You see them everywhere you go this time of year, in front of Churches, in town squares and in malls. Chances are you have one in your home right now.
I'm referring to nativity scenes, those wonderful reenactments of the Christmas story where everything is cute and tidy and where there is no animal manure and all the shepherds are neatly dressed and way too clean for their profession.
I have nothing against nativity scenes, I just think that sometimes we lose sight of how Jesus really came into the world, and who shepherds really were.
Shepherds were on the bottom rung of society's ladder in Jesus' day. It was a job for the very young and the very old, and not at all something someone would aspire to be. King David spent his teen years as a shepherd, as was the custom in those days. It was a right of passage on the way to doing something else bigger and more important.
Every word of every verse in the Bible was written for a reason, and I think that because the authors of the Gospels spend time talking about who the Lord chose to first tell about the arrival of his son (with a choir of angels no less) that we should take a moment as well.
Why would the Lord chose this scenario? A lowly birth for the son of God, (and we won't even talk about the stigma of being an "illegitimate child" that Jesus already carried with him) shepherds worshiping at his side while he lay in a animal feeder wrapped in animal blankets and rags.
This does not compute.
Perhaps the Lord has a heart for those who find themselves on the bottom end of society, those who are marginalized (fancy word for pushed to the side) by the rest of us. Perhaps it was done to turn our thinking upside down. Perhaps it's not about a grand entrance or power or prestige or being respectable in the eyes of society.
I so often need to have my thinking turned upside down. If the Lord chose to reveal himself first to some of the lowest people of his time, perhaps He wants me to see the lowest people of our time with new eyes.
God loves everyone equally and with no favoritism. (Indeed one of the most radical things about the early church was that the rich and poor, slaves and free men, Jews and Greeks were all worshiping together, and in fact the second set of folks to arrive on the scene were the wisemen who were the uber-rich of their day)
Having said that, I just can't escape how much the Bible talks about marginalized people (In the books of the Law, the prophetic books like Amos and Micah, with the example of Jesus who was always loving on the sick, the crippled, the Samaritans, the widows and orphans and other downtrodden people of of his day) and how we are instructed to always have our eyes open for ways to spread the Kingdom of God to those who are poor, hungry or lonely.
In a day and age where the Christmas season starts out with people fighting over shopping carts and pushing each other aside violently for a better deal on that plasma screen television, it's refreshing for me to go to a church like Oasis where marginalized people have been on our mind lately. With the Angel Tree Project we have been reaching out to children with parents in prison, with the Voice of the Martyrs project we were encouraged to write to and pray actively for those around the world in prison because of their faith. The restart of One Can I Can has us thinking about the hungry and with the outreach to the folks living down by the river (who like the shepherds, sleep outside) we have been reaching out to those who are cold. Individuals have been coming forward with ideas and collectively we have been reaching out in a way that I'm sure makes God smile.
So may my vision be turned upside down, and yours too this Advent season, and may we continue to honor our savior, who was born in a manger.
May your fire burn brightly,
Alex
