531 No Pastor in the Manger
“Hey Glen,” Stevo said to me recently, “ever notice who is and isn’t in the manger?”
“What kind of a goofy question is that?”
“Just think about it awhile; you’ll get it.”
Like a pink rhinoceros or trying to name all of Santa’s reindeer, I simply couldn’t get Stevo’s question out of my mind.
I kept re-taking a census of the lighted, outdoor manger scene our family put up every year when I was a kid. There was Jesus, Mary and Joseph; a cow and camel; some sheep and, if memory serves me correct, a donkey. (I used to sneak little blocks of wood into the scene as animal poop. That riled my mother up, especially when I moved the camel too close to the babe Jesus.) There were a couple of angels we used to put up on snow piles so it looked like they were flying. Finally, there were a couple of shepherds and the three wise men. That’s it.
So Stevo, who’s there and who’s not? They all seemed like no-brainers. The only ones I wasn’t certain about were the wise men. The Christmas song says “bearing gifts they traveled afar.” Being outsiders, I decided to do some detective work on them. It wasn’t long before I discovered some cool facts I didn’t know.
The Bible says: “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, ‘Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star in the east and have come to worship him’” (Matthew 2:1-2).
As Matthew says, the wise men were actually Magi (from which we get our word “magic”) and there were as many as 12 of them; probably not three. They traveled over 1000 miles from modern day Iran to Jerusalem – a trip that took around 10-12 months on camel, plus weeks of preparation. Amazing.
Their religion, Zoroastrianism, was founded around the 6th century BC by a fellow named Zoroaster. They were considered highly educated scientists and scholars who were also known for interpreting dreams and controlling spirits. Much, if not most of their religious practice was done by studying the stars – thus their following the star to Jesus. Today, we’d call them astrologers because they believed that stars influenced human events.
That’s when it hit what Stevo wanted me to get. The religious representatives in the manger (aside from angels) were astrologers. For all these years I had been putting pagans in my manager scene, not pastors or priests. Scandalous!
Speaking of which, where were the priests? Jesus was born in Bethlehem, a mere three miles south of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem which was crawling with priests. Furthermore, as Matthew points out several times in his gospel, the priest’s own scriptures contained many road signs and markers which pointed toward the specific place of Jesus’ birth and the events which would surround it. Certainly, these signs had to be as easy to see as that star was for the Magi some 1000 miles away. Nevertheless, it was the far-away Magi with their pagan astrological practices who found and worshiped Jesus, while the nearby, orthodox priests didn’t seem to have a clue.
Initially I was disturbed by the notion of God using stars for the specific purpose of attracting pagans like the Magi to Jesus through their “misguided” religious practices. Like the religious leaders of Jesus’ day, I thought that God could only speak to people according to my religious guidelines. Yes, there is a way to find God; my way. Seeing the Magi in my manger scene and no priests was very unsettling.
However, the more I thought about it the more I realized that God frequently uses unorthodox means to draw folks to him. There wouldn’t be a Jewish religion if God hadn’t used a “burning bush” in the desert to draw a pagan named Abram near. (Of course, Abram later became Abraham.) God spoke directly to the pagan priest Balaam through the mouth of his donkey. Israel’s first king Saul talked to the dead priest Samuel through the pagan medium in Endor. It was to a pagan Canaanite woman that Jesus said, “Woman, you have great faith!” And how about that bizarre choir of angels God used to draw the outcast shepherds to Jesus. God even talked to the pagan Magi again in a dream after they had visited Jesus. Obviously, God is bigger than my religious notions.
All of this raised some big questions for me about the Christmas story. Did God send any additional signs to the priests like he did the pagans and outcasts? After all, God loves religious folks as much as the non-religious, right? If so, then why wasn’t there at least one priest at the manger? All I can figure is that the religious folks just couldn’t accept anything that was outside of their God-box – even if it was God himself.
Sadly, this trend did not change. Throughout Jesus’ life the “lost” crowds always managed to find and flock to Jesus. They loved his teaching and worshiped him. Meanwhile, the religious crowd continued to distain him. From the outset of Jesus’ public ministry they fought to discredit him. They never let up and eventually mounted a successful campaign to have him killed.
Thanks to Stevo my eyes were opened to the scandal of the manger scene. I see afresh just how true the angel’s declaration to the outcast shepherds was when he declared: “I’m here to announce a great and joyful event that is meant for everybody, worldwide” (Luke 2:10).
Does God still draw religious and non-religious people to himself? Absolutely. Does still he work both inside and outside of the official/orthodox religious box to accomplish this? Of course he does. As it was at Jesus' birth, are religious leaders like me with the most thorough and orthodox training the ones who still tend to lag behind the learning curve when it comes to seeing what God is really up to? I sure hope not. If Jesus’ birth occurred today instead of 2000 years ago I’d like to think that at least one pastor would be placed beside the pagan Magi in the manager scenes of future generations.
|
|
