Nativity Scenes are Proof that God's Love is Extravagant

It’s that time of year again! Where nativity scenes take over the airwaves—little ones adorning the mantle-piece; big, inflatable ones set out in the yard; even living ones complete with spitting llamas and blue-lipped Joseph because it’s too stinking cold outside to be holding this god-forsaken pose for three hours straight!

It’s everywhere, a tableau, an image frozen in time and remembered every month of December, reminding us of the historical moment that gave birth (pun intended) to its reconstruction. I love nativity scenes because they tell a story—a really extravagant story with vastly different characters holding vastly different roles. And yet all of the characters and their respective lives converge, like tributaries running to the sea, in this one, solitary scene. And it is a moment we’ve captured in writing and live in, over and over, each year, when we reenact it.

            

But thinking about this reenacted moment, I was confronted by an obvious question that I had never considered before. That being, do you realize how many unnecessary characters are in this scene? In fact, there are even characters not present who are crucial to the scene coming to be! I pose this obvious question because it got me thinking of how it is God likes to work in our world. I’ll give you a hint—it’s extravagantly, with a lot of unneeded excess. Why? Because that’s what Love does!

We see this characteristic shining in the story of Jesus’ birth. So in light (punned again!) of the Christmas season, I want to list all the characters related to the story, just so you can get a glimpse that God’s ways aren’t ours. Whereas we are all about the bottom-line, efficiency, limiting unneeded elements, God is about throwing the most extravagant, wildest, most-talked-about party the world has ever known—and you better believe everyone is invited!

1.      Mary, Joseph (and eventually Jesus)—These are the only must-haves in the story, and truly, if we’re being frank, Jesus is really the only must-must-have. God-made-flesh was to be born, which of itself is unthinkable enough. Mary and Joseph weren’t needed. God could’ve figured out another way to show up on the earth. Truly, if our God was a practical God, an economic, efficient, bottom-line type of God, Jesus would be the only character in the nativity scene. He’d just be standing there with a full beard and a Paul Rudd look of nonchalance on his face like, “What’s up guys. I’m here.”

But he wasn’t. Because our God is an extravagant God. A God who loves as his primary state of being. And love requires more than one person. So he elected to come through the messy, bloody, painful, but oh-so-joyful process of birth. Which means he needed a surrogate, and a righteous man who could put aside his pride and serve his betrothed with honor and humility. The whole means by which Jesus showed up on earth was entirely unnecessary! And it leaves us absolutely speechless at the goodness of God.

2.      Angels and Shepherds—I group these two together because they’re inseparable. God commissions the angels, thousands of them, to deliver the news bursting from the seams of heaven, like water about to explode from an over-filled balloon, that the Messiah had come! The King had been born and light had returned into the land that had dwelt in darkness for so, mournfully long. “Go! Tell them!” God exclaims. And so the angels go.

And who do they tell, but the people God has a soft spot in his heart for—shepherds. God loves the outcasts, the pariahs, those who society looks upon with a sneer and mocking repulsion. Those who the world says are unlovable, these are the precise ones God says, “Oh, how indescribably special you are to me!” Like shepherds. God could’ve sent angels to tell anyone, and the rational candidates would be the world leaders—Pharisees, King Herod, Caesar even—so as to make the succession of lordship from the old power-holders to the new One as seamless as possible. But no, God doesn’t care about power. He already knows it’s all his anyway. He wanted to tell shepherds. God wanted to tell those who had no hope that Hope had returned and that they, the last, were so favored and honored by God that they received the good news first.

And the angels delivered the message through song. Song is unnecessarily poetic. That’s our God.

3.      Wisemen and the Natural World—Just when you think God only favors the outcasts, he halts that judgmentalism in its tracks. Oh no, God’s extravagant love is for all people, regardless of how ordinary, how powerful, how wretched or sinful or hungry they may be. The wisemen were your intellectuals of the day, the philosophers, astronomers, physicists, economists, political advisors, all rolled into one. They were brilliant and they were sought out by kings and rulers alike. Yet also, they were trackers of the divine. And God, in his sheer extravagance, had been leaving clues in the natural world—like the alignment of planets and the over-illumination of stars, which just so happened to rest above Jesus’ home. When I said earlier God’s joy is bursting at the seams, I wasn’t playing. The stars in the sky were giving away the secret! And brilliant intellectuals were catching on. So they came too, to offer their gifts, recognizing the party that was about to be thrown.

4.      Animals—This might seem like the ultimate waste of God’s creative energy. Why would it be necessary for dumb beasts to be present at the birth of Jesus? Well, simply, because Jesus created those dumb beasts. Harkening back to another story about God’s extravagance, he didn’t just choose to make humans in his world. No. God’s love and grace is much bigger, wider, deeper than you and I. He made more species of plants and animals than we could ever hope to discover. Think about that: there are species of animals on this earth that no one knows about except for their Creator who takes care of them. That’s our God. And that’s why animals were deemed worthy to witness the birth of their Maker. Because God’s love is too extravagant to be limited to humans alone; all the earth must know, must join into their Maker’s joy—stars and sheep and spitting llamas too.

5.      Emperor Augustus—If the animals were the ultimate example of God’s creative waste, then Augustus is the greatest example of God’s ironic humor. He’s not in the nativity scene, but it was his decree that made it all possible. As we learn from Matthew’s gospel, the Jews knew that the Messiah would come from Bethlehem. Jesus had to be born in that town, the same place David hailed from. But instead of simply telling Joseph and Mary to travel south from Nazareth to Bethlehem (a very long journey), God decided to use the Emperor of Rome, the most powerful man in the world at that time. We know this because it says in Luke 2:1, “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered.” You can’t call for all the world to be registered unless you’re the ruler of all the world.

But that’s the joke. Augustus isn’t the ruler of all the world—even though he thinks he is. Jesus, the baby about to be born, and through the bidding of God the Father, is the ruler of all the world. And without telling Augustus, God had him nudge the process along—the process of making sure Jesus’ birth fulfilled all prophecies. If God was only a bottom-line type of God, he wouldn’t have used the Emperor of Rome to make Joseph and Mary travel to Bethlehem. Gabriel would’ve just mentioned it to Joseph in a dream when he spoke to him the first time. But God is too extravagant—and too much of an ironic jokester. To prove that he was the ruler of all the world, Jesus came as a baby (not a powerful warrior), and he incited the “supposed” ruler of all the world to do his bidding. Just to prove that all power and authority had always been, and would always be, his alone.

So there you have it. The characters of the nativity scene. Jesus being the only one necessary! And yet, our God’s ways is to work through as many people (or animals, or stars) as possible. Why is that?

Because our God is an over-joyed, reckless Lover. He goes above and beyond what is “needed” or “prudent” so as to do this. His name is Love. Love is only so if it is the mutual selflessness, desire and joy found between living beings. The reason the nativity scene is so big and wide and extravagant is simply because that’s who our Maker is.

So the next time you think, “Ah, God doesn’t need me,” take a look at a nativity scene. And as your eyes are tracing over the various characters in that dingy, putrid stable, keep in mind that you’re right! God doesn’t need you. But you can bet your last breath that he wants to include you. You can rest assured that you are absolutely invited to his party. Because our God is an extravagant one. And extravagance isn’t selfish. All are invited to the party. His entrance into the world proves this.