Meditations During Advent: An Empty Manger

Some people don’t put the baby Jesus in the creche until Christmas because, during Advent, inside of our story, the Christ child is not yet born. This practice pairs well with the intention of Advent--when the faithful are meant to be waiting, anticipating, and preparing for the coming of the Christ child. 

 

Because I was raised Baptist, I didn’t learn about holding back Jesus from the creche until I enrolled in an Episcopal college. I was conflicted because if there is one true thing about Baptists, they will not, for any reason, in any season, hold back Jesus. The Baptists in my world centered the baby Jesus in the manger from the day after Thanksgiving until New Year’s Day, when all the Christmas decorations went back into the attic.

 

I manage the conflict in myself by recommending that Jesus be held out of the creche in my professional life, at work, in the church building. But at home, I stuck with how I grew up--Jesus in the manger on Advent I.

 

I have a beautiful crecha carved of olive wood that a dear friend bought me from the Holy Land. When my kids were little, because wood is strong, I kept it on the coffee table, within their reach. The set includes all the usual suspects: the holy family, shepherds, sheep, wisemen and camels. Mary and Joseph are kneeling. The shepherds and wisemen are standing. There is a manger for the baby Jesus. My daughter, Sophie, played with it some, but mostly she liked to put baby Jesus in her pocket and carry him around. I found him in the laundry once.

 

And one afternoon the baby Jesus ended up at The Hop Ice Cream Shop. It was December and the afternoon was dragging on--we went for peppermint ice cream. I was sitting across from Sophie with her little sister in my lap. Sophie pulled the baby Jesus from her pocket and plunked him on the table. It seemed like a decent enough afternoon—the baby Jesus and peppermint ice cream.

 

Except that was the last time I ever saw that baby Jesus. I swore I watched Sophie put Jesus back into her pocket. I swore I checked he was still in her pocket once we were in the car. But when we got home, he was gone. I traced our steps. I checked the car. Under the seats, between the seats. We drove back to The Hop. I scoured the parking lot.

 

Losing baby Jesus felt like someone was missing from a party of our creche. It was like the last piece in the puzzle was lost. Like a player was absent from the line-up.  

 

I never found the baby Jesus and I fretted over it until it finally came to me that I wasn’t meant to find him.

 

Still to this day it is difficult to trust the sacred gift inside of emptiness, I think because I always thought of emptiness as diminished and impotent. The empty manger invites another possibility –that emptiness is not so much a void but an opening. In the emptiness of the manger, like the empty tomb, there is room for a fullness which cannot be contained. And it is inside of emptiness that we encounter it.

 

 

Words from Sufi poet Rumi:

 

But don’t be satisfied with stories,

how things have gone with others.

Unfold your own myth, without complicated explanation,

so everyone will understand the passage,

We have opened you.

 

Start walking… Your legs will get heavy and tired.

Then comes a moment

of feeling the wings you’ve grown,

lifting.

 

- The Rev. Judith Whelchel