Mayhem at the Manger!

 

Who would have believed it?! A brawl broke out at the manger!

Maybe you didn’t know, but the Church of the Nativity has three Christian denominations laying claim to it, Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, and Armenian Apostolic. To clean and provide care for an area of the church is to claim ownership of it. All this led to an altercation or as Associated Press put it, “The annual cleaning of one of Christianity’s holiest churches deteriorated into a brawl between rival clergy Wednesday, as dozens of monks feuding over sacred space at the Church of the Nativity battled each other with brooms until police intervened.”

Imagine that, people fighting over the place where Jesus supposedly was born, a place where all should be welcome, but which a few desire to claim as their own. What if the magi had arrived and started a fight with the shepherds claiming that shepherds were of low character, smelly and dirty, and had no place at the birth of such an important person (Something some would have actually claimed at that time had they been aware of the birth at all)? I can see it now! The shepherds would have claimed that they had been personally invited by the angels, even God Himself. The magi would have held their ground, and soon shepherd staffs would have been swinging and swords would have been drawn.

While I would have bet my money on those hardened shepherds, that isn’t the point. It wouldn’t have mattered who won or who lost because everyone is a loser when Christians fight over something like who has a place around the manger. Yet, some would say that is exactly what our own denomination is doing today, fighting as to who has a place at the table of our Lord.

Don’t get me wrong, I have my own opinion on the matters before us, and I do believe they are matters of importance. However, I do think we are going about deciding the issue entirely the wrong way. It cannot be a matter of win or lose.

The year ahead will see some dramatic changes in our denomination. It is my prayer that none of those changes will be made in anger, that efforts to follow the Gospel as closely as we may understand it will not drive people away from the church and give them one more reason to avoid organized religion even though sometimes it turns into a bunch of broom swinging monks.

Pastor Craig