Be a sheep

Here's to Christmas Pageants! 

Years ago, okay decades ago, I lived in Crawfordsville, and they had an epic one.   You see, the church let the YOUTH GROUP tell the Christmas story.  We all know that can be a little risky. It was not told in King James English, or even NRSV.  I didn’t get to see it;  I was in Sunday School. Still, I treasure two memories from that event; yes, they are memories of an event I did not see and yet became part of our family Advent Lore. It changed the way I wait. First memory, the kings arrived down the center aisle on bicycles, and second the shepherds’ big line was, “’Biding’s a bore.”  Any time I have to wait, I repeat that line.  The shepherds are SO RIGHT!  “And in the same country there were shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night” (Luke 2:8 KJV). They were waiting. 

Shortly after that, Christmas Pageants disappeared from the churches I attended.  I don’t know if the contemporary interpretation was a determining factor, probably not.  However, I was sad.  Christmas Pageants are an important part of Advent, of waiting.  It is the "past and now" part of the “not yet” of Christmas. 

In Advent, it is tempting to suspend the knowledge that Jesus was born, lived and died.  It is as if we go back to the beginning and try to pretend we don’t know the ending, but that is the wrong reason to do a pageant.  Advent should not be void of Jesus, or "pre-Jesus."  It should be all about Jesus and the incarnation: God made present,  the story made real, the memory at hand. What better way to think about the word made flesh than by embodying the story?  That is what a Christmas Pageant does. It puts us in the story.  It makes us the story.   With angel wings and sheep ears, we embody and enter into the story that is about then, now, and the time yet to come.

If we wait IN the story, then biding isn't a bore. We make the story, and its message, real.  God is here, and we are part of the story. It is our story. So this year, while you are waiting, sign up to be part of the Christmas Pageant.  Tell the story, be the story, and share the story.  This year, while you wait, be a sheep...    

Peace, 

sign up for the Second Presbyterian Church Pageant: http://members.secondchurch.org/default.aspx?page=3061&occurrenceId=52933