While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no place in their rooms. – Luke 2:6-7
Away in a manger, no crib for his bed, The little Lord Jesus laid down his sweet head;
The stars in the heavens looked down where he lay, The little Lord Jesus, asleep on the hay.
The cattle are lowing; the poor baby wakes, But little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.
“We tend to sanitize the birth story of Jesus, fashioning it into a pristine, shimmering nativity scene adorned with gold accents and residing comfortably on a hallway table or atop a fireplace mantle. It all becomes so benign and serene that we forget the visceral reality of the moment, that it was loud and chaotic and messy as childbirth. Jesus was pushed through Mary’s birth canal and into a strange world. To miss this fact is to cheapen the event by trying to soften it into something neat and orderly, when in truth (as with all births) there was surely mess and chaos in the moment.” (From Low: An Honest Advent Devotional, week one, day one “A Messy Nativity”, by John Pavlovitz)
Nothing in our scriptures indicate that on the first Christmas “all was calm, all was bright”, nothing indicates that the infant Jesus was still and quiet, we have no real reason to say that it was a “silent night” at all. Anyone who has given birth themselves or been witness to a birth will give first-hand testimony to a sometimes loud, sometimes frenzied, and always a bit messy event. Throw in a pack of shepherds tromping about and some barnyard animals, and it was probably, as John Pavlovitz says, “A Messy Nativity.”
In our romanticizing and blurring the sharper edges of Jesus’ actual birth, we set ourselves up to believe that only the most peaceful and serene of Christmases is a valid, real, and meaningful Christmas. We can make the mistake of thinking that God is only interested in entering our world and our lives when all is still and bright.
Just as in the days of Mary and Joseph, our world and our lives are full of conflicts and violent threats, oppressive forces, and hectic last-minute details and frustrating compromises (like a manger cradle and barnyard roommates.) God is just as willing to enter into the messiness of our lives as God was willing to come into the world through all of the livestock odors and messiness of human birth 2,000 years ago. We need not wait for everything to calm down and for neat and orderly spaces before we open ourselves to God and welcome God’s Holy Spirit to be born into us at Christmas. Just as babies will come whenever they are ready (not on our timelines), God’s Spirit is ever-ready to burst into our lives no matter how chaotic and loud.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s helpful to clear away the chaos and create a little quiet space in order to more fully appreciate and benefit from God’s presence. I hope our Christmas Eve services will give us all just that. BUT, if you find that you just can’t manage to create a silent night where all is calm and all is bright, and if the babies around you are crying their heads off, and if the cattle are bellowing rather than lowing, hear the angels say, “Fear Not!”. God will send God’s own child to us again this Christmas, even if it is a messy and loud Christmas.
Pavlovitz adds “Life comes with the collateral damage of living, with failed plans and relational collapse, with internal struggle and existential crises, and we carry these things with us into this season. The good news is we don’t need to discard our messiness to step into the season, and we couldn’t even if we wanted to.”
After all, the saying “Cleanliness is next to Godliness” isn’t from our scriptures; and a loudly crying baby should sound like God’s promise of a new day full of promise and hope. Bring your fully flawed self and all your often chaotic schedule along into this Advent season, and trust that God will willingly enter in.