When I think of the night Jesus was born, the first image that comes straight to mind is that of my childhood. It’s like I’m watching a snow globe feeding scene. Perfect Hallmark Channel, it’s clean and serene. Everyone is in the right place. The snow falls gently, covering the hillside in a carpet of calm. Everything is calm. Everything is clear. Shake it well and nothing falls out of place. The snow swirls gently, then settles again on the immaculate couple and the silent baby.
But this image is quickly replaced by another. Nearly 15 years ago, my husband and I lived in a dusty Chinese village on the outskirts of Beijing. We volunteered for four years at New Day Foster Homea private, non-profit Christian organization that, at the time, before the Chinese government, limited work NGOs across the country have helped fund surgeries and provided long-term foster care for medically fragile orphans. We lived in an apartment complex about a mile from the organization’s campus, and most days we walked behind a flock of sheep and their shepherd to get to work.
I recently reread what I had written in my diary at the time, a description of this shepherd’s stable. You could smell it before you saw it. Fetid and dirty, the sheep crowded together at the end of a day spent searching for food. In summer, flies buzzed. In winter, the sludge froze. I didn’t want to come any closer; it was too dirty.
I walked past the sheep and their shepherd, pitying him a little, silently grateful that my own job didn’t require me to mess around in the mud. Around Christmas, I imagined my Savior born among the fresh, sweet hay in an inexplicably warm and comforting stable. The snow globe in my mind was exactly how I research imagine the entry of Jesus into the world. But the stable I passed told the truth: stables smell like dirty sheep.
With eyes freshly opened to all that is broken and fallen in the world, I couldn’t help but think of this contrast. My arms were full of children without parents and diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses. In this light, the snow globe-shaped Nativity scene no longer looked precious and pristine; it seemed out of place and irreverent – a vulgar plastic approximation, probably made by forced laborers in Chinanothing less, for the mass market of American Christian kitsch.
I wanted to throw a snow globe at a brick wall. This pure Nativity was fraudulent and false and incapable of containing the pain I saw. And without room for that, what’s the point? I felt angry with myself for all the ways I had belittled and tamed the gospel. My own faith also seemed false and plastic.
The world I saw out my window – in fact, the world I knew in my own heart – needed a God made flesh in circumstances far more complicated than those perfect little snow globes. And here is this shepherd and his sheep, overturning my image of the Incarnation and revealing that the lack lay in my vision, and not in the coming of Christ.
In the years since, I have kept my eyes peeled for better images of the Incarnation. Like that migrant baby packed into a suitcase, napping on the banks of the Rio Grande River – a sleeping baby born to a family fleeing a past that offers no future.
Or This image of a baby falling over barbed wire and barricades amid the chaotic US evacuation from Afghanistan. (This child was reunited with his family after receiving medical treatment from American soldiers.)
Image: Courtesy of Omar Haidiri / AFP / Getty
A U.S. Marine grabs a baby over a barbed wire fence during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.
Jesus entered the world as the son of a Middle Eastern father who would take his family on the run to save his son’s life from King Herod’s murderous plans to preserve his own power (Matt. 2:13). ). And today, Jesus enters a world where refugees are still fleeing murderous tyrants.
Jesus entered the world with a mother who did not have the comforts of home or the care of family when he arrived. And today, Jesus enters a world where some mothers raise their children on the street.
It is undeniable that incarnation means coming to a dirty and fetid world, just like this stable in China. Jesus came into a world where some babies are loved and nurtured, while others are left on street corners or next to dumpsters and, if they survive, end up in places like the orphanage where we worked . He arrived in a world where young girls and boys are sold into prostitution and refugees spend their lives waiting in squalid camps. It’s a world where white picket fences keep marriages in ruins.
It is a world rife with illness and mental illness. A fallen creation groans with earthquakes, floods and fires. We have made a mess of our lives, of our families and of this world. And we also live with the consequences of the damage caused by others. Drugs. The death. Destruction. Sorrow, endless sorrow. Flies and vultures buzz over the little ones with swollen bellies. The mud freezes and becomes a playground for barefoot children.
It’s too dirty, and yet he came closer.
He came over to play in our mud. Jesus is God made flesh who does not ask us to clean up the mess before His coming. He enters our messes, always always with We. He took on human skin, transforming places seemingly abandoned by God into his holy temple (1 Cor. 6:19). He willingly emptied himself (Phil. 2:7), becoming a shepherd to you and me, a band of dirty sheep (John 10:11).
He lived and evolved among people whose problems he accepted. He wept when his friend died (John 11:35). He turned the tables when he saw vulnerable people being defrauded in the temple courts (Matt. 21:12-17). He looked with compassion on the widow whose son had died (Luke 7:13), the two blind beggars (Matt. 20:34), and the harassed and helpless crowds: the sheep without a shepherd (Matt. 9:36). He has not left us in our misery but has led us to green pastures – to the healing, saving and restoration of our souls (Ps. 23).
I still remember the conviction I felt all those years ago as I tried to avoid that Chinese man and his scruffy flock. I saw the sheep dirty and felt sorry for the shepherd. But I love a God who sees the dirty sheep and takes care of them himself.
Carrie McKean is a West Texas-based writer whose work has appeared in The New York Times, AtlanticAnd Texas Monthly Magazine.
