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51OY34aJfnLMy mother took down our Christmas decorations a couple of weeks ago, just as December was coming to a close. Back into the basement went the tree, the lights, the ornaments, and various other knick-knacks that had festooned our living room for the three weeks prior, and among them was the little nativity scene that we set up at the base of a bookshelf each year. The Christmas season is sadly over, but that crèche, as the French, and my grandmother, would call it, has remained on my mind even after being packed away.

It must be a good 40 or 50 years old, but our crèche is hardly traditional. The basic pieces—a dilapidated wooden shack of sorts, appropriately meant to resemble a barn; Mary, Joseph, and a host of ceramic animals who observe the little Lord Jesus as he rests peacefully in a crib of hay— are close enough to what actually happened, I guess, barring the fact that the Biblical figurines are conspicuously whitewashed (our baby Jesus is blonde— I mean, come on.) But what makes our nativity scene, I mean what really makes it, are the little figures surrounding the barn, tchotchkes that my grandmother picked up over the years she spent traveling to France and Germany and various other European countries.

There is, for example, a woman who looks like she just stepped out of 1800s France, a tall lace headdress capping her tiny clay head. There is a man who I have decided best resembles a pirate and a little old woman who appears to either be knitting a scarf or stabbing herself in the abdomen with her knitting needles. A little drummer boy (actually, more likely a man, seeing as he has a mustache), who looks better suited for a scale-model Civil War battlefield than one of ancient Bethlehem, beats away on his little drum, alongside a fat priest of vague denominational background and a camel. And my personal favorites, who this year stood neatly in front of good King Wenceslas: a couple bearing an uncanny likeness to George and Martha Washington.

Alright, so it doesn’t look that close to what actually happened. And yet, I can’t help thinking that this admittedly tacky crèche is as close as it gets.

In Luke 2:10-11, perhaps the most-quoted verses of every Christmas ever, Luke writes, “…The angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.’”

Joy for all the people. I love that word: all. And in Galatians 3:28, Paul says, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” 

How beautiful. The kingdom of Heaven is open to all, if only they would take its invitation.

So often do we forget that oh-so simple notion: that all are welcome. The ones who show up in dresses and pearls; the ones who show up in jeans and tee-shirts. Teachers and dentists and secretaries and stay-at-home moms.  Bleeding-heart liberals and those who would probably build shrines to Ronald Reagan in their living rooms if it was socially acceptable. Ivy-Leaguers and GED program graduates, introverts and extroverts. Men and women.

Even fishermen and tax collectors.

If that’s what the kingdom is going to look like, then I hope that’s what the church can look like, too.

After all, I like to think of Jesus’s story as being an awful lot like the nativity scene that sat at the base of our living room bookshelf— everyone from Martha Washington to a priest, to a French lady who appears to have just left the 19th century, all coming to see what the fuss is all about. A hodgepodge of people, minuscule in comparison to God’s infinite power, who can freely come to lay their eyes on Jesus, to taste Him, to see that He is good.

People who can come just to know that He loves them, too.