I like to talk about the Christmas creche every year. I just wrote about that a couple of weeks ago. I think it’s important to remember the whole story and remind ourselves that everyone belongs at the manger because Jesus is for everyone. And I think it’s important to remember that one big story portrayed by a full and busy stable is from two different gospels and a load of traditions, it covered a much longer span than one night, and is full of a whole lot of imagination.
All of that is good, it is. And we should find time for all of it. Every story that brings each of those characters to the stable brings us closer to the stable, too.
Take, for example, the shepherds and the magi, two very different groups of people. What is true about Jesus is revealed to both of them, but each travelled a very different route to get there. And the presence of each reveals something very different to us.
The birth was revealed to the shepherds by an angel (and heavenly host), according to the gospel of Luke, and they came to the manger from nearby fields and found Jesus just as had been described to them. It wasn’t much of a journey, not physically anyway, and they didn’t really have to look hard to find him. They just followed instructions and believed they found exactly what the angel told them they’d find.
The first to see Jesus were poor and marginalized, the very people Jesus came for. They found him among animals, a child of poor, ordinary people, just like them.
The magi, according to the gospel of Matthew, were not close by: they were "wise men from the east." That's not a description you give of people from just the other end of town. And the sign they followed was a star, a celestial marker, that anyone should have been able to see from anywhere. And yet, they were the only ones who truly "saw" what it meant. They followed a sign which they interpreted in order to find the fulfilment of a prophecy that a great king was born. And even though there was no trappings of royalty, they knew, when they found Jesus, that they were in the right place and they offered him their royal gifts.
This is a whole different kind of journey from the shepherds. But the truth at the heart of their stories, what they found, brought them to the same place.
The author of Luke says they found the messiah. The author of Matthew says they found what Isaiah prophesied to be Immanuel, which means “God with us.” The author of the gospel of John writes that he is “the Word made flesh.” Jesus, who is for everyone.
Perhaps that’s why we like to put them all together. Shepherd or magi, we come to Jesus in different ways, from different places, led by different desires.
