What’s in your nativity scene? At a recent prayer meeting for pastors we all laughed as one told how his church’s creche, the one prominently placed on the Lord’s Supper table where the Bible or flowers typically rest, included the little drummer boy. This stirred my thinking about other inaccuracies common to even the best nativity sets. The most obvious, to me at least, is the common inclusion of the magi.
I’m sorry, they just weren’t there. Scholars debate how long it took for the magi to arrive in Bethlehem. Some suggest as short a time as 40 days and others as long as two years, the latter based on the ages of the children slaughtered by Herod’s troops. But Matthew 1:1 plainly says that they arrived at Jerusalem to inquire of Herod after Jesus was born. So they certainly weren’t present that first night.
This is just one of many inaccuracies common to nativity scenes. There’s also the presence of the angels (they appeared to the shepherds, then they left), the actual setting (cave, simple shelter, barn, or lower floor of house), and that Mary in all of them looks remarkably comfortable for a woman who’d just given birth, and she looks European. Scooter Wenner is adamite that you know, while most nativity scenes show the angels as women, all the angels named in scripture have male names. So, our nativity sets are not accurate representations of the history.
But let’s not toss them out just yet, for while they may not capture the truth of the very night of our Savior’s birth, they offer a wonderful representation of the breadth of the salvation our Savior brings. Consider the shepherds, simple, uneducated, humble. And yet the Father dispatched an angelic army inviting them to witness the events. The magi, on the other hand, were of great stature, able to secure gifts fit for a king. These the Father summoned via the star, drawing them on a lengthy journey to likewise witness prophecy’s fulfillment. These wealthy, non-Jews received as significant an invitation as did the simple, socially challenged shepherds. In other words, the gospel’s breadth is as wide as it is deep, with plenty of room for broken souls like you and me.
So leave the creche up. Celebrate the Christ who’s birth it seeks to portray. Dig into the scriptures, meditating on the full story. Then, let’s be like those shepherds and tell everyone about the Savior.
Merry Christmas!
Bro. Jim