Christmas Illustration

Christmas Illustration – Fire alarm!

Every Christmas in NYC on the front lawn of a church near Central Park, a pageant is held.  Through the years the town has grown fond of this Christmas Pageant – so fond in fact that one year not long ago the church didn’t have enough characters to fill all the roles – you remember the nativity scene, right?  In more ambitious years the church would have live animals, the sheep and cows, a real donkey, even a few camels. 

Now the timing of such a big production is critical.  All the characters gather for a prayer in the fellowship hall at the church and they have a person, a prompter – one to send each character at just the right time and out they’d go from the fellowship hall to Bethlehem!

One year, the wise men not only wore silken robes made just for the pageant, they also wore turbans on their heads and from an orthodox church they borrowed brass censers, so that as they headed across the lawn they would shower the scene with smoke and mystery and incense.  Before they left the fellowship hall, the lit the censers and got the incense burning its pungent smell.  Then they headed out to the manger scene, unaware that the smoke from the incense had set off fire alarms at the church.  An electronic message warned the fire department and those receiving the message became convinced the church was ablaze, and they responded to the call in fantastic and efficient form. 

Needless to say, this was a Christmas pageant the town will never forget.  There on the front lawn of the church, heading toward Bethlehem, were not only shepherds and angels and wise men, but yellow-slickered firemen unrolling hoses, convinced they had a fire to put out.  By the time the firefighter crew realized this was a false alarm, the crowd on the lawn heard the fire chief say with irritation:  “You wise men are setting off alarms all over town.

The original wise men would have understood!  They too, set off alarms all over the region.  They recognized the world as they had known it would never be the same again!  They recognized that the Christ child was God’s new thing in the world and it was God’s intention to set things right.