When you look at your Nativity set nestling peacefully under the Christmas tree what do you see?
A holy Mary and Joseph watching over Jesus in the manger. On one side a group of ordinary shepherds, sent into town by an angel and a heavenly choir, on the other three kings who have followed the star from the east.
And yet look closely and you will find something distinctly unholy and edgy about each of these characters. Joseph the refugee and apparently not the biological father of the new baby. Alongside him Mary, the teenage mother.
The visitors from the east are not kings but magi, doubtful astrologers, distant foreigners of a different faith.
The shepherds were nomads who tended religiously unclean animals. As the poorest and roughest of the community, they were treated with great suspicion by the settled townsfolk. The kind of people you put at a distance if only because of the smell.
But these are the ones who were chosen to meet with Jesus, the King of Kings. Look closely and the nativity scene reminds us of God’s passion for the unholy outcasts of society.
For God is a God of the humble, a God of the poor, a God who turns the world upside down with different priorities and values. Let’s allow God to turn our expectations and our priorities upside down. Let the baby in the centre of the nativity scene lead us to a new way of living.
A reflection by the Revd Philip Brooks, Deputy General Secretary (Mission).
Image: Tim Mossholder/Unsplash.