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Wandering lambs…
Shepherds in bathrobes with belts…
A petrified young Joseph, and a serious Mary holding an ugly baby-doll…
Three wise-men sporting amazing tape-on beards…
Little angels in white chiffon wearing tilted halos…
I love the Children’s productions at church during the Christmas season. You can’t help but smile, and when they go off script, well…that is the best part.
While parents might cringe, to me, this is the purest essence of the story of God’s incarnation. Over the years we have sanitized the story, put it on a Hallmark Card, and in many ways lost the earthiness, and chaos of how God chose to enter the human story.
Kids are honest…
Thoughts come out of their mouths without editing…
The Christmas story is worthy of unedited expression.
If you have never read the book “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” I highly recommend you put it on your holiday reading list. It tells the story of the Herdman family (and we all know a Herdman family or two, it is probably even our own!) and their invasion of a church Christmas pageant. Here is a bit from the book:
The Herdmans are the worst kids in the history of the world. They lie, steal, smoke cigars, swear, and hit little kids. So no one is prepared when this outlaw family invades church one Sunday and decides to take over the annual Christmas pageant.
None of the Herdmans has ever heard the Christmas story before. Their interpretation of the tale — the Wise Men are a bunch of dirty spies and Herod needs a good beating — has a lot of people up in arms. But it will make this year’s pageant the most unusual anyone has seen and, just possibly, the best one ever.
In the Nativity, God enfolds Himself with humanity.
Darkness meets light…
Brutality meets mercy…
Ugliness encounters beauty…
This Christmas, may you be freed from a neat and tidy encounter with God.
This Christmas may you realize that the best way to celebrate the season is with honesty, craziness and abandonment to the unpredictable God who shows up most profoundly in a Christmas pageant where the actors have all lost the script and roll on with whatever it is their soul produces.
God smiles at moments such as these.
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