Passing on by the Miracle

Remarks by Lawrence Bechtel at the Sunday evening Christmas service
Concluding the weekend Nativities display, December 6-8, 2025
The Church of Jesus Christ, Lexington VA
           
My aim in crafting the set of Nativity figures I call Miracle, was to lift off their halos, as it were, and present them as unique individuals—each with their own backstory. Perhaps in doing so, I hoped we could better see ourselves in the story, too. I took my time with each figure. So it took me about three years to finish the whole group. The time was worth it. I really “entered in”—except in one respect: I could not “unknow” my knowledge of Jesus’ life: his teaching, his miracles, his death and resurrection. We see the Nativity with that knowledge in mind. The persons in the Biblical narrative, of course, did not have that knowledge. Well, perhaps the prophet Isaiah did!
We know of the persons, identified in the Gospel of Luke, who attended the birth of Jesus in the Bethlehem stable. But what about the persons he didn’t name? I imagine other people were also sent down to the stable because there was no room in the Inn. The stable could have been crowded. Did any of those people, not named, and therefore lost to history, also kneel and worship the “newborn king”? Or were they too busy with their own affairs: a child with cholic; a lost wallet; some recurring husband-wife squabble?
What about the people just walking by the stable?  There must have been many. The streets of Bethlehem were no doubt crowded and noisy with people who would much rather have been home, and who were only there because the Emperor had decreed that “all the world should be taxed.” They walk by the stable, they look in the open door, see the very scene we have venerated for centuries—and turn back to their preoccupations, their difficulties, their arguments—all legitimate. But in turning back they miss the miracle. Miss it! Mere feet from the birth of the Savior of the World, and yet passed on by, heedless.
All of us get very preoccupied with the business of our lives. We can’t help it! We have to! We don’t want to be interrupted—at least not right now. We’ve got too much to do. But that miracle might be one glance away. Sometimes it takes a disaster to break the preoccupations which bind us, allowing us suddenly to “see Jesus in the face of every child,” as Mother Theresa put it.
We are all about being strong, independent, capable. The Pharisees were strong: devout and sincere in their rigorous obedience to the last jot and tittle of the law. But Jesus ministered to the weak, not the strong. The blind man, the demon-possessed, the cripple. Not that these people necessarily became his disciples. They went away rejoicing and that was that. And Jesus didn’t track them down, get them by the scruff of the neck and say, “I healed you for goodness sake! Now be my disciple!” No! He gave freely of his healing power. Even to the point of death by crucifixion.
May we be open to miracle, even at moments when we’d rather be doing something else.
And all the people said---AMEN!