When I was teaching elementary school
French, I had a brilliant idea one time for a Christmas lesson plan. In the
south of France, people collect and display “santons” or “little saints”—small clay
figures dressed in traditional folk costumes, representing each village
inhabitant, from the town baker to the town pickpocket. The figures are all set
up outside the stable, waiting to visit the Holy Family inside. For the lesson,
my young students were supposed to choose a character from a typical French
town in Provence and shape him or her out of homemade salt dough. We would then
bake the figures in the oven, paint them, and display them in the school
entryway as our own French “crèche,” or manger-scene.
We began our work, but it wasn’t long
before I noticed that there was something wrong with the salt dough that I had
mixed at home the night before. It somehow wasn’t firm enough to allow the kind
of detail necessary for the task. I had assigned the most dependable children
the job of crafting the Holy Family, the angels, the kings, and the shepherds.
These kids were getting frustrated, though, as Mary’s head drooped softly down
onto her belly; the angel listed to the right as if she had already sampled too
much holiday eggnog; the shepherds’ staffs folded in two; Joseph’s legs
crumpled beneath his heavy body; and the necks of the three kings slumped over
into each other like some kind of royal three-headed hydra.
That’s when I noticed that the rest
of the kids were not following directions.
They were not fashioning men and women from a French village. When I
asked them what they were doing, almost every single child said that she was
making an animal. Dogs, cats, birds, ponies, and giant insects were taking
shape all over the classroom. Only one child was creating a human being. When I
praised him and asked him which character he was making, he proudly proclaimed
that he celebrates Hanukah, not Christmas, and was therefore making a Hebrew
soldier from Masada, complete with a lovingly-crafted modern rifle in hand.
My blood-pressure started to rise as
I watched my brilliant lesson plan go totally awry. Children, however, are
creative, and they didn’t let my worry over accuracy ruin their project. They
ignored my hand-wringing and single-mindedly continued their work. The next
week, when the figures were all baked and painted, they proudly wrote “Joyeux
Noel” above a manger scene … with a baby Jesus, a couple of bowing angels with
droopy wings, a Hanukah soldier, and a whole zoo full of snakes, giant worms and escargots, legless dogs and cats, and
quite a number of rocks.
All those years ago, I prayed that
the parents who came to our school Christmas program would not look too closely
at our lumpy animal Nativity. I cringed at the thought of this monstrosity
sitting out in the hallway, where parents could shake their heads over the low artistic
standards that I was setting for their children and the lack of French apparent
in the lesson. Now that I think about it, however, the children in my French
class were showing profound theological insight in their determination to bring
animals to worship the baby Jesus. Think of all the carols that we sing about
the ox and the ass standing around the manger. Legends, poems, and stories have
sprung up all over the world about the role of animals in the stable in
Bethlehem. Even though the Gospel stories about Jesus’ birth don’t mention the
animals at all, our human imaginations have filled the stable with sheep and
goats, oxen and donkeys, camels, and birds, and even spiders. I recently
learned that it was St. Francis of Assisi, credited with putting together the very
first crèche, who first put the donkey and the ox into the Nativity story.[1]
Leave it to St. Francis to think to include the animals! I wish that I had known
that fact twenty years ago, since I was teaching my infamous Christmas lesson
at a school named after St. Francis!
Like the kids in my French class, we
human beings seem to be drawn to the idea of bringing animals in to worship the
baby Jesus. Our desire to include our animal friends in the wonder of Christmas
is more than pet-loving sentimentality on our parts, however. When God came
down to earth as a human baby, God did not come only to heal and save our human
flesh. God came into the world to remake the whole of creation, animals
included. When Jesus is born, the powerful Word through which God made the
heavens and the earth enters history in the form of one human being. In Jesus,
we see God’s loving face, but we also see the sons and daughters of God that we,
too, are meant to be. Theologians have called Jesus the “second Adam,” born to bring
to earth human nature as it was meant to be before the first Adam ate that piece
of fruit in disobedience to God. Christmas is like a second creation, a creation
necessarily touching the lives of all creatures, not just human ones. As Rowan
Williams writes, Jesus’ birth “announces that creation as a whole has found its
purpose and meaning, and that the flowing together of all things for the joyful
transfiguration of our humanity is at last made visible on earth.”[2]
Psalm 96 sings a beautiful song in
anticipation of the moment in which God will come to re-create the whole world.
As Christians, we can hear in tonight’s psalm the joy of all creation as it
views humanity transformed by God’s presence on earth: “Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth
rejoice: let the sea roar, and all that fill it; let the field exult, and
everything in it. Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before
the Lord; for he is coming, for he is coming to judge the earth. He will judge
the world with righteousness, and the peoples with his truth.”
Can you imagine the animals in a vast
Christmas crèche, joining in the psalmist’s song of praise at humankind’s
transformation? Can you see them gathering like we do tonight—and every Christmas
Eve, year after year—looking toward the baby in the manger and longing with heart
and soul for safety, for healing, for the redemption of Creation? I can see
them, from the Arctic snows, to the African plains, to the deep oceans, to the
American cities, all turning toward Bethlehem and raising their voices in song:
“Thanks be to God that I will no
longer have to carry men into battle,” sings the horse.
“Thanks be to God that I will no
longer swim in black, sludgy seas, despoiled by human greed for oil,” shout the
seal and the fish.
“Thanks be to God that my home will
stop melting and I can feed my babies again,” cries the polar bear.
“Thanks be to God that I will no longer be
beaten and mistreated by tortured souls,” shout the dog and the cat.
“I will be able to lead a plow once
more on family farms,” rejoices the ox.
“I will no longer be slaughtered by
greedy humans looking for ivory and skins,” chime in the elephant and the
leopard.
“I will cover the barren plains once more,”
exults the grass.
“I will no longer be shattered in an
insatiable search for treasure and fuel” rejoices the mountain.
They look at the new baby, and they
know that the old ways will soon die. They know that God has come to remake the
world, that God has come in truth and righteousness. As Auden writes, they know:
“How all things living,/ Domestic or
wild,/ With whom you must share/ Light, water, and air,/ And suffer and shake/
In physical need,/ The sullen limpet,/ the exuberant weed,/ The mischievous
cat/ And the timid bird,/ Are glad for your sake/ As the new-born Word/
Declares that the old/ Authoritarian/ Constraint is replaced/ By His Covenant,/
… Run to Bethlehem./ Let us run to learn/ How to love and run;/ Let us run to
Love.”[3]
Let us all run, hop, crawl, fly and slither to the stable. Let
us take our places around the baby who will set all creation right, standing hand
in hand with all creatures, bearing witness to the power of God’s Love for all that
God has made.
Amen.
[1]
Thank you to the Rev. Dr. Michael Jinkins, who brought this subject to my
attention in his blog, found at http://www.lpts.edu/about/our-leadership/president/thinking-out-loud/thinking-out-loud/2014/12/16/-christmas-eve-and-twelve-of-the-clock-
[2]
Rowan Williams, Choose Life (New
York: Bloomsbury, 2013), 57.
[3]
W. H . Auden, “For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio,” from “Vision of the
Shepherds,” part II.
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