My favorite telling of the natal story was prepared by a Portuguese web presence firm Excentric in 2010. It’s called “Nativity 2.0” and is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkHNNPM7pJA. Go there. Now. I’ll wait for you to watch it and come back.
Fun, huh? It’s filled with internet in-jokes and memes, but it’s still pretty good theologically despite the liberties it takes with the scriptural story and with two millennia of church traditions. Here’s my serious point, though: If the story of God’s incarnation of love doesn’t live and breathe and move and evolve, Jesus is just a tiny porcelain figure tucked away for 11 months and not a savior, guide, and friend, not an incarnate God-with-Us for every moment of our lives.
We have to keep Jesus real. That’s hard, because even the nativity 1.0 stories are suffused with legend and intended to be edifying and picturesque. That’s why so many preachers and movies over the years have reminded us that the pretty tableau smelled like a barn, that childbirth is a sweaty, painful, tedious, blood-and-amniotic-fluid-streaked process even in a 21st century hospital, much less for a young mother two millennia ago. In this culture, it’s hard to keep the story real, but that’s the only way it has any meaning for us… for our families… for our neighbors… this week, 2013. Thursday night at the Words and Music service we heard a reading from The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson which riffs on the too-often sanitized, child-friendly un-reality show in most churches by interjecting a very human element into a memorable reenactment.
Recasting the old, old story into new words is, of course, the ongoing business of Christianity. Mary and Joseph have traveled through time as much as through Palestine, through minds and hearts, and there has never been a single reference point for Christmas— despite what modern commentators would like— but a series of snapshots in a 2016-year-old family album. Now we tell this life-giving story on computer screens. Now Joseph and Mary and magi would carry smartphones. Now our neighbors google Christmas on their smartphones. But Tuesday we need to help them look up from their smartphones and look up at God’s star and around at other worshippers; we need to get them actually into worship. So take your smartphone and text their smartphones and send them the link to our building so they can follow yonder maps to our living version of the Christ Child’s arrival. The old story, new approach, new souls.
I like that web video retelling exactly for the reason it brings Mary and Joseph and their thwarted travel plans into our context… and imaginatively puts us in their sandals, bringing their story into our experiences, so they seem real… for this really real world. Jesus is not frozen in porcelain but still alive in Ithaca, in our hearts.
I hope you will invite your family, friends, and even acquaintances to our Christmas Eve candlelight worships (family service at 6 pm and traditional service at 8:30 pm). Help the light of Christ shine!
In the Joy of Christmas,
David
Texts For Sunday Worship:
From the Hebrew Bible Isaiah 7:10-16
From the Gospels Matthew 1:18-25
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