Film Friday The film The Nativity Story tells, as you might expect, the story of the first nativity. We see Mary and Joseph making the dangerous journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, for the census. We see the pressure and the stress that they’re under and we see the incredible birth of Jesus in the middle of the night. And then the Shepherds arrive and we’re reminded again that the first people who encountered Jesus were outsiders. Shepherds were marginalized, they were seen as unclean and they were practically unclean because of their job. And yet the angels appear to them. These shepherds are told specifically to look for a baby in a manger and that’s highly significant for them because they hang around mangers all the time. It’s a home from home for them, nothing threatening about. They wouldn’t be able to cross the doorstep of a palace, but a place where animals live… not a problem.
It’s a wonderful symbol of how close God has come to ordinary people. For these Shepherds the manger is key – and so they go. And having met the new baby and believed they then become the first witnesses! Because we’re told in Luke’s gospel that they go out and about telling everyone about this new king. Who knows how many of the neighbours rolled up to see the baby that night, might well have been crowded in there! So here it is – this unlikely story of this humble, relatively poor couple from Nazareth who become the parents of God’s baby. A son who will grow up to save the world, and who continues to this day to call people like those muddy shepherds, those with little power or influence, to come to him and to find a new life and a new beginning. Day after day after day.
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