I find it an irresistible image, that baby in a manger. It has inspired paintings and songs and stories through the years, and endless reams of theological commentary. And as soon as I hear even a bit of all that – or just the phrase “laid him in a manger” - my mind’s eye starts seeing all the pictures haloed in shining light, the peaceful (amazingly unsquished) newborn sleeping in a pile of gently glowing straw, and heavenly glory and adoration all around.
And then tonight as I read this story for the hundredth – thousandth? – time, I find myself struck not only by that holy glow, but the idea that – while an animal’s feed tray is a very unusual place to put a baby (for many of us, anyway), and is undoubtedly detailed by Luke for important theological purposes – putting a baby in a manger is the height of practical improvisation, under the circumstances.
Everybody’s tired after the birth. The baby needs to sleep. There’s no crib, no glider; this isn’t an obstetrical suite or a home nursery. But there’s a manger, and the straw will support him better than the floor and he’s not going to fall out of it.
Any number of babies, over the centuries before and since, have slept in improvised beds. Cave hollows and mangers and hammocks and dresser drawers and maybe even Amazon delivery boxes.
Life happens; we’re not in exactly the right place, or at the right time, and we improvise.
(In fact, improvising is the only way many of us get through big Christmas-season events in our families or work or school – or church!)
And I wonder if maybe that is part of the whole point of Christmas.
Wonder if that baby in the manger is a deliberate invitation – or provocation – from God to encourage us to improvise.
To take things that aren’t what we were planning for, or hoping for, and to not only roll with it, but – together with God – to improvise something new.
Years ago, I took a short crash course in improvisation at The Second City improv theater and school in Chicago.
And the very first thing we talked about is that the fundamental rule and root of improvisation is “Yes, and…”
When you are doing an improv scene, and your partner starts with “Wow, the moon looks beautiful tonight,” you might respond “Yes, and it’s so much brighter now we are out of atmosphere”, and now you are creating a story together about a space journey.
If instead you had said “You can’t possibly see the moon, we’re in a windowless classroom right now,” or your partner responded “You can’t afford to travel to space,” the story would fall apart before it started.
Beyond the summer camp beginner level, you don’t usually say the “Yes, and” words out loud as you build a story, a relationship, a world to share. But it’s still there: It’s the principle of receiving a gift to build on, and give back, that makes improvisation work.
The taking of something unexpected, and unplanned, and rolling with it, and pulling in ideas and stories and resources to make it work, is what improv, and partnership, and often even faith is all about.
It's what makes the Christmas miracle work – in Bethlehem so long ago, and also here and now.
When the sky around them fills with terrifyingly supernatural creatures, the shepherds in the fields near Bethlehem had to choose, “Yes, this is happening, and we should listen,” instead of “No, this is freaky; I’m having hallucinations and should hide under a sheep.”
When the angels announced that the Messiah had come, that the kingly superhero God’s people had been waiting ages for was here, the shepherds had to say “Yes, let us go to Bethlehem and see, and be part of God’s salvation,” instead of “Well, that has nothing to do with me except probably raising my taxes again.”
And when they got there, and had to realize that there was no fabulous royal superhero ready to knock down the Roman oppressors,
that this ordinary, squished red baby was what God had done,
they had to choose not to walk away in disappointment, or complaint.
They had to embrace the absurdity and tell people that yes, this child came announced by heavenly choirs; and yes, we will celebrate the long-awaited miracle of this ordinary child in an improvised crib, so that the story could go on.
The shepherds aren’t the only people improvising with God in this story. Mary and Joseph each had to hear a shocking and potentially catastrophic opening line from God – an unplanned pregnancy that could break their marriage before it got started – and say, “Yes, and we will become co-parents with God. Yes, and this divine child will be our ordinary child, loved and raised to be fully human.”
Instead of “No, impossible. It’ll ruin me; I can’t cope; I give up.”
In a world that so often chooses to say “No,” and “but…”, to unexpected news and events,
and “impossible!” to improbable hopes,
the miracle of Christmas absolutely requires us to suspend our disbelief and use our imaginations and get right into the story with God, saying “Yes!” and choosing to act as if the impossible is perfectly sensible, and the absurd is a deep holy truth.
Because, of course, sometimes deep holy truths – like the truth that the unlimitable divine being who created the universe would choose to be an ordinary infant sleeping in a feed tray, would choose all the messy, hungry, uncomfortable limits of humanity just to be with ordinary us – is completely absurd.
There are whole reams of potential Saturday Night Live sketches in the ridiculousness God proposes, in heavenly glory coming to be human, with us.
It's so ridiculous that the only response of faith is “Yes, and…”
God becomes a helpless infant?
Yes, and we will become nurturers for the divine in every infant. Yes, and we will become playful friends, as the divine child grows, right in the middle of our ordinary twenty-first century electronic lives.
God wants to become one of us, “move into the neighborhood”? Yes, and we will invite God to the neighborhood picnic. We will ask God for recommendations on gardening and contractors, and share our knowledge of the local parks with God. We will lend a hand with God’s home improvement projects (which, we will quickly notice, are always much, much, bigger than they sound when we start).
And yes, we will look for God in the faces of strangers and friends around us, people who show up a little out of place and looking to be at home.
Because all along, God is improvising with us. God is picking up the cues of our hopes and longings for the closer presence of God, the healing of the world. God picks up the things we stumble into, the things we were not planning for, and not only rolls with it, but invites us to join with God to improvise something new.
God hears our absurd hope and our accidental surprises, and says “Yes, and I will invent this adventure with you, a story in which you will love, and be loved, in ways you have never imagined before.” A story that is absurd, and wonderful, and full of surprise and delight – and wraps holy glows around the most ordinary, utilitarian tools and furnishings and people in our lives. Straw and shepherds and your family car or endless email.
Look with me, tonight, in your mind’s eye, or your heart’s, at the holy glow around that unexpected infant, in that improvised crib, so long ago, and hear God’s absurd and joyous and profound “Yes, and more yes” response to all our own hopes and dreams and longings and prayer:
now, tonight, here.
Hear God’s invitation to us to say (with the shepherds) “Yes, this absurd, wonderful, long-ago glowing miracle of God is our miracle, too, and we will roll with the unexpected, we will hope and dream and create a new story with God, tonight, and forever.”
