Christmas Perspective: Unlikely Messengers

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Unlikely Messengers

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night.  Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.  But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid; for see - I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.  This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger."  And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,

"Glory to God in the highest heaven,

and on earth peace among those whom he favors!"

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, "Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us."  So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.  When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them.

Luke 2:8-18 (NRSV)

He came down to earth from heaven

who is God and Lord of all,

and His shelter was a stable,

and His cradle was a stall:

with the poor, and meek, and lowly

lived on earth our Savior holy.

From "Once in Royal David's City" by Cecil Frances Alexander

"The Herdmans were absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world," so begins Barbara Robinson's classic children's novel The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.  The six Herdman children - Ralph, Imogene, Leroy, Claude, Ollie, and Gladys - wreaked havoc in their town, doing awful things like burning down a tool shed with a stolen chemistry set, bringing their feral pet cat to show-and-tell, and blackmailing other students.  They lived above a garage, and their favorite pastime was banging the garage door up and down, trying to pin each other beneath it.  "We figured they were headed straight for hell, by way of the state penitentiary," the young narrator of the story reports.

A closer look reveals that poverty and absent parents were at the root of the Herdman children's behavioral problems.  Their father had apparently abandoned them, and their mother had to work two shifts at a shoe factory every day to make ends meet, leaving the children to raise themselves.  Their teachers were not helping matters, for they would keep promoting them to the next grade despite their poor performance, because they could not bear the thought of having more than one Herdman in the same class.

For all the students who had to put up with the Herdmans every day at school, church had been a refuge, until one Sunday morning when the Herdmans decided to pay a visit.  That day, the pastor announced the auditions for the yearly Christmas pageant.  One week later, the Herdman hellions were cast in all the lead roles - Mary, Joseph, the Angel of the Lord, and the three Wise Men - because, for one reason or another, none of the other children in the church auditioned.  When other parishioners started voicing their concerns about a Christmas pageant starring the Herdmans, the narrator's mother, who was stuck directing the pageant, declared, "I'm going to make this the very best Christmas pageant anybody ever saw, and I'm going to do it with the Herdmans too."

During what was supposed to be the first rehearsal, the narrator's mother ended up teaching on the Christmas story, because the Herdmans, who hadn't stepped into a church until recently, were unfamiliar with the very story they would be performing.  Their irreverent yet honest questions, which quite possibly revealed a spiritual hunger, forced the narrator's mother to think seriously about the story, which had become a little too familiar to her.  She began to see the good in the Herdman children, whom nearly all of the other parishioners had written off.  The Herdmans were outraged that there was no place for Jesus to be born besides a stable, and they were enraged that King Herod sought to kill Him.

Having just learned about the Christmas story, the Herdman children played their parts in the ways that came natural for them, but, instead of ruining the pageant as the church folk had feared, they really did make it the best Christmas pageant the church had ever seen.

According to the narrator, Imogene and Ralph, who played Mary and Joseph, entered the sanctuary looking confused and out of place like refugees, reminding the congregation that the real Holy Couple were far from home with nowhere to go.

Imogene burped the doll that represented the Christ Child before laying it in the manger, reminding the congregation that, in Christ, the Almighty Creator of the universe took on flesh and became a baby - a real baby who needed to be burped.

Gladys, who played the Angel of the Lord screamed, "Hey!  Unto you a child is born!" like it was "the best news in the world," reminding the congregation that the angel's message to the shepherds was indeed "the best news in the world."

Leroy, Claude, and Ollie, who played the Wise Men, pitched their pretend gold, frankincense, and myrrh and instead brought forward the ham from the food box that the church's charitable works committee had taken to the Herdman family, reminding the congregation that Christ deserves our best.

The church folk who were concerned about the Herdmans' participation in the Christmas pageant had treated the Christmas story like a toy that must be kept in mint condition in its original packaging, lest it depreciate in value.  When the Herdmans took the proverbial toy out of the box and started playing with it, the same church folk began to appreciate it in a whole new way.

The Herdman hellions became unlikely messengers of the birth of Christ.

When I was a child, my third grade teacher read this novel to my class.  When I had the opportunity to read this story two years ago, one thing that stood out to me was that the children's last name Herdman is very similar to the word shepherd.  Shepherds are, after all, herdsmen of sheep.

In the Gospel of Luke, we read that, when Jesus was born in a stable in Bethlehem, there were some shepherds nearby who were guarding their sheep during the night.  Suddenly, an angel appeared in their midst, and the glory of God shone around them.  Naturally, the shepherds were frightened out of their minds.  I imagine they thought that Judgment Day had come, at least for them, and that they did not expect to fare well, since they weren't exactly upstanding religious folk.  Instead of judgment, the angel brought them "good news of great joy for all the people" that their long awaited Messiah had been born.  The angel told them that they would find their newborn Savior lying in a manger in a stable in Bethlehem.

The shepherds ran into Bethlehem and found the Christ Child in the stable with His parents, and then they went out to spread the news of the birth of their Messiah to everyone who would listen.  These shepherds had been chosen by God to be the very first messengers to announce the birth of Christ to the people.

Like the Herdman children, the shepherds were the poor, unkempt, uncouth kind of people one probably would not want to see around the manger, but, like the Herdmans, they became unlikely messengers of the birth of Christ.  Throughout the biblical narrative, we can see that God has a tendency to choose unlikely messengers - the kind of messengers most people are all too ready to write off.  I suspect that God still likes to choose unlikely people to speak for God.

This Christmas season, may we consider the unlikely messengers in our midst whom we readily dismiss, and may we be willing to listen to what God might be saying to us through them.

But as far as I'm concerned, Mary is always going to look a lot like Imogene Herdman - sort of nervous and bewildered, but ready to cobber anyone who laid a hand on her baby.  And the Wise Men are always going to be Leroy and his brothers, bearing ham.

The copyright of the cover of the first edition of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever is most likely owned by either author Barbara Robinson or publisher Harper & Row.  It is believed that its use to illustrate a blog post that discusses the same work qualifies as fair use.  The image was taken from the Wikipedia article about the work.