“O Little Town of Bethlehem” undoubtedly would rank as one of the most beautiful Christmas carols ever written. How many Christmas cards, tableaus, or mental images have been spawned by just the first line: “O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see the lie; above the deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.” How peaceful, pastoral, serene!

           
The reality of that night of which we sing would have quite different. Bethlehem would not have been a quiet, sleepy, serene little village. At that moment in time it was a pilgrimage destination, a town in the midst of activity and festivity. People would have been coming there to register for a census, and they would have been all sorts and conditions of people: old and young, families and solitaries. There would have been travelers and those who were trying to make a living from the travelers—food vendors, musicians, artisans, entertainers, pick-pockets and scam artists. There would have been officials—armed soldiers to keep order and bureaucrats to fill out forms and collect taxes.   There would have been young lovers, trying to steal a quiet moment or a furtive kiss, and there would have been those who were grieving the death of a loved one. Then there would have been the average residents of the town—people just trying to be inconvenienced as little as possible by the whole rigmarole. And then there was that census—not necessarily a welcome event in the lives of an occupied people. If you had an acute nose for such things you would catch a whiff of unrest, dis-ease, upheaval, fear in the air.

           
Bethlehem, in other words, was a place like many other places throughout time and space. A place where all the realities and all the dramas of human life, both the great one and the small ones were being played out: Love, death, power, struggle, perseverance, surrender. That was Bethlehem. But because of what happened that night, Bethlehem resembled Heaven.

           
“And it came to pass in those days”. With these simple words God invites us into the greatest drama of human history, the beginning of the consummation of the love affair between the Divine and the created. An old man and a young woman in the final moments of pregnancy arrive in this nondescript village on a typically human night, and something new begins. What has been in the works for centuries, eons, from the beginning, comes to pass. God in the heavens becomes Emmanuel, God with us. All that God had hoped for humankind becomes possible, tangible, real as Mary gives birth to her son and lays him in the manger.

           
At the heart of the Christmas story is the simple manger, the crèche. It is a reminder of the humility, the simplicity, the natural and often hidden, unexpected way that God comes in order to redeem. I imagine that if you are at all like my family, your house is adorned with at least one, if not several nacimientos, as they are called in Spanish. Though we’ve had them in our household for years, I learned something about them this year that I’d not known before, and that is that we have St. Francis of Assisi to thank for them. While there had been paintings and other depictions of the manger scene for centuries, St. Francis is credited with being the first to make a three dimensional crèche. 

           
Francis was in the Italian town of Greccio in the winter of 1223, making retreat with some brothers at their hermitage on the hillside opposite the village. He asked one of the citizens of the town to prepare a manger inside the hermitage beside the altar and to bring an ox and a donkey to stand there as well. The manger became the altar for the celebration of the Christmas Eve mass. According to the Tales of St. Francis, a miracle occurred that night. For at the moment of the consecration of the bread and wine, some saw the Christ Child appear alive upon the manger/altar. And Francis is said to have lifted the child high into his arms like Simeon of old, and Baby Jesus, the little Word who would become the Big Word of Jesus Christ, was Emmanuel, God with us and those who saw it had their hearts stirred.

           
Who knows if that actually happened or not? But the beauty of the story caught people’s attention and the practice of having manger scenes became part of Christmas devotion ever since. The Franciscans took them, in fact, to Prague, where the first public Nativity was set up in 1570, complete with many characters and animals. From there it spread around the world, pointing us to the deep truth about this night: That in the humble, basic, naturalness of human life, Eternity passes through the threshold of time and time is caught up in Eternity. God becomes a child that we humans can see, once more, face to face. We can see ourselves reflected through divine eyes, see within us and among us Emmanuel, God with us, and be called back to our beginnings and be restored.

           
At the heart of Christmas is the miracle of the manger, but there is even a greater miracle than that. The manger is not just a long-ago event but is now, whenever meek hearts receive him still and the Christ child enters in.” The real manger on Christmas Eve is the human heart where God is known to be real and true.

           
The place and birth of Jesus is a fore-telling. The infant’s birth fore-tells the Gospel that the man-Jesus will later preach. It is a revolutionary message about he superiority of love over power, faith over pride, charity over affluence, hope over despair, resurrection over death. The birth of this child proclaims the character of the Divine Creator who made us all. God’s character is shown to be that of innocence and humility. God appears in the form of something fragile, tender and lovely—in the form of a child to whom people are drawn to pay homage. The message accompanying this birth is that of peace, goodwill among all. Jesus is born, and we are reminded that in the routine, the ordinary and even the murky, earthy and dark places of human existence, the divine can be given birth.

           
As a people of faith we gather this night to pay homage to the child called the Prince of Peace.  As a people of faith our lives have breathed into them a sacred responsibility and task. Our responsibility, our task, our vocation is to be a sacrament of this birth we celebrate. We are to be human Nativities, giving flesh to the divine in the mangers of our hearts.

           
Christmas night is truly a night of wonder and awe. On this night we remember, with shepherds and angels, Mary and Joseph, the birth of the child Jesus which released into the world a life-giving power which is no less than the power of God himself. Now, gathered as we are on this night, may God, who caused Bethlehem to resemble heaven and caused shepherd’s hearts to fill with mystery, and transformed a manger into a thing of immortal beauty, brighten our skies, fill our hearts and transform our lives, for his sake, forever. Amen.