Wide-angle Nativity

Minor characters matter in telling the Christmas story, writes Maxine Hancock.

This Christmas, like many of you, I’ll take out my Nativity set and arrange the pieces one more time, noting the accumulating nicks and scratches that come from much packing and unpacking.

Here they are. The first is the kneeling shepherd boy just in from the fields, holding a lamb.

The poet Christina Rossetti imagines that the boy will offer the lamb to the Christ child, as she asks,

The angel from the realms of glory, wide winged and sweet faced – probably not a bit like the mighty singing warrior angels of the heavenly host (and after all, the angels had all gone away into heaven again). But I like this beautiful angel and place her where she can watch over the scene I am building.

Next I unwrap the Wise Men, all three of them, each bearing a gift. I know they don’t really arrive at the manger, of course, but are still on their long and arduous journey to worship the child. But time is relative in this scene, and the liberty we take coalescing the figures in Matthew and Luke’s accounts will allow us to bring some other figures into our scene, at least in imagination.

Only when the shepherd, the angel and the Wise Men are in place, do I carefully unwrap and place the centrepiece – the Holy Family. Joseph bends protectively over the others. Mary is serene, gazing downward in wonder and love. And all of us are looking at the child.

There they are on the mantel once again.

But this Christmas I am imagining a wider angle on the Nativity scene – the angle the historian Luke takes in his Nativity narrative (Luke Chapters 1 and 2). In Luke’s telling there are some other figures just to the right and left of centre stage.

In Luke’s telling there are some other figures just to the right and left of centre stage.

In my wide-angle Nativity, there would be another blessed family trio looking on with great joy – two geriatric and still-surprised new parents, Zacharias and Elizabeth, and their baby boy named John. The seniors are white haired and bent, but also radiant. It is the highly unexpected conception of the child in their arms that has alerted them, and the whole community in Nazareth, to something unusual breaking on the horizon, connected to other miraculous births in Israel’s history such as the birth of Isaac to the aged Sarah and Abraham, and the birth of Samuel to the infertile couple Hannah and Elkanah.

Elizabeth and Zacharias’ unexpected and miraculous conception of John may have helped to prepare Mary for the angel Gabriel’s announcement to her of Mary’s own even more miraculous conception of a son who would be named Jesus, one who “will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.” To Mary’s protestation, “How will this be?” the angel points to Elizabeth, at that time six months’ pregnant, and tells Mary, “Nothing is impossible with God.”

So let’s have these two shocked and blessed geriatric parents and their plump three-month-old baby just over at stage left to the central scene, looking toward the new parents in the stable. Of course, Elizabeth and Zacharias were no doubt in the hill country near Jerusalem, but they will hear the news and rejoice. The son of these faithful old believers has a promised destiny intimately linked with that of the baby in the manger, a calling which Zacharias has announced in an outburst of poetic praise – “You, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him” (Luke 1:76). So yes, these figures belong in the scene I am imagining.

And now in my imagination, I pan across to the right where I place another pair of seniors who belong within my wide-angled Nativity scene – Simeon and Anna in the temple in Jerusalem where Joseph and Mary will soon bring the baby Jesus for the ritual redemption of a first-born child (see Exodus 13:1; 11–12). Simeon will get the speaking part – he too, as he holds a baby, bursts into poetic prophecy as he realizes the promise that has been silent for four long centuries is now fulfilled.

Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you dismiss your servant in peace. For my eyes have seen your salvation (Luke 2:25–35).

Anna’s not often mentioned at Christmas, but what a great old woman she is!

There, just beside him, I place Anna. She’s not often mentioned at Christmas, but what a great old woman she is! I smile as I imagine her using a cane, maybe cupping one hand behind an ear to hear every word uttered about the child. At 84 she is, by the life expectancy of the time, very old. She’s at home in the temple because she’s there a lot. She is, we are told, a prophet.

Like others of the principals in the Nativity story, she has a distinguished family lineage, in her case going back to Asher, one of Jacob’s sons who was the head of one of the 12 tribes of Israel. What Moses said about Asher when he blessed the tribes of Israel just before his death is still true about this woman who is his descendant. “Most blessed . . . is Asher . . . your strength will equal your days” (Deuteronomy 33:25).

It seems Anna is not only a prophetic speaker, but also a good listener. She listens to conversations at the temple and identifies those “who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.” Those who were looking forward to the coming Messiah probably spoke together in little groups and whispers – for, as the Wise Men would find out, it could be dangerous to speak openly about the Promised One. Maybe she had a prayer group that met regularly to pray for the fulfilment of God’s promise to send a Redeemer. One way or another, Anna knew who the waiting, and longing and praying ones were.

PHOTO: SINCERELY MEDIA

And once she had seen (and, I am guessing, also held) the child and heard Simeon’s prayer and prophecy, she wasted no time in sharing the Good News. She chose the recipients carefully on the basis of their openness to this fulfilment of long-held and shared hope. Like other women in the Gospels – the woman at the well we learn about in John 4, the women who hurried to share the news of Jesus’ resurrection, many named by Luke in Luke 24 – Anna couldn’t refrain from sharing good news.

There now. My Nativity scene is a little wider and more complete – just as Luke seems to have intended. But there is still one more set of figures to add. Even though Luke does not mention them by name or by action, they no doubt had a very important role in the birth of our Saviour. Kneeling there, beside the shepherds, let’s add, as almost for sure she was there, a midwife and a village woman who is her helper.

In Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels (IVP Academic, 2008), Kenneth E. Bailey recasts the Nativity story as understood by his long acquaintance with Middle Eastern culture. He envisions the “stable” as the second room of a Middle Eastern home of the time, part of the house where the animals were kept. He writes, “The room would, naturally, be cleared of men for the birth of the child, and the village midwife and other women would have assisted at the birth.”

How can my Christmas celebration this year include some who I hadn’t thought of before?

The midwives of the ancient Hebrews played a decisive role in the preservation of Hebrew babies – including Moses, the great deliverer of Exodus. This little one also came into a world in which mother and infant life were precarious – in which to bear a child was to go into the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Infant survival depended on the care and experience of midwives. This birth after travel and in an unusual place would have required extra care. The baby and His probably very young mother survived a hazardous birth, and God’s amazing plan to come as one of us has been fulfilled.

And now I see the Nativity scene is wider yet. It includes insiders who were awaiting the coming of Jesus and recognized that in Him God’s promised Messiah had come. It includes outsiders, those arriving still bedazzled by the announcement of Good News and others who have plodded along, following a distant light. It includes seniors and infants, proclaimers and listeners, and those who kindly and skillfully serve the needs of a mother and infant. I’ll ask myself, “How can my Christmas celebration this year include some who I hadn’t thought of before? With whom can I share ‘Good News of Great Joy’ ”?

How can I have a wider-angled Christmas?

As I think about this, I realize I do not do this alone for the Nativity scene encompasses all who have been drawn to know Jesus as Lord, God come to us – people from all places and in all eras since that night in Bethlehem. And look! I’m in there too, rejoicing, inviting, encouraging –

With Elizabeth and Zacharias and baby John; with Simeon and Anna; with the shepherds and the midwife and her helper, with the angels “now gone away into heaven” and the Wise Men still on their trek,

PHOTO: SINCERELY MEDIA

Maxine Hancock is professor emerita of interdisciplinary studies and spiritual theology at Regent College, a longtime writer for Faith Today and lives in Vermilion, Alta.