My Nativity Project (#3 - Bethlehem)

My Nativity Project:
A Journey Through the Manger Scene
in Sermon and Song
(#3 - Bethlehem)


I don't pick up my guitar(s) much these days. Life is pretty full, so my collection of six strings sits in the closet, silent, waiting for some stolen moment when they will be played. When I do pick one up this Christmas season I will likely play very few Christmas songs. However, I know I will play On To Bethlehem by Vigilantes of Love. It is one of my favorite Christmas songs and one that strikes a deep chord in me.

The song captures the mood I often enter the holiday season with - a mix of weiryness and despair. This comes through in lines like:

and i'd like to say i'm faithful
to the task at hand
speaking gospel to a handful
and others with their list of demands

The song also captures a bit of the hope Christmas offers in the refrain. There Bill Mallonee sings:

it's cold this year and i'm late on my dues
it's cold in here ah but that's nothing new
my heart's electric with your love again
so it's on to bethlehem

Though I love the tone of the song, it is the lines in the middle and last part of the song that have bearing on this reflection of the nativity. In those lines we see a reluctance to approach the manger. We see a hesitancy to rush up to the newborn Jesus.  We are drawn by the lyrics to experience our own humanity and the incarnated humanity of Jesus. First the middle:

you might surmise that i ran there
but i really only crept
lead me to the place where love runs wild
and then it dogs your every step

you know how fickle my heart is
prone to wonder my Lord
yeah we talk but it's at arms length
always got one eye on the door

Do we rush to the manger too easily each Christmas?  Are we too much like Ricky Bobby (1) wanting to worship the "Dear Lord, Baby Jesus"?  Do we truly love the baby Jesus the best?  Sometimes I think we like Christmas more than the rest of the liturgical year because the baby Jesus doesn't come to us us and bid us to die (2). The baby Jesus doesn't command us to give to the poor, or lay down our lives, or rest on God's protection and provision.  In fact we like that "The little Lord Jesus, No crying he makes" and sing it out loudly.

Pastor and author Nadia Bolz-Weber expresses what I think our reaction to the adult Jesus often is in an interview on National Public Radio's Fresh Air program:

"I was at a Q&A recently and this really earnest young seminarian was like, "Pastor Nadia what do you do personally to get closer to God?" and before I even knew I was saying it I was like "What?!  Nothing.  Why would I do that?" Half of the time I wish He would leave me alone. Because if I'm going to try to get closer to God because I'm going to end up having to love someone I don't like again or give away more of my money or be confronted with some horrible inconsistency about myself and be called to repent. None of those things - I'm not interested in those things.  They keep happening to me, but it's not because I've climbed some spiritual ladder and I'm constantly pursuing God.  God is pursuing me." (3)

Bolz-Weber was talking in that moment about having the gift of faith.  How many of us have a faith - not even a faith, but a curiosity about Jesus - that is marked by or fickleness and having "one eye on the door"?  I bet that most of us - if we are nakedly honest - creep, at best, to the manger and are ready to leave at any second.

If Mallonee hasn't made us uncomfortable enough yet, now the end:

God wraps Himself up in human skin
for those who want to touch
and God let them drive the nails in
for those of us who know way too much

You come bearing all our burdens
and take Your lovers for a ride
but we stay holed up in our cages
fashioned by our own design

so tell me what is your secret
what's on your blister soul
what is that one little secret
you know the one that has taken its toll

'cause daddy's banging on your gate again
yeah he won't leave you alone
got a whole lot of dry warm rooms
and the finest of homes

The mystery and the magic of Christmas is that God could somehow become human.  In the Disney movie Aladdin the genie describes the situation of living in a bottle by saying something like, "UNLIMITED POWER!!!, tinny-weeny little living space."  This always seems to me a statement of the incarnation at Jesus' birth.  God becomes human, the ruler of the universe packed into the body of a newborn baby. 

Eugene Peterson put the incarnation this way in his translation of John 1, "The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood."  Jesus moves into our human neighborhood, and also the places where we live.  Our being human and the world we live in leaves scars on us - scars that need healing.  But while Jesus is coming to heal us, we insist on living with a blistered soul.  I love the direct way Mallonee gets the listener to admit to that? "so tell me what is your secret, what's on your blister soul, what is that one little secret, you know the one that has taken its toll?"  The question is not if you have a secret or if your soul is blistered, but what the secret is in that tattered soul of yours.  In what way has being a human in this world left its mark on you?

Today we reflect on the setting of our nativity - our manger scene.  Sure the birth of Jesus took place in Bethlehem, and sure the representations we have of the birth of Jesus might set on a table or mantle, but as we set up the manger scene in our lives during advent the nativity is resting deep in our blistered soul.  

Can we say, with our blistered soul, that our heart is electric and that we will creep up to the manger one more time seeking the healing of the baby Jesus?

Joel K

Read the lyrics while you listen here.

(1) Will Farrell's character in Talladega Nights: The Ballad Of Ricky Bobby
 Talladaga Nights...
(2) Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
(3) http://www.npr.org/2015/09/17/441139500/lutheran-minister-preaches-a-gospel-of-love-to-junkies-drag-queens-and-outsiders