Spiritual Solutions

There are two stories of the birth of the Christ child in the synoptic gospels. One is in the gospel of Matthew, which was written from the perspective of Jesus being the fulfillment of the Hebraic prophecy of the coming Messiah (read Matt. 2:1-2; 9-11). The other is in the gospel of Luke, who was writing for the Gentiles (read Luke 2:8-18).

The stage is set. We have the wise men, sometimes called kings, bringing their gifts; we have the “holy family,” as it is called, in the stable which is probably a cave; and there is the baby, Jesus. Then there are shepherds; and there we have angels.

So the stage is set for this great event.

Can you picture it in your mind; does it bring back to you that special story? As you think about Bethlehem, think about it today. Bethlehem is about six miles south of Jerusalem and it is still a fairly small town. The shepherd boy, David, who was to become a king was born there. Approximately three hundred years after the birth of the Christ child, Constantinople and his family became Christians and Constantinople’s mother, Helena, had a church built there on the spot where Jesus was supposed to have been born. It is called the Church of the Nativity.

Thousands of tourists and pilgrims visit that spot today. But it seems that Bethlehem is constantly in the news and is a center of strife, because Moslems, Christians and Jews all see it as a strategic place both for sacred and for politic means. So it has, in a sense, become a battleground.

Is the Bethlehem in your own mind a battleground too? Sometimes our mind is like a battleground, and we might wonder if there is a place for the Christ child to be born there.

In the story there was no place in the inn; and the inn basically symbolizes our intellect. There’s no place in the intellect for a Christ child to be born, for the Spirit of God to be born. The Christ child has to be born in our heart, which is represented by the stable.

So what does Bethlehem mean to you today?

A woman writes that she had been listening to some children caroling “How far to Bethlehem?” The song says, “Not very far.”

The woman who was writing about her experience was remembering a time when she was a child; she had moved with her parents to New York City and was separated from the rest of her family who lived in another city. She was feeling overwhelmed and homesick for her grandparents and her familiar friends who were all back in the Midwest somewhere.

She and her parents visited a big church in New York, and she remembered that she was sitting near the back of the church in an aisle seat. The church was having a Christmas pageant. She said that even though she was timid and shy and was feeling overwhelmed by a sense of separation, she was feeling the movement of Christmas; she had a sense of awe as the Christmas music from the organ echoed from the rafters in the church as it rolled back and forth, and the lights were dimmed and the candles were lighted.

Then, she said, the lights came up again. And as the lights came up the procession started, and down the aisle came all these colorful characters dressed in robes; there were travelers and wise men and shepherds. She said she got swept up by the pageant and as they came by her, without anyone noticing, she got up and followed them down the long aisle.

She said, “As I remember now, that long aisle was a spiritual pilgrimage for me and it seemed quite a long way at the time. But I got to the front with all of these wonderful people in the pageant. I was a part of it, and there was the stable scene and there was a soft light inside of it and there were Mary and Joseph and a sleepy donkey and real sheep and the baby Jesus with all the people gathered around. And I knelt there, and as I knelt there I felt a sense of exultation.”

She said, “I wasn’t there very long before an usher came and picked me up then carried me back to my embarrassed parents. But it didn’t matter, because I had been to Bethlehem. It was like it was real; I was there in that time and in that moment, and it has lived in my heart ever since.” She got a whispered scolding from her parents and people around her smiled and twittered, but she oblivious to all of that because she had been there; she had had an experience of Bethlehem within herself.

The woman later married a minister, and she was moved to work in a tenement area deep in New York City and for many years brought Christmas pageants to the children there, children who were deprived and would never experience anything like that if those pageants were not presented.

So the stage is set.

The story enters our hearts in different ways. I remembered a minister friend who said that before she went into ministerial school or seminary was struggling with the ideas of God and Spirit and Jesus. She said, “I could identify with God and Spirit, but I didn’t know where Jesus fit into my life anymore.”

She was thinking about it and praying about it when one day she burst out in frustration and said out loud, “I just don’t know what to do with you!” And she said in that moment, in the midst of a rolling sound of laughter around her, it was as though a deep resonant voice said, “And I don’t know what to do with you either!” She said she wasn’t given to hearing voices but she certainly heard that within herself. It’s the surprising sound of God’s presence

What I want to say to you today is that God comes to us with that surprising, unexpected presence, at times we don’t expect it and in ways we don’t expect it. I want you to capture that idea.

Sometimes we set things up in our lives which are so controlled that we don’t leave openings for the unexpected; we don’t leave openings for God to come through. We perhaps get caught up in the disorder of our lives or the disinterest and we forget that, underlying all things, is this presence of God that is seeking to burst through unexpectedly. And God does break through those barriers we set up, no matter what.

There’s a nativity scene in a Renaissance painting by Piero Della Francesca. It’s a fairly well-known painting. And when he painted it he was in his waning years, but this was a masterpiece. The nativity scene in the painting is placed in a setting of just a stone wall and a ramshackle kind of a roof over everything. There are five angels carefully grouped around in back of the child Jesus and on either side there are two angels that are quietly playing their lutes. In behind them to the right are a group of men who are really solemn, down and dull-looking. There’s a brown ox there by the men, very strong and sturdy, and he’s looking with great brown eyes directly out at the person who is looking at the picture, as much as to say “You don’t need to only look with your eyes; you need to look with your heart.”

Joseph is seated in front of the men in the picture and is looking off into the distance, and beside him there are two shepherds and one of them has his finger pointed toward the heavens as though saying rather pointedly, “If you don’t know where this is coming from, I’m just reminding you.” And there in the front is the baby Jesus, very doll-like and stiff, not in a manger but on Mary’s robe which is a royal fluorescent blue. Mary is kneeling over the child, she has every hair in place and she’s elegant; it doesn’t look like she came from birthing a child, it looks like she came from the beauty salon. There she is, leaning over Jesus, this doll-like figure. Everything is so controlled and placed in this picture except one thing.

In the back, peeking over an angel’s shoulder is a donkey; and the donkey has his head in the air, and he’s braying and laughing gleefully, showing all his teeth. What a remarkable thing; only one creature in that picture gets the story, and that’s the donkey! The donkey really sees the truth. You see, the donkey gets the joke.

We too often stand around in our lives like these stylized people and we try to control everything. It’s like manger management 101, the shepherds have to be here, the angels have to be here, the baby has to be here in a manger or at least on Mary’s coattails, and everything has to be in its place. But, you see, there is joke in this, because God breaks through, or a baby breaks through, or a donkey breaks through, and turns everything we’ve thought on its head.

It was thought that the Messiah would come on a horse, leading people to victory. And here’s this little child, vulnerable, tiny, who was to become the one who was to bring, not a charger, not more violence, but love and peace into our world. God’s presence is symbolized in this little child, and in every child that we see, and in the child within us.

God bursts forth in unexpected ways. It was Frederick Beuchner who wrote, “Blessed is he or she who sees the joke.” Can you see the joke of life that underneath all of our turmoil and troubles, worries and anxieties, there is this Emmanuel or “God-with-us,” always there, always seeking to come into our experience, and coming in unexpected ways?

Bill Moyers, years ago when he was doing a series on creativity, talked to an artist who said to him, “If you know what you are looking for, then you will never see what you don’t expect to find.”

We often think that God has to appear this way, or that way, but if we know what we’re looking for we never see what we don’t expect to find, God in different guises, God in different expressions, God as a baby, God as a donkey getting the joke. And yet, sometimes, God pops up in our lives and says, “Here I am!”

You may be driving down the street, caught in traffic, and you grind to a halt; you’re late for an important meeting and there you are, stuck at a light, and you’re fuming inside. Then you look across at the driver in the car next to you and you see that he is singing and dancing to some song on the radio. And suddenly you burst out laughing. It’s God saying, “Here I am!”

Or perhaps you’ve had an argument with your spouse and you’re still feeling upset inside; and the phone rings and it’s a neighbor saying, “Oh, I just wanted to give you a call and say hi.” And before she hangs up she says, “By the way, I want to tell you that I saw you and your wife on your walk yesterday morning and it does my heart good to see two people so much in love.” You gulp, and swallow, and put the phone down and you chuckle again because God is saying “Here I am!”

You see, God comes in unexpected places, and unexpected ways. And God always brings a sense of joy. That’s what it’s about; it’s about joy!

The angel messenger said to us, “I come to bring this message, this great news, of a joy that shall come to all the people!” Not just some of the people but all the people, if we’re open, receptive, ready to accept it. God is ready to come into our lives. God-with-us, you see, God within us. We can experience the nativity, the birth of the Christ within ourselves, if we’re open to it and not expecting it to be this way or that way, but open to the fullness of God’s expression no matter how it comes.

May you have great joy and unexpected blessings of God’s presence this Christmastime.

For, remember, God is Blessing You, Right Now!

Rev. Alan A. Rowbotham

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