Child amid the mess
It is the season for Nativity plays. They come in all shapes and sizes, some of them very slick and professional (some of them even produced by professionals brought in to reduce the chaos). Others stagger their way to an over-delayed conclusion borne on the wings of prayer and hope, so lengthy that they make my sermons seem like precious jewels of instantaneous wisdom.
Probably the best description of a chaotic Nativity play is in the novel Rubyfruit Jungle, which, however, I cannot recommend to you in its entirety as the language used is not always appropriate to what we would expect in Shirley. In this disaster-strewn production, one of the shepherds is so overcome by fear on taking to the stage that he wets himself while making his offering, thereby causing the child acting St. Joseph to make the immortal impromptu reply: “You can’t pee in front of the little Lord Jesus, go back to the hills”.
In recent years, alas, a shadow has passed across the happy-go-lucky world of the Nativity play: some councils have banned parental videos of school productions on the grounds that the results may end up being used for corrupt purposes on the Internet. And in South Shields one parent recently bit the finger off another during a fight in front of the assembled company before the play began. “And on earth peace to people of good will”?
Of course one can have a super-professional Nativity play, but somehow it doesn’t seem quite right. That is more what we would associate with the Passion play, from Oberammergau downwards. In the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus we are dealing with such mind-boggling matters that we are straining to keep our hold on the story at all. It is a story that is really beyond our range. No wonder we tread carefully when we enact it.
But the Nativity play is different. Chaos and confusion seems to be a built-in part of the story. ‘Making do’ and ‘muddling through’ are, after all, what the Holy Family had to do. There was no room for a polished ‘finished product’ in the makeshift accommodation of the manger or the cave.
This is why the story appeals so much to adults, largely irrespective of the fact that it is enacted by children. It is a symbol of our chaotic adult lives, full of God-given promise, but often blighted by failures, misunderstandings, fruitless expenditure of effort, and grief.
It is only right that Christmas is close to New Year and new resolutions. As we contemplate the ‘child amid the mess’, so we are reminded of our own God-given lives, so full of outward confusion, yet so rich in God-given worth. A worth no-one can take away from us.