Every Family Has Insiders and Outsiders, (The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, week 3)

Isaiah 2:1-5
Luke 1: 47-55

The Herdmans in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever are really getting to the bottom of this whole Christmas story.  They are understanding in a way that the other children don't exactly how perilous this whole time was for Mary and Joseph and the newborn baby whose life is in danger.  They understand the threat of Herod. They go to the library to learn all they can about him since the sanitized version of the Christmas pageant at church doesn't seem to offer them the information they want.

You've heard the phrase "It takes one to know one."  In the case of the Herdmans, it takes an outsider living on the edge to know an outsider living on the edge.  They GET the grittiness of the real Jesus nativity.  And they are horrified and transfixed.

In Isaiah we read:  

God will judge between the nations,
    and settle disputes of mighty nations.
Then they will beat their swords into iron plows
    and their spears into pruning tools.
Nation will not take up sword against nation;
    they will no longer learn how to make war.

5 Come, house of Jacob,
    let’s walk by the Lord’s light.

This suggests to us that it is God who can create peace and settle disputes, but that we are called to walk in that light.  God relies on us to listen to God's story and call... and in that message we will no longer make war, but peace.  I am sure that the Herdmans, who are filled with chaos and rabble-rousing, would have a few words to say about this passage, but perhaps it is because they haven't yet seen or experienced God's light that they live in warfare mode instead. But they are seeing God bit by bit.

I read this the other day and it certainly applies here:  "If we want to encounter God, we must walk with those who suffer. God is not found in the American dream, but in its shadow."  The Herdmans are shadows in our society. People who are outsiders, shunned, turned away.  God is found in the shadows of our society, thus it makes perfect sense that it is the Herdmans who ACTUALLY understand the real story of Mary, Joseph and Jesus.

Mary's magnificat takes on more powerful meaning when you think, for example, of Imogene Herdman reciting the words. In her context of poverty and abandonment and neglect, these words are amazingly powerful: 

 In the depths of who I am I rejoice in God my savior.
48 He has looked with favor on the low status of his servant.

He has pulled the powerful down from their thrones
        and lifted up the lowly.
53 He has filled the hungry with good things
    and sent the rich away empty-handed.