St Francis of Assisi established the tradition of the nativity play.
He created it as an imaginative way of engaging his contemporaries in the reality of the birth of Jesus. In a real stable the earthy smell of the hay and pungent scent of the animals would have helped those present to understand the humble nature of our Saviour’s birth, of the miraculous in a place of obscurity, and hope in a humble setting.
Perhaps today the nativity has become slightly sanitised. Our nativity sets and children’s plays, however, delightful, may lack something of the edginess of the real event 2000 years ago in Roman occupied Palestine.
On the other hand, looking at the news may bring us headlong into the reality of Jesus’ birth. A family soon to be refugees fleeing persecution, excluded, and finding a shelter for the birth of their first-born child in a village on the periphery of a great empire.
The world of the 21st century with its wars, refugees, and power struggles echoes that long-ago reality in Bethlehem. Our nightly news resonates with the march of armies, the displacement of peoples, and the cries of the homeless and hungry.
As we begin the Jubilee Year, which takes as its theme Pilgrims of Hope, we are reminded that the Incarnation is not an event removed from history, but one forever bound up with it.
We celebrate, Emmanuel, God with Us. Jesus is born into the messiness of the human condition, with its pain and its joy. We are reminded we are all pilgrims, persons and communities journeying to a sacred place.
The Incarnation binds us to God in an extraordinary way, as God becomes one of us in the person of Jesus. God is not a distant being, detached from our concerns and challenges, but a loving God, totally immersed in the human experience.
The Incarnation is an emphatic reminder that we are both pilgrims and people of hope, or as the Evangelist John reminds us “a light shines in the dark, a light that the darkness could not overpower [1:5]”.
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