
very multicultural. One set I really like is this one – the cloth stable with
the stuffed people and the little wooden manger. It’s a nativity set that kids
can handle, and play with, without anyone getting nervous that they will break
something.
The first year I owned this set,
I was children’s ministry staff at a big church. The kids were setting up the
stable for Advent, and they placed Mary and Joseph a few feet away from the
stable, planning to move them closer each week. But something wasn’t right…………they
conferred. Kids are realists, you know. They like to get things right. Then one
of them said, “Mary is supposed to be pregnant.” Somebody else grabbed baby
Jesus and tucked him up under Mary’s robe. Mary looked nine months pregnant then,
uncomfortable, unsteady as she rocked back on her little cloth heels, probably pretty
much like she really felt.
I think we enjoy nativity sets
because they help to make Christmas real. They’re real enough - enough like us
to make us smile, and feel sentimental. Then we wrap them back up and pop them
away in a box until next Christmas. Of course if we think about it, we know that
the whole event couldn’t REALLY have looked like our nativity sets.
We know that the holy family was
not a blue-eyed fair skinned trio, all clean and well-dressed. The creators of
my little Mexican nativity knew that Mary and Joseph and Jesus were not really
Maria and Jose and Jesus. The people who make Peruvian nativities, with llamas,
don’t actually believe that there was a llama at the place of Jesus birth.
Another thing we know isn’t true,
but is really part of our story, is that Jesus probably wasn’t born in a barn,
not a barn like we know it today. Even though it makes such a good joke. You’ve
heard that – the boy Jesus heads out of the house and Mary yells, “Jesus, shut
the door! Were you born in a barn?”
The story is so familiar that we
don’t really think much about the reality of it. When I hear the Christmas
story, I like to hear it from the King James Version, because it is the poetic
language of the grand story that I know.
Like nativity sets, though, the
King James, for all its beauty, doesn’t exactly tell the whole story. For
instance, we don’t know how long Joseph and Mary were actually in Bethlehem
before the baby was due. Even though we picture Mary on the verge of going into
labor as they looked for a place to stay, she probably didn’t make that arduous
journey of eighty miles when she was that far along. And there’s no donkey in
the Bible story. Really, not at all, I double checked.
But there is one detail that
we’ve gotten wrong for such a long time, and the real story is so much better! We’ve
had it wrong because the men who translated the King James Version took the
Greek words and interpreted them into common English words the common English
of the time.
So here’s Luke 2, verse 7: And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in
swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger;
because there was no room for them in the inn.
And that last word is “kataluma,”
the word that got translated as “inn.”[1]
is the one that has thrown us off. It’s not a bed and breakfast, or a hotel or
hostel, a kataluma – it’s really a guest room. So Mary and Joseph arrived in
Bethlehem, probably to a relative’s home. You know how that is – lots of family
comes to town, you crowd them in wherever you can.
But the guest room was taken.
So they had to stay in another
part of the house - the part of the house where the animals were kept. In
houses of the time, there was a sleeping room, where everyone slept. The other room was the stable, where the animals
slept. Not a barn, not a separate building.
More like the front hall, only
with animals in it. It would be warm, in that room. There would be family
nearby, which would be helpful, if you are far from your mom and having your
first baby.
There would be someone there to
check on you, reassure you while you were in labor, bring you something to eat,
maybe some clean cloths for swaddling the baby. Much better than being alone,
out in a barn far away from the house, in the dark, and without anyone to help
you.
I love knowing this, love having
Jesus be born right there in the house. It lets me keep my childhood pictures,
and my nativity sets, with the cow and the donkey and the straw, but it brings
Jesus right inside, right where he needs to be. Up close. Warm. Personal. Alive.
Because all too often, I think,
we prefer to keep the little baby Jesus figure of the nativity set, small and
safe and distant, out there in the barn. We wrap him up in tissue paper after
Christmas, and we put him away and we don’t really pay much attention to Jesus
again until Easter.
But here he is, now, all snuggly
and warm, right here in the house. He is here in the house, and he didn’t stay
a sweet snuggly little baby. He grew up, to be a teacher, and a healer, and a
lover of humankind to such an extent that he was willing to go to the cross, suffer
a humiliating death, and lie in a tomb for three days. He loves us so much that
he conquered death and rose again. And on that last night, before he was
betrayed and handed over, he gave us a great gift, a gift that, like this
nativity set, helps us understand.
He gave us communion, a way to
remember him, to taste and see his goodness, to make him real and present to
us. He came that night so long ago, an infant, wrapped in swaddling clothes. And
he was real, and he was alive, and he was in the house. Not far off, apart from
the people, but close – with them, for them, in humanity and love, even as he
comes to us tonight, in this manger, and at this table, with us, for us, in
humanity and love. May we welcome him into our homes, into our hearts, into our
lives.
Amen.
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