“Nativity Set, $19.94, at Wal-Mart”

 December 5, 2004

Scripture Reading:   Isaiah 11:1-10

 Rev. Dr. Carol L. Kerr

Blue Point Congregational Church

I went to Wal-Mart the other day to buy a new nativity set for Christmas.  Our old set had gone beyond pathetic.  The ox had shattered.  We had lost one of the three wise men.  The shepherd lost his foot.  What threw it over the edge was baby Jesus’ hand had broken off.  It looked like a nativity set from Far Side Cartoons.

I found the new nativity sets in a large back room at Wal-Mart which they use for seasonal items.  Where in the summer you can find garden hoses, clay post and ornamental flowers.  The nativity sets were wedged between two foot plastic candy canes that light up and you stick in your yard and on the other side were free standing dancing Santa’s.  The set came complete with a stable, Mary, Joseph, shepherds, sheep, a donkey, an ox, three wise men and the baby Jesus with two complete hands.  It was only $19.94 plus tax.

It is made in China.  I always wonder what the factory workers in China think of us.  Does the same factory that manufactures thousands of baby Jesus’s also manufacture hundreds of thousands of Santa’s holding up Coca-cola bottles under a snowy plastic dome?  What do they think of us in the West?  What kind of religion do they think we have?  Or, perhaps they are just glad for the job and our money and they don’t think at all.  

As far as I can remember the nativity set has always looked pretty much the same.  Mary has a blue cape over a red dress.  Joseph is always holding a lantern.  Where is that in the bible that Joseph is holding a lantern?  The ox always lying down.  The nativity set is pretty much the same year in and year out.  Santa’s dance to different tunes.  Candy canes in the yard might be the rage this year, next year it might be gingerbread men in the yard.   The marketers at the Christmas decoration companies work pretty hard each year updating these kinds of things.  But I don’t think they ever think of changing the nativity sets.  They never get together in a meeting and someone says, “Hey lets snaz up our nativity sets this year!”  “What a good idea!”  “Lets make the shepherds action figures!”  Lets call Matell and see if we can make Barbie and Ken versions of Mary and Joseph.   No in fifty years they will still be selling Mary in a blue robe and Joseph holding a lamp.  I’m not complaining, I have grown to like them that way. 

Alan Ehrenhalt in his book The Lost City writes about a study of three Chicago area communities in the 1950’s.  He describes one area, the Elmhurst area.  In December the Jaycees launched a ‘Put Christ Back in Christmas” campaign.  They were crusading against the ‘xmas’ vulgarization and the creeping secularism it represented.  In the winter of 1953, there were “Put Christ back in Christmas” stickers and signs all over Elmhurst – on postal machines, on bushes, on every tree sold for the holidays anywhere in town.  Residents were urged to send cards that had only a religious theme, and merchants were pressured to place biblical scenes in their store windows.  The Boy Scouts were enlisted to distribute 8,000 pamphlets door to door explaining the significance of the crusade. 

Two things I would like to say about this.  One, it doesn’t look like the Jaycees’ 1953 campaign worked very well from the fact that of all the millions of dollars of Christmas merchandise that Wal-Mart is selling in 2004, there were only 5 boxes of nativity sets. 

The other point is that the world has changed since the 1950’s, a time when I grew up and when this church was built.  Today, the Jaycees would never even think of running such a campaign because of its overbearingly Christian emphasis.  What about all the Jewish boy scouts, and Moslem Jaycees?  This is not a bad thing necessarily.  What we must realize though, is that the church is no longer sanctioned by the culture.  Like the T.V.  There use to be about 3 channels that you could choose from.  Now, with cable there are over 500 channels.  Likewise it use to be that on Sunday the culture chose going to church.  Now days the stores are open.  There is soccer, hockey, swimming, etc. for our kids.  I like to run in long distance races (I am a glutton for coming in last.)  But, most of the races are held on Sunday morning so I cannot.  Charity activities for such things as the Lung Association are held on Sunday mornings.  The expectation is not that people are going to go to church.  The expectation is that people are going to skip church in order to go to their event.

Which brings me back to the nativity sets at Wal-Mart.  By all indications I should have felt depressed about there only being five sets in the whole store.  I should have been righteously outraged by the amount of money spend on dancing Santa’s.  Yet, strangely I wasn’t.  Instead, I found/find my spirits lift when I saw the sets, small in number as they were, still there none the less.  I have a strange pride in the fact that the five boxes stubbornly took up shelf space in spite of  their commercialized surroundings.  Isaiah’s term, “holy remnant” came to mind.  The tree might have been chopped down, but there are these stubborn shoots sprouting up from the roots. 

In some ways when the church was supported by all of society, when it was the one center of life, things got too easy for it.  It became a social club and civic etiquette.  We had no need to grapple fiercely with our identity.  Why bother?  Everyone came anyway.  And in fact, if one got too serious about faith you might start ruffling some feathers.   We could get away with complacency.   Out situation now is certainly harder, but perhaps it is healthier.   

Now, what can I say?  We have to hunt with sore and tired feet through all of Wal-Mart to find those nativity sets.  We are not going casually walk by, lift one off the shelf and throw it in our cart with a sigh, “What the heck.”  We have to really want that nativity set to bother to go get one.  So it means more to us.

We here this morning are not the majority, or the “Mainline” as the Protestant church use to be called.  We are the minority and the “Other line.”  Like those five nativity sets we are the holy remnant that comes to church in spite of all the competing and demanding messages we get from sports, from our jobs, from societies expectations. 

The one big question of our day and age is, “Does it work for me?”  Does this job work for me?  Does my marriage work for me?  Does Girl scouts work for me?  Does the new YMCA work for me?  Does Bush work for me?  Does Kerry work for me?   Everyone here is here against cultural expectations.  It might not have been a huge battle to get here, you might not be all that consciously aware of it, but we are swimming against the tide to get here.  It is not as easy as it use to be to come to church.  Sometimes it is down right hard.  So, why do we come?  My guess is that at some point in our lives we realized that the one big question  of our day and age, “Does it work for me?” itself -  didn’t work for us.  The question itself somehow became ruthlessly individualistic and cynical.  It assumed that we as individuals are in control of our destinies at all times.   My guess is that we are coming o church because at some level we realize we simply can’t understand everything on our own.  Perhaps, some of us are staggering from some form of crisis, or a grave loss.  Perhaps we feel we need some sort of guidance because we simply can’t pull it together on the strength of our own individuality.  Some of us realize we are limited.  Some realize we are capable of enormous self deception at time.  Some are taken up short by how short life is.

Certainly if we are not seeking this for ourselves, we are seeking it for our children.  We parents know that at some time in their lives our children will be tested.  They may be teased on the playground.  They may be tempted to tease others.  Perhaps they will become very sick.  As grown ups some of our children are bound to face divorce.  Some may be addicted.  Some will get utterly burnt out and have a mid life crisis.   Some will face war.  Some may face worse things that we ever have had to face.  We parents who have brought our children do it because we have the suspicion that soccer won’t do it entirely (although it is good exercise),  neither will the dancing Santa clauses (although they are fun),   selling popcorn for boy scouts won’t help them through either, even the best college education won’t (although it will get them a good job and expand their minds.)

What will get them through has something to do with the nativity set, Mary in a blue robe and red dress, Joseph with the lantern, and the baby Jesus holding his hand up in a blessing.  Ian loved the nativity set I got.  He helped me take it out of the box and set it up.  He thought Mary was so beautiful, he wanted to bring it into his art teacher and show her.  Hopefully, this nativity set won’t get wrecked right away. 

Hopefully we will be able to keep the pieces in tact through many Christmas seasons.  But, someday, somehow it too will slowly break apart.  Things will be lost.  Pieces will be dropped and broken.  Even the baby Jesus, which is actually pretty small can have accidents.  Wrapped in newspaper put into storage the last one almost got thrown out inadvertently.  After all the other decorations had been unwrapped we found it at the bottom of the box with the left over wads.  Yet, I won’t really mind because by that time I hope the set will be replaced by another.  Not one that is found in Wal-Mart or any store.  I mean a nativity set that resides in our imaginations and weaves into our hearts.  With this set message of baby Jesus will spring up amid the night and call  to us and our children of hope.  It will be as if quiet and inconspicuously the figurines come alive and climb down off the buffet in our dining room where we placed it all these many years and come into our rooms.  They step over the question lying uselessly on the floor “Does it work for me?”  They climb into our minds, just outside of our peripheral vision, and whisper the point “All things are possible with God.”     

We the holy remnant will hear this voice.  Those of us who still bother to walk all the way to the back corner of Wal-Mart to pick up a nativity set, so to speak.   The voice is growing dimmer in our society.   At least it is harder to listen for and hear if you judge by the merchandising at Wal-Mart.  Yet this is not all bad.  It forces those of us who come to be motivated out of a sincere search for God.  Call us stubborn.  With God’s help the message will not die out entirely.   Through our number, small as it may be, even a remnant of the past,  the root of Jesse is carried on through our hearts and scattered through the hearts of our children.  That is very hopeful.  It is hopeful indeed.