The Very Rev. David Giuliano

Sunday, December 16, 2007

This Moderator's Blog originally appeared on WonderCafe*.

It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty founder was a child Himself.

Charles Dickens

This morning, at Royal York Road United, I slipped into a pew with a flock of wriggling sheep and one infiltrating turtle. The pew in front of us was a meringue of angels’ wings and flowing robes. All but one tiny seraph wore silver garland halos mounted on white fur headbands. The sheep and turtle were boys. The angels were girls. Teenagers tuned an electric guitar in the shadows of the transept. We were ready to worship.

The pageant unfolded in ways that proved again the perfection of chaos theory. There were shepherds (“That’s a staff not a sword, boys”) and some wonderfully bewildered wise Kings. They arrived from and returned to the East several times upon remembering they had something else to say. With help from the wings they stated the purpose of their visit. A deliciously evil, and British, sounding Herod answered them from the bass section of the choir loft. “…and all of Jerusalem was troubled…”

A couple of vignettes included a contemporary Joey and Maria. Maria, I’m guessing she is 13, bore all the signs of a lumpy pillow gestating in her womb. They kept the spectre of modern-day poverty before us.

Mary and Joseph plunked the doll-Jesus in the manger. Then they worried his blankets and hair non-stop—giving authenticity to their role of first-time parents.

A small leopard sang one of the solos.

It was joyful, beautiful. It left me nostalgic for my own young children and the ways we played the birth story together. We all begin our relationship with Jesus there, at the manger. We make the story our own. We tell Jesus’ story and our own stories through it.

“I’ll be the wolf!” four-year-old Jeremiah shouted as we unpacked the crèche.

“The wolf?” I asked.

“Yep! The one the shepherds have to keep from killing the sheep. You be the shepherd, Dad.” That year wild confrontations between the wolf and shepherd became central to the story of Jesus’ birth. Let’s leave the psychoanalyzing for another time, shall we?

The nativity stories, it seems to me, are not so much about history as they are doorways into the house of faith called Jesus. We find ourselves in his story. We play at being shepherds, or magi, or sheep. If there isn’t a character that quite fits, there is still room for a leopard or a turtle or a wolf.

It is a story that evokes play and imagination and celebration—a saviour born unto us! There are hard times to come, true, but today our hearts danced at Royal York Road United. The stories are big enough to include us all.

This year I would be one of the magi. Not because I am feeling particularly wise but because this year cancer has taken me on a difficult journey to a foreign but exciting encounter with God. I am travelling with faithful companions, also seekers after God's birth among us. I arrive at this birth bearing gifts that are more symbolic than useful. And I can see that we will have to find our way home by another way. We will never be the same.

If we played the pageant together, who would you want to be this year?