Nativity for the rest of us

Yesterday, in a moment of rebellion and boredom, I updated our traditional tiny Nativity scene…with Legos.  

I had been digging into a closet and out fell the pieces of a tiny project I'd made a few months ago* – complete with pink house, Island ninja angel with Starbucks, a skeleton on a snowboard, a peg leg cowboy, a blind skier, a broken bicycle, and a handful of everyday ordinary characters.  I added them to the lily-white, cute, traditional Nativity.  

When I purchased the Nativity scene years ago, I needed something cheap, hardy, and …available.  What I got was an ethnically inaccurate, logistically questionable, tidied up version of what was really a messy, cold, and terrifying event.

First, the crowd at the manger were not white; they were from the Middle East, not Cleveland.  Three Wise Kings?  On the run (or "lope" as they were camel-riders) from a murderous tyrant who would see their stable visit as treason.  And the shepherds?  The fact that in most manger scenes no shepherd seems to be staggering with an empty wine jug from which they've swilled the contents many long, cold, lonely nights, seems deceptive.  And where's the poo?  Shepherd + sheep = musty pungent poo.

Mary has just traveled by donkey while nine months pregnant and laboring over rocky ground.  She's poor, without the comfort and aid of her womenfolk and a warm familiar pallet.  She is also sore, post-delivery, and a new mom in a barn of moowing, lowing, pooping, clucking, meowing, lumbering farm animals.  And the baby is God's own son and all she has to keep him warm are strips of clothing, hopefully clean-ish hay, and her mom-heart.  

Joseph is holding up somehow as he shoulders his responsibility for keeping both mom and God's baby safe after witnessing the messy loud frightening awesomeness of birth –  not normal for a guy of his time.  He's also got to find a home and a way to provide for his new family.  He's a good man, but he's not networked into the Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce.

Add to this scores of flying luminous angels on high, an exhausted innkeeper, the unknown that stretched out before them, the wonder of it all and I cannot for a second believe that any traditional crèche does the event justice.  So I added the Legos.  

I need the messy loud chaotic unknown of the original manger; that's where I live.   I think most of us live in the intersection of the rudeness of daily life and the need for hope.   Which brings me to inspiration for this amended stable scene and post, Mike Bonella.

Mike is a great guy who owns a friendly independent pet supply store in Manhattan, Kansas.  Mike is not a Jesus guy.  He is one of the nicest men who loves his family and his mom-in-law like nobodies business, and does, however, have a healthy delight in Festivus, "the festival for the rest of us."  And it was Mike's voice I heard as the Legos spilled around my feet; "where is the manger…the Nativity 'for the rest of us'?"  

Where is the Savior who never entered into a big honking church, sang in a professionally produced choir, or joined the country club?  Where is the guy who took an interest in the everyday ordinary people of his time – the people that I would live with or hang out with, fetch water for, or clean up behind?  

Where is the Jesus for those of us whose lives would never be embodied in ceramic, painted as an example of faith, or make it on the big screen?  Where is the manger – the Jesus – for the rest of us?

Good News.  The real Jesus was born and lived and died among the misfits (of which we all are in one manner or another), the weary, the foul-mouthed, the pious, the pungent, the clean, the beer-swilling, messy losers…like me.  And I'm so very very glad.  

The real Jesus – that kid in the manger – came to the poorest of the poor, the social outcasts (Helloooo Shepherds & single moms!), the weary and afraid because he loves us.  He grew among us, laughed at our jokes, walked with us to the Quick Trip for slushies when summer blazed, helped us fix our bikes or wagons, and allowed his own earthiness to mingle with the pungency of our lives.  

He never made it into the country club nor the Fortune 500.  But he did make it to earth to give us hope and to personally deliver an invitation to new life that he would make good on 33 years later while hanging bloody from a tree.  

So if your life is messy, you reek of too much wine and crap of life, your wallet is empty, you are weary, bewildered, or afraid, join the motley crew at the stable – the real one.  Allow the wonder of a baby Savior to fill you with hope and mystery.  If you have questions, that kid has answers.  If you are filthy from work, terrible choices, or despair – he doesn't care.  He has time for you and you are why he came.  

A strange way to save the world, http://youtu.be/Ie4Zgw1AD6w

* The original Lego project was crafted a few months ago as I struggled to articulate my heart's desire to offer my home as a soft landing place for folks coming off of the field, heading out, doing life and looking for real community.  That's where the angel came in, the coffee cups, and that snowboarding skeleton.