My family loves to watch America’s Got Talent. You never really know what is coming up next.
AGT has the Golden Buzzer, a feature where, if a judge thinks a person or group is talented enough to go straight to the final round, they can push the literal golden buzzer to let everyone in the audience know that this group has special status. When they press it, golden confetti rains down.
There’s music and tears and much, much celebration. Everyone in that building knows when the golden buzzer is pressed. And everyone knows who was chosen.
And then, in sharp contrast, we have the little town of Bethlehem on that first Christmas, where something that had never happened…happened. God took the form of man, parted the curtain and stepped into human history.
Tthere were no cameras, no confetti, no fireworks, no parade.
In fact, it was just the opposite. No recognition. No room.
The Bible doesn’t describe what it was like for Joseph to register himself and Mary in the census. But I’m picturing long lines of people waiting, dust blowing in the hot breeze, kids pulling at their mother’s skirts. Mama, are we done yet?
When Mary and Joseph finally made it to the front of the line, I imagine the census workers checked off 2 adults and 1 child-to-be and yelled NEXT without even knowing Who this child actually was. That this child, whose presence they just checked off on a clip board, was the Messiah.
Suddenly I’m picturing the sloths at the DMV from Zootopia. Are you?
I think it is significant that Jesus came in the middle of a busy time – census, chaos, when Bethlehem was filled with people, weary people. He was lost in the crowd so to speak. He fell through the cracks. It looked as if He were insignificant.
He was born in a stable. Born in extremely poor surroundings. Even the best accommodations this world has to offer, when compared to heaven, would have been inadequate, but a messy stable?
And then there were the angels, the ones who actually grasped the significance of what Jesus left behind to come to earth as a man. They were so happy that they broke out in a glorious concert. Not in the middle of Bethlehem, not where the Jewish leaders would see it, but out in the countryside, with only a group of shepherds to witness it. And the shepherds… well, they weren’t really the right crowd to get the word out to the right people.
There were a few people who grasped what was happening. When Mary and Joseph brought Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem, Simeon and Anna knew who Jesus was because they had been waiting for Him.
Two people.
God did this amazing thing and then went about the marketing and PR all wrong.
Or did He?
I’m not the first one to think this. Jesus pushed against this idea during His entire ministry. The Jews were picturing a more aggressive Messiah, one who would take down the Romans.
But Jesus spoke to the weak, the looked down on in society – He healed those society had forgotten.
Jesus ate with sinners, talked to women, poked at the religious leaders. He chose a group of rag-tag men to be His disciples.
He did not behave right. He was doing it all wrong.
Or was He?
The greatest irony was that He came to show us what God is like and the ones who were supposed to know God didn’t recognize Him. The demons he removed from people recognized Him, but His own people didn’t really get it.
So what does this tell us, as we sit on this side of history? We who have the benefit of seeing how Christianity spread from this ragtag group of unlikely disciples to our lives today. Across the years, around the world.
At the very least, in the understatement of the year, It tells us that God’s ways of doing things are not the same as our way of doing things.
As we look closer, it also tells us that Jesus knows what it’s like to be looked over, to be misunderstood, to fall through the cracks, to not measure up to others’ expectations.
But He didn’t come to please others. He came to follow the Father’s will, to rescue the very ones who rejected Him.
And He kept His purpose always in front of Him.
The baby in the manger makes it possible for every heart to have peace with God. Every heart is important to Him, not just the ones the world deems important, not just the golden buzzer people.
He comes to those who acknowledge their need of Him. The people who know they are a mess and know they can’t fix the mess. And just when the hopelessness of that begins to sink in, that’s when He shows us that He came for our mess.
No ear may hear His coming, but in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in.
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