Reflections
Only a story

"It’s only a story, a beautiful story, a wonderful story even, but just a story nonetheless," said the young man as he left the carol service. It may even have happened but it’s so remote, so long ago and far away that it fails to connect."

"Ah, that’s because you are experiencing it from the outside," replied his companion.

"What do you mean from the outside?" the young man asked.

"Well, you come as a spectator, an onlooker, a listener, rather than as a participant or a seeker. It’s someone else’s story not yours. For you it’s maybe a winter’s tale or a nostalgic reminder of a lost childhood, not as a story that reveals who you are and in which you are caught up. But there are others that it speaks to today."

"Explain," said the young man curious yet sceptical.

"Think of the shepherds, rough working men on night shift, conscious that they were despised by decent folk as godless and dishonest since they weren’t above a little bit of sheep stealing. Yet it was to them that the message came. They had an encounter with the divine that religious folk would have given their eye teeth to have had, and they were the first witnesses to the birth of the child."

"But we are town dwellers, what have we to do with sheep?" countered the young man.

"The occupation isn’t important, but how we see ourselves is. There are plenty of folk today who like the shepherds are conscious that they are on the outside, on the fringes of society because they are poor, or ill-educated, have low paid

dead end jobs or have no job at all. The story says to them that they are important, they are wanted they are valued. The religious who were then by and large, the wealthier, the better educated, the more highly respected, they couldn’t stir a foot to travel the 5 miles to Bethlehem to check out the story when the wise men came, but the poor shepherds ran like the wind to see the child because they were thrilled to be given the news. Outsiders matter to God - that’s a theme than runs through the nativity story like a bright shining thread."

"But the wise men were rich?"

"But they were Gentiles, strangers, foreigners and so outsiders. And they discovered that God accepted them as well. The story includes them, they have a role. So what this story continues to say two thousand years on is that if you are honestly seeking, God will give you your heart’s desire."

"So what do I do?"

"Step into the story and ask "who am I?" Am I a shepherd? a wise man? the one who offered his manger and cowshed? Joseph the migrant worker? Mary the teenage mother? a priest or a Rabbi? a soldier? a bereaved mother? or a Herod? There’s a role for anyone since it is a universal story that has the power to speak to anyone today. But we can only really hear it on the inside for there it becomes more real, more solid, immeasurably vaster, far more wonderful and dynamic than anything we have previously known. On the outside, it is as you say only a story, but on the inside it becomes life."

Don Dowling, Christmas 2000

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