ANOTHER VIEW: Nativity statuettes prompt questions of Christmas_120803

Posted: 12/05/03

ANOTHER VIEW:
Nativity statuettes prompt questions of Christmas

By Dale Hanson Bourke

They are known collectively as The Nativity Scene, statuettes we take out this time of year and position around the baby Jesus figure to commemorate his birth.

But this year, as I opened the box and lifted each from its Styrofoam bed, I stopped to look at them individually,

wondering what came before and after. What made each of these men so wise? What moved a lowly shepherd to pursue such a lofty vision?

Dale Hanson Bourke

They are permanently bowed in reverence and awe, faithful to the call they each received to come to Bethlehem. But when they arrived, were they surprised or even disappointed?

Somehow these gathered strangers knew that God had asked them to witness a moment like no other. Yet they were fully human themselves. They traveled evasively to avoid a jealous king. They left family and vocations. They set off to pursue something they probably couldn't explain.

Did they hope their journey of faith would end in a massive display of glory? Did they expect they would witness something so significant their apparently foolish mission would be vindicated?

The Bible tells us they worshipped the baby. Somehow, they knew that even if he was crying or cooing or being very baby-like, this child was different. But how could they explain it?

According to the Scriptures, Jesus performed no miracles until he was an adult. The characters in the nativity scene, other than Mary and Joseph, probably never saw him turn water to wine or heal the sick. They had to take their experience for what it was. They had to be faithful even without proof.

And then they probably appeared foolish when they returned to their lives. “So what was that all about?” friends and family asked. How did they explain the incredible contradiction of seeing a baby in a manger and somehow knowing that his birth changed everything?

Did they keep it to themselves? Did they, years later, begin to doubt what they had really seen and felt?

Each year I set up this little tableau with the notion that I am spotlighting something holy and divine. But this year, as I look at the gathered porcelain figures, I am struck by the humanity of most of the statues.

I am reminded of times when I have felt God's presence or witnessed something that seemed utterly miraculous. I am struck by the fact that my glimpses of the holy are easily obscured by the mundane.

What if I had been called to witness this sacred event? Could I have suspended my human disbelief long enough to experience holiness? And then what? Would I have returned to family and friends filled with the news? Or would I have hesitated to talk about something so implausible?

Years later, would I have wondered if I had been too easily impressed, too caught up in the flurry of it all to use my analytical skills? Would I have wished for more proof, more explanation?

As the years passed and the baby became a seemingly ordinary child, would I have been disappointed? Would I have cried out to God when I saw suffering and asked him why he did not use his son to fix the world he had come to save?

I suspect I would have done all these things. I am a human being who occasionally glimpses the divine. In those holy moments, my reality is shaken, my identity re-defined. I return to my ordinary life, untethered for a time by all that once kept me grounded. And yet I eventually go back to the world I know, weighted down by reality.

The older I grow, the more I realize that a life of faith often looks like foolishness. It includes experiences that are not definable and choices that seem counter-intuitive. It means suspending disbelief and refusing to accept the mundane. It means bowing in awe and then, perhaps, having others wonder why you have lost your grip on reality.

But it also means having a tenacious hold on those moments even after they have become a distant memory. It means building tableaux of our own, commemorating those times when God became so real in our lives that nothing would ever be the same.

Dale Hanson Bourke is a consultant to non-profit organizations. Her column is distributed by Religion News Service, which she formerly served as editor