Sometimes the Spirit takes hold while a preacher preaches and they go off script to make a point. I thought that was happening to me last Sunday as I was talking about how we love the baby Jesus, but that baby grows up to challenge and even threaten our comfortable way of life.
As I was talking about the baby Jesus, I remembered that the church has this little porcelain creche displayed in front in the sanctuary. I hadn’t planned on doing this, but I moved over to the creche and was either going to lift up the wrapped-in-swaddling-clothes Jesus or at least point to it. As I made my way over there, still (in my mind) preaching up a storm, I said something like, “We love the innocence and safety of baby Jesus but…” And I looked down…and there was no baby Jesus. Mary and Joseph were there. Shepherds, magi, animals. All present and accounted for. No Jesus. “Well,” I thought to myself, “this is embarrassing.”
I turned to our small congregation and laughed, “Where did Jesus go?” I learn something new about this church every day as I go through a year with them for the first time. A woman near the front tried to mouth some words to me. “What?” I said as I moved closer to her. Finally I heard her whisper, “He’s behind the stable.”
I walked back over, looked behind the stable, and, sure enough, there was Jesus. It’s a tradition at this church that the infant Jesus isn’t reunited with the rest of the creche figures until Christmas Eve. Thankfully, everyone had a sense of humor about it and I filed that little tradition away, hoping that I wouldn’t forget.
I talk a lot about how Jesus can be hidden in so many places and people and often he can be discovered in unlikely locations. As I was thinking about my inability to literally find Jesus in worship, I reversed the question to myself. It’s a good spiritual practice to find Jesus in all things, but how often am I the hider? Does the way I live my life–my actions, behaviors, decisions–make it hard for others to find Jesus? Or easier? That’s a question I’d sometimes rather not ask myself, but one that’s necessary.
Whether you bring out Jesus on Christmas Eve or try discover him every day, may the incarnation–God’s way of not hiding–remind us to make sure Jesus can be found in our own lives.