Forty-Eight

The Best Worst Christmas Pageant Ever tells the story of the year the Herdman children decide they are going to participate in the annual church Christmas pageant.  The Herdman children are not the typical church-going children, with perfect manners and peaceful demeanors (actually as I think about it I know few children that fit that description and I know that I don't fit that description even now haha).  The Herdmans have the reputation for being the worst children ever.  All 6 of them smoke, steal, burn things down, beat up other kids, and the list goes on and on. 

They start coming to church because they heard that there were free refreshments at Sunday School (that was an exaggeration).  Even at church they don't behave as they're supposed to - they draw in the Bibles, steal from the offering, and smoke cigars in the bathroom.  Then they hear about the Christmas pageant and decide they are going to be the stars.  And since no one is crazy enough to challenge a Herdman for a role all 6 of them are cast as the leads.  

Everyone deems that this year's Christmas pageant will be the worst ever with the uncouth and unmannered Herdmans as the stars.  But something strangely beautiful takes place as this unconventional Christmas pageant unfolds.

It starts when the pageant director must share the entire Christmas story with them because they had never heard it.  I grew up in the church and a Christian home and I don't remember a time in my life when I couldn't have recited the Christmas story forwards and backwards and probably even sideways.  But imagine if you had never heard the Christmas story before...

Imagine that someone on the street comes up to and says man I've got a story to tell you and it's about a pregnant woman - and by pregnant I mean like 9 months ready to burst pregnant - and her husband who have just arrived in town after a long, tedious journey and  the local hotel can't even find them a room.   So they stick them in the barn with the animals.  I don't imagine that flying too well nowadays.  But they literally stuck this poor couple in the barn.  And to make matters even worse this poor pregnant girl goes into labor in the barn and she gives birth to her son in the barn.  I mean think about the story that way.  It's pretty appalling.  And that's what the Herdmans think.  They are ready to go and beat up the innkeeper or run him into the next county.   

But then they were told about the wise men.  The pageant director says they were like kings.  When she tells them what wise men brought and explains what the gifts were, the Herdmans were also disgusted at those.  One of them exclaims at the thought of giving Jesus oil, "Oil! What kind of cheap king hands out oil as a present?"  They don't think oil was good enough for Jesus.  So on the night of the pageant guess what they bring to give the baby Jesus.  Not the gold, the frankincense, or the myrrh.  They bring Jesus their Christmas ham!  The Herdmans who have never given anything to anybody give Jesus a ham because they think that was a better gift.  They gave from their heart.  

On the night of the pageant Imogene and Ralph Herdman who plays Mary and Joseph come in bewildered and in less than perfect appearance.  And it suddenly occurs to the narrator of the book (one of the children in the pageant) "that this was just the way it must have been for the real Holy Family, stuck away in a barn by people who didn't much care what happened to them.  They couldn't have been very neat and tidy either, but more like this Mary and Joseph." And when Imogene goes to put Jesus in the manger she gives him two big pats on the back like he was fussy or something.  Little Alice Wendelken - who has always been Mary in the previous pageants - is appalled at this and whispers to the narrator that "it's not nice to burp the baby Jesus as if He had colic" and the she wonders if Jesus could have even had colic.  The narrator goes onto to say, "He could have had colic, or been fussy, or hungry like any other baby.  After all, that was the whole point of Jesus - that He didn't come down on a cloud like something out of "Amazing Comics," but that He was born and lives...a real person."

And when Gladys Herdman, who plays the angel who announces the birth of Jesus to the shepherds, loudly yells, "'Hey! Unto you a Child is born!... as if it was, for sure, the best news in the world."

I'm so thankful for this humorous children's story because in the mist of the humor it paints the message of Christmas...

That Jesus came for all.  That unto you a Child is born!  He didn't come to the religious.  His birth was proclaimed to poor shepherds and foreign wisemen.  Not the pharisees and the ones who kept the law.  The Herdmans were the heathens.  No one in the church wanted them there or expected them to do anything but ruin the pageant.  But in the mist of their changes from the norm, they showed that Christ came for them.  

As Alice Wendelman kept record of all the wrongs they committed, writing down each of their sins, she reminds us that we can hear the Christmas story but not experience it.  She felt that you had to be a certain way in order to be in the church.  She and others in the church were appalled at the Herdmans' behavior - forgetting that they had never been in church before.  Alice keeps missing the point as she looked at the faults of the Herdmans.  When the pageant director tells them of how Herod tried to kill Jesus the Herdmans what to go and kill Herod (they're kind of angry that there is not Herod in their pageant because they want to beat him up because he tried to kill Jesus).  One of the Herdmans who plays the wise man asks, "What if we went back and told on the baby?"  The narrator has quite  a thought after this question.  "No Jesus...ever."  But it becomes clear others do catch on, especially Alice. Alice proclaims, "I don't think it's very nice to talk about the baby Jesus being murdered."  I think she forgot what happens when the baby grows up.  She wants this romanticized beautiful picture of Jesus that wasn't messy.  But Jesus' whole life was messy.  He moved into our mess.  When He came He didn't come into the perfection and fine living...he came into the mess, the dirtiness, the scandal.  Alice misses this.  She hears but dosesn't experience.  Imogene hears and experiences.  Alice leaves the pageant believing it was ruined.  Imogene leaves renewed.  At the end of the pageant Imogene is crying.  Crying because the love of Christ shown at Christmas has invaded into her heart.  

I thankful for the message of Christ offered in this book.  The message that a child has been born for you and for me.  That came into the world in an unconventional, scandalous way so that ALL could come to the Father.  

Who has believed our message

and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

He grew up before him like a tender shoot,

and like a root out of dry ground.

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,

nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men,

a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.

Like one from whom men hide their faces

he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he took up our infirmities

and carried our sorrows,

yet we considered him stricken by God,

smitten by him, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions,

he was crushed for our iniquities;

the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,

and by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray,

each of us has turned to his own way;

and the LORD has laid on him

the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and afflicted,

yet he did not open his mouth;

he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,

and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,

so he did not open his mouth.

By oppression and judgment he was taken away.

And who can speak of his descendants?

For he was cut off from the land of the living;

for the transgression of my people he was stricken.

He was assigned a grave with the wicked,

and with the rich in his death,

though he had done no violence,

nor was any deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,

and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering,

he will see his offspring and prolong his days,

and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.

After the suffering of his soul,

he will see the light [of life] and be satisfied;

by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,

and he will bear their iniquities.

Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,

and he will divide the spoils with the strong,

because he poured out his life unto death,

and was numbered with the transgressors.

For he bore the sin of many,

and made intercession for the transgressors.

Isaiah 53

Who, being in very nature God,
   did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
   by taking the very nature of a servant,
   being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
   he humbled himself
   by becoming obedient to death—
      even death on a cross!

Philippians 2:6-8

Cause my Jesus would never be accepted in my church
The blood and dirt on His feet would stain the carpet
But He reaches for the hurting and despised the proud
I think He'd prefer Beale St. to the stained glass crowd
And I know that He can hear me if I cry out loud

I want to be like my Jesus!

"My Jesus" by Todd Agnew