Thoughts on the Nativity...During Holy Week

 Don’t laugh.

But I just took down my nativity sets yesterday.

I like to leave them up for a little while after Christmas,

But this year that little while turned into a long while and almost greeted Easter.

 

I have quite a few nativity sets—

Some from G-mama,

Some from my mom,

Some from my aunt,

Some from various other places.

My largest set is my Willow Tree set that my mom gave me one piece at a time.

 

The Willow Tree set takes up an entire table in the front hallway.

The rest of the sets share shelf space in the back hallway.

As we put away the sets yesterday,

We found the baby Jesus’s mixed up and placed in sets where they didn’t belong.

It took us a moment to realize what was going on,

And then we laughed.

We have a friend who likes to rearrange the smaller sets.

It looks like the friend struck again!

 

I started thinking, though:

Isn’t my friend’s rearrangement precisely what Jesus came to do?

Crude baby Jesus in the midst of the ornate.

Black baby Jesus in the midst of the white.

Wooden baby Jesus in the midst of the silver.

Stone baby Jesus in the midst of the ceramic.

Poor in the midst of the rich.

Unassuming in the midst of the bold.

Jesus exactly where Jesus isn’t supposed to go,

Boundary breaking, love-inducing

Jesus.

 

…

 

As I took down my Willow Tree set,

The boxes demanded that I put away the people first.

Toward the end, with only infrastructure remaining,

I started thinking about the stable.

We don’t know where it was.

It didn’t make the national registry of historic places.

We don’t know how long Jesus stayed there.

It didn’t become his permanent home.

We don’t know exactly what took place within its walls.

It didn’t have security footage to give us a play by play of Jesus’s birth.

Yet we know that that stable, or cave, or room,

Was, for one moment, a holy place.

Its walls contained within it the sacred

And served a purpose much greater than anything anyone ever imagined.

 

…

 

This Holy Week, may our messy lives be the infrastructure for holy, sacred moments and may we allow a boundary-crossing, love-inducing Jesus to make his home with us and live through us in ways that defy the logic of this world. Amen.