Scripture: John 7:41:42 – “Others said, ‘This is the Messiah.’ But some asked, ‘Surely the Messiah does not come from Galilee, does he? Has not the scripture said that the Messiah is descended from David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?’” (NRSVue)
I remember the first play I was ever in, a Christmas pageant at my church in Marshfield. I was in second grade, and I took it very seriously, even though as a shepherd all I had to do was stand there. At the end, all the children threw hay around the stage, but I calmly and professionally bowed to the audience. This tells you something about me. First, it is another page in the “Greg had a weird childhood” story. Second, it is that making sure that everything is right concerning the Christmas story is important to me.
Details matter, I would say. For example, there is the issue of whether the wise men and the shepherds are together at the manger. Based on the gospels, the wise men arrived days or even years after the shepherds returned to their fields. But there is something meaningful is seeing all the characters together in Bethlehem with a beaming star overhead. If our expectations of the scene are not met, things feel wrong, and we want to fix our cognitive dissonance by rejecting what we think does not fit.
But the truth is that things are not always what we expect, and the “rules” of what is supposed to happen are not always how we interpret them. At the time of Jesus, there were many predictions and rules about where the Messiah would come from. Some prophets said the Messiah would come to, and supposedly from, Jerusalem. Others, like Micah, said Bethlehem. But none said Galilee. Galilee was not a place of any scriptural significance. And the idea that the Messiah would come from such an unimportant place baffled the mind.
In the Gospel according to John, people said that the Messiah had to come from Bethlehem, and since Jesus did not (as far as they knew), he could not be the Messiah. Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem was not known during Jesus’ ministry and does not appear in any stories set during Jesus’ adulthood. As such, skeptics believe that Matthew and Luke made up the stories about Jesus being born in Bethlehem just to make sure the prophecies were fulfilled. It seems Jesus not fitting expectations is still happening today.
But ultimately, our belief in Jesus is not based on which Old Testament passages he did or did not adhere to. Jesus does not need to be what we think he should be. Jesus just is. We know Jesus because of our reading about him in the gospels, but also through our experiences in worship and prayer. Jesus does not have to fulfill some checklist for us to believe. Rather, Jesus opens us to possibilities we could not even imagine.
This Christmas, as we return to traditions and the need for our manger scenes to be “just so,” remember that the true message of Christmas is that God does strange, unexpected, and wonderful things to the most likely people in the most unlikely places. Christmas is about something new, and the hope in that newness is what Christmas prepares us for in the year to come.
Prayer: Lord Jesus, come as a baby in Bethlehem, but more importantly come as our savior and friend into our hearts. Amen.
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