Christmas Reflection – The Manger Scene Part 1 (1/3)

It’s that time of year again when we start seeing Christmas decorations popping up everywhere.  

I find it interesting having just moved back to Australia after living 6 years in London UK, how many Manger scenes there are everywhere.  In the UK, fewer and fewer Manger Scenes seem to be displayed for fear of offending someone. 

Now I’m not going to engage in a discussion on the accuracy of the classic Manger Scene (I’ll leave that for others to rant about).  However, I do think that the image of the Manger Scene presents an interesting Theological reflection.  When we take a close look at this scene, we discover a narrative that sets the scene for the rest of Christ’s ministry on earth.  We are also presented with an image of full inclusion, with Christ at the centre.  Let us examine it closer, and I will explain what I mean.

Mary, Joseph and Jesus

Let us start with the mother of Jesus – Mary.  It is remarkable that she is even there.  A young, single woman (though engaged to be married to Joseph), found to be pregnant.  She believed that this is God’s will, that she was visited by an Angel, and that she is carrying the Messiah.  However, in the culture where she lived, the very fact that she is pregnant and un-married should have meant that she was stoned to death.  At the very least, her unborn child would have been forcibly aborted.  The fact that she is there at all, and giving birth to Jesus is a miracle in itself.  The only reason she is there is because the man who she is engaged to be married to, has accepted her.  Joseph has shown her love, and allowed that love to override millennia of teaching and culture and tradition.  Love has trumped the law.

Now this is no small act by Joseph.  He was a carpenter – a very highly respected tradesman, and probably very wealthy.  As a carpenter, he would have had a very high standing in his community.  To show such love and acceptance – inclusion – to a pregnant, unmarried woman, despite what they both believed (or not) regarding the origin of the child, meant he risked everything.  He risked his position in his community.  He risked his financial security – after all – who was going to continue giving him commissions if he disregarded all the traditions and teachings, and laws of his community and faith?  He risked everything.  But love won out.

Christ’s very birth then shattered tradition, shattered the law, and shattered millennia of scriptural teaching.  Yet perhaps it was not so much a shattering, but a fulfilling of those things.  Christ said in Matthew 5:17 “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them.”  Laws, traditions, and teaching are only binding until the need for them has been fulfilled.  Christ was not only the fulfilment of prophecy, but the fulfilment of the law.  It is no longer binding on us.  Those traditions, those scriptural teachings from Old Testament scriptures are fulfilled in Christ, thereby abolishing the need to adhere to them.

The Holy family then points towards a new era, a new way of engaging with God.  The old has gone, the new has come.

End Part One

Graeme Randall

Former Officer

Sydney, Australia