I’ve seen quite a few Nativities in my day. There’ve been painted wooden ones to elegant effigies of porcelain and glass in all sizes and varieties. The other day I was driving home and a local church had a “live” Nativity outside. From the road it appeared more adventurous than most, with parishioners dressed in garb standing out in the cold. Yet, there’s a problem. For as many as I’ve seen, they are all missing one important element:
POOP.
I’m not kidding, call me crazy, I want the poop to be present. It doesn’t need the spotlight but it deserves to be around. We know that it was there—you mean to tell me that an Inn keeper with a packed house has time to muck out his stable? Have you ever been in a barn, a real barn—there’s poop and plenty of it!
That’s what I want, the poop, I want the Nativity to include Mary’s attitude after riding on a stinky donkey all the way from Nazareth, 9 months prego, and then forced to give birth in a barn. I’d like to be reminded of how Joseph must have felt to arrive late(or after everyone else). Maybe they got lost, it was slow going, or he just didn’t want to ask for directions. Not to mention they were so poor they couldn’t pay off the Inn Keeper for a better spot.
Don’t get me wrong, the versions we have are nice, but they are idealized. Let us not forget that the King of the Universe came into our time and existence which includes our sinful brokenness. I don’t want to welcome Christ into the idealized version of my life, because that isn’t what my life is—my life has crap, it’s a messy room which wasn’t expecting company. I’m thankful that Christ enters into our brokenness as He entered into a filthy stable—what a grace filled mystery.
Fredrick Buechner puts it this way:
“Those who believe in God can never in a way be sure of Him again. Once they seen Him in a stable, they can never be sure of where He will appear or to what lengths He will go or to what ludicrous depths of self-humiliation He will descend in His wild pursuit of man…. And this means that we are not safe, that there is no place where we can hide from God, no place where we are safe from His power to break in and recreate the human heart because it is where He seems the most helpless that He is the most strong and just where we least expect Him that He comes most fully.”
From my family to yours, God Bless you and have a Merry Christmas!
