The nativity scene was old and the paint on the wooden figures was scratched and chipped. All the essential pieces were in place. A Mary in pale blue, a Joseph in a working man’s brown, and a pink and white cherubic face peeking out from a bundle of swaddling cloths laid within a farmyard hay rack.

There were the shepherds, with a few sheep to affirm their calling, and there were some very regal looking characters leading camels into the scene. But why, oh why, does an angelic figure always have to be nailed so artificially above the gabled front of the barn?

A better question to ask though might be, Why are there always three shepherds and three wise men? I am sure it can only be the demands of symmetry, to balance this celebration of the incarnation as they all bow down in worship.

Luke tells us that There were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night[i]. Independently, Matthew recounts that After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem[ii]. The two events are separate, and there is no indication either to their coincidence or of the number participating.

Shepherds were living nearby and the announcement they received told them of events happening that day. The magi, even if living in what today is Northern Iraq, would have had a minimum trek of eight hundred miles to reach Jerusalem. A loaded desert camel can manage around eighty miles a day, so the shortest likely journey time for the magi would have been ten days. They must have seen the star over Bethlehem weeks before the Messiah was born, or they would not have set out in search of the savior.

The two accounts of visitors to the newborn king surely happened at different times, with one on the night of His birth and the other during the brief post partem period when Joseph and Mary continued to reside in Bethlehem. We know of the response of the shepherds, that, having visited the holy family, they returned glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told[iii].  Conversely, the magi brought their worship with them right into the house where Jesus was and, bowing down, presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

The magi were the wise men of a religion foreign to the Jews. They were Zoroastrian, the other great religion of the Middle East that survives from that time until today. They worshipped Ahura Mazda, the Lord of Light, and, as magi, were the astronomers, astrologists, and alchemists of their day. They knew stuff in an age when the majority were uneducated. Not even the schooled among the Jews, while knowing that the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem had understood the event was imminent. As the Son of God was being incarnate in the hometown of David, the greatest King of the Jews, he was also being revealed to the Gentiles. Presumably, those wise men would have returned from whence they came and shared the new wisdom they had received.

However, it was the shepherds who became the first missionaries of the good news the angel had given. These simple men, who maybe had never seen a book or a scroll in their lives, except in a syngagogue, became the first to share an account of Jesus’ birth narrative and the primitive gospel contained therein. They had heard the word: Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; He is the Messiah, the Lord.[iv] Then, having seen him they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed.[v]

Whatever your nativity looks like, be it scratched and dented, with missing figurines, or be it shiny and polished, radiating a manufactured glory, it is only a shadow of the true nativity. The stable was a smelly place, filled with the sweat and breath of livestock. The shepherds were unwashed from sleeping out on the hillside among the animals and the wisemen were dirty from days of dusty travel. Perhaps the only clean things in the whole diorama would be the gold and the containers of frankincense and myrrh that would have come from the loaded saddlebags. Yet the story contained within is the most glorious story ever told.

And perhaps the message contained within this message is the one prepared for the Apostle Paul to reflect upon when he wrote to the church in Corinth: God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.[vi]

As with shepherds and wisemen and all the others who heard on that day and the days to come, an encounter with the Savior demands a response. Which is ours? Perhaps better though, in the oft repeated words of the nineteenth century poet Christina Rosetti, If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb; If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part; Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.[vii]

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[i] Luke 2: 8

[ii] Matthew 2:1

[iii] Luke 2:20

[iv] Luke 2:11

[v] Luke 2: 17-18

[vi] I Cor 1: 27-28

[vii] In the Bleak Midwinter, by C. Rosetti