The Manger

The Christmas story is made for telling. There is a rich cast of characters, an exotic setting, travel, suspense, cute animals, and a touch of the supernatural. Christian or not, people have always been drawn to the Christmas story.

Let me put that another way. People have always been drawn to this story whether or not they know or love Christ. That’s a “good news, bad news” truth.

It’s bad news because the Christmas story can so easily be turned into several things that it’s not. For example, it can be turned into a myth, a legendary folk tale whose meaning is found in some “universal truths” about poverty, hospitality (or inhospitality!), the relationship between government and citizenry, etc.

It can be turned into just a cute story, with cuddly animals, a mean innkeeper who changes his mind, excited shepherds, and the like.

It can be turned into a parable of family, zeroing in on Mary and Joseph and the troubled beginning of their marriage, focusing on the hardships they encounter, and climaxing when they overcome all the difficulties and are recognized, by shepherd and magi, as a special family.

It can be fictionalized, adding in “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” or talking animals, or “The Littlest Angel,” or “The Drummer Boy,” etc. Many of these versions are very well done, and seek to communicate important truths about the coming of Christ into the world, and can, I think, be used well, as when our Kindergarten tells the story of the crippled lamb, Joshua, at their graduation each year. Others, though, focus more on the fictional characters than on Christ, and may lead people to cherish heretical teachings, such as those about angels in “The Littlest Angel.”

The good news about people being drawn to the Christmas story is that it truly is “Good News,” it is “The Gospel,” in fact. Told exactly as it happened, the Christmas story is universally attractive, drawing people to the fact that God, in the fullness of time, acted to save sinners by sending his Son to be one of us. The true, full Gospel is there when the true, full story is told, including all of Luke Chapter One as well as Chapter Two, with Zachariah and Elizabeth and John as well as Mary, Joseph, Caesar, and the shepherds, all adoring Jesus, the Christ come into the world. Throughout the telling of this whole story we find it pointing to the work that Jesus came to do, pointing to the cross. At the heart of the Christmas story is the Gospel!

How beautiful, that God chose to bring his Son into the world in such a way that the telling of the story would both attract human attention and draw that attention to the Gospel! How sad that we let the world co-opt that story for its own purposes!

So I urge you, as you prepare your hearts and homes for Christmas, to make sure that you tell the true story to all who will listen. Especially I urge you to tell it straight to your children. One key element, I believe, is to make sure you don’t mix Santa up into the Christmas story. I know that there’s a popular picture of the “Kneeling Santa” that is quite seductive, but I have a deep concern about this. Think about it. What’s the key “truth” about Santa? That he is mythical, legendary. What’s the key truth about Jesus? That he is very much real, true, alive. When Disney puts cartoon characters in with live actors, we know that the story, the whole story, is fictional, that there is no attempt here to communicate something that actually happened. Add a fictional character to a real character and you get a fictional story every time. In the picture of Santa kneeling at the manger it’s hard to keep the two halves separate, and children especially are going to tend to put the two into the same category as far as reality is concerned.

Jesus really was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary. He really was born far from the home of Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem, and really was laid in a manger, announced by angels, and worshiped by shepherds. This was all truly foretold by prophets as God’s plan to rescue fallen humanity, which angels truly made clear to Zechariah, Mary, and Joseph before his birth, and which the Holy Spirit revealed to Elizabeth, Simeon, and Anna. Magi from the east really saw a special star that, coupled with their readings of the prophets, finally directed them over hundreds of miles to the baby Jesus.

The truth of the Christmas story is the truth that saves. The attractiveness of the Christmas story is a tool that God puts into our hands. Let’s use that tool to proclaim that truth to the world!

Pastor Moore