Some years ago I read a charming story told by a school teacher in England. At Christmas she supervised the construction of a manger scene in the corner of the classroom. It delighted the students to set up a model barn, cover the floor with real straw and then arrange the clay figures of Mary, Joseph, shepherds and animals, all facing a tiny crib where there lay a tiny doll representing the baby Jesus.

One little fellow could not tear himself away from the scene—he kept returning to it, each time looking puzzled. Finally, the teacher noticed him and asked if he had a question. He said slowly, “What I’d like to know is—where does God fit in?”

I thought at the time how amazing it was that such a profound question could come in all innocence from a child.  And yet, what better question to ask at Christmas than that, and who better to pose it than a young boy who looked at all those things that are the historical basis of our stories, the theme of our carols, the object of worship—and asked quite sincerely, Where does God fit in?

Before I walk any further down this road, which I want to do, let me pause now with a caveat. In a number of previous posts on “Knowing and Believing,” I have self-identified as what I have chosen to call a “Reverent—or Spiritual—Humanist.” I refer you to those posts for details, but suffice it to say in this context that while I cannot know that there is in existence a God by whatever name, metaphor or descriptor—a Supreme Being, an Ultimate Reality, a Ground of Being, the Infinite One, or perhaps in John Claypool’s appealing phrase, The Great Mystery—I can choose to believe that there is and, in my best moments, I am inclined to do so in what my friend, Guy Sayles, called “an existential stab-in-the-dark (or at least in the twilight), which is like trusting, faith-ing, or risking.”

And for those of us who do choose to “risk it,” the lowly manger scene might well provoke us to echo the boy’s question. It seems so unlike all most people have come to believe about this Being, whom we cannot visualize—even the Gospel writer says that “no one has ever seen God.” We can have our ideas but they tend to be unlike anything associated with that manger scene.

• We tend to think of God-by-whatever-name in terms of remoteness. We instinctively look “up,” thinking of this Being as existing somewhere beyond the farthest galaxy.
• We think in terms of otherness. We are temporal, prisoners of time and space; this Being is usually characterized as without beginning or ending and unbounded by physical space.  We are finite, limited in body, mind, and will; the Great Mystery is normally conceived of as infinite, subject to no limitations.
•  We think in terms of greatness. “(S)he” is great. We are small. Words fail us in trying to speak about the awesome majesty of such a Being.

Of course, scholars weigh in. As one has written: “We must be clear that whatever we say about God in human concepts can never be more than an indication . . . no concept can really conceive of the nature of God.  God is inconceivable” (Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline).  And in the same vein, Paul Tillich spoke of the “true Being” as beyond all human thoughts and conceptions—“the God above God.”

Even hymn writers add to our wonderment: “Immortal, invisible, God only wise, light inaccessible hid from our eyes.”

But they are words, only words—human inventions, earthbound vehicles that can never contain the great Mystery of an Eternal Ground of all Being.

So no wonder we look at the incredible lowliness of that simple manger scene that seems so ridiculously out of touch with our sublime notions—a man, a woman, a child, a crude stable—and ask, what has all that got to do with an “immortal, invisible” Divine Being? 

But maybe looking at it is the most important thing we can do. Analyzing it almost seems like tearing apart a beautiful thing in order to understand it. So, if you’ll humor me, let’s just look at the Christmas story—anew, once more—and let the drama speak for itself.

The time—approximately just over 2000 years ago. The place—an obscure little province of the Roman Empire situated at the corner of the Mediterranean Sea. An insignificant little place, not only geographically but economically as well. Even the best farmers labored hard to wrestle a living from a rocky and sparsely irrigated land, and what little they did earn was heavily taxed by the Romans.

For five centuries the inhabitants of this country, known as Jews, had lived as a conquered race, the servants of whatever dictator held the balance of power—yesterday it was Nebuchadnezzar; today Caesar Augustus; tomorrow, who knows? Up in the province of Galilee a man named Joseph worked in his carpenter’s shop. Under somewhat unusual circumstances, his wife, Mary, was expecting a baby.

About that time, Caesar ordered a national registration of the Jews for tax purposes. To make matters worse, each had to register in his place of birth. For Joseph, and Mary, this meant traveling to Bethlehem, a Judean village not far from Jerusalem.

It could not have come at a worse time. Any day now Mary was expecting her first child and she was in no condition to travel at all, much less a journey of several days and nights. We can see the pathetic sight—a peasant carpenter starting out on foot and behind him, his pregnant wife walking? riding a donkey? The very idea would make a modern physician have apoplexy!

At last they came to Bethlehem, grateful that the child had not chosen to come in mid-journey, by the side of the road. They entered the town apparently at night-fall—a sorry situation under any circumstances but critical to a woman struggling with the pain of labor. Surely they must have knocked on door after door, only to get the same polite refusal: “Sorry, no room.” Too many people had gotten there ahead of them.

It must have been sheer panic that drove them to a stable, a place where animals bedded down for the night, although there is no mention of animals. There on the straw-covered floor, in those crude surroundings, Joseph made a place and Mary gave birth to her son and cradled him in a manger—a trough normally used to hold food for animals. Later that night, so the story goes, some shepherds came from the Judean hills with a strange tale of angels in the sky, but apart from these few humble visitors, the event took place completely unnoticed.

As surprising as it is that it came from a child, is it any wonder, then, that surveying the visual presentation of the story, one should ask the question, “Where does God fit in?”  What could be more out of line with our ideas about a Supreme Being?

• Remoteness? Nothing remote about this Bethlehem stable—you can place it, date it, find its counterpart wherever people live and work.
• Otherness? Nothing unique about the birth of a baby; unusual circumstances notwithstanding, it takes place thousands of times every day.
• Greatness? Surely not in a tiny, squalling infant; even a new-born animal has more strength than a human baby. Under such circumstances, it’s a wonder that this one survived at all.

So where does God fit in? Whether asked by a child or a theologian, the answer, in my judgment, is the same. Not in our high-sounding notions of supreme attributes, which we can speculate about all we wish, because as Barth reminded us, in the end, God—the Great Mystery—is inconceivable. But if . . . if it should  be possible that this Supreme Being has “a near side”—available to human beings, should we choose to seek it—could it be that this is one place where we find it, in this simple, seemingly commonplace stable in ancient Bethlehem?

I tend to believe that it is. Not only because the baby in the manger grew up to be Jesus of Nazareth, in whose life and teachings and character it is possible above all to touch “the near side,” but because the ordinariness and lowliness of that Bethlehem manger reflects something that has always been true—the almightiness of The Great Mystery consists in its nearness, not only in the unique person of the babe of Bethlehem and the man he would become, but also in those human lives and relationships at their best that likewise provide a supremely important place where we might touch “the near side.”

It would almost be easier if it weren’t so. There is something safe about a Ground of Being that is far away and inaccessible, that we can conveniently ignore or at least think about in obscure theological or philosophical terms without feeling that we have to get personally involved.

But suppose this old Christmas story is true and that The Great Mystery does actually meet us in those “commonplaces” where we are born and live and work, where we prosper and suffer and die. Suppose the almightiness does consist in lowliness—that God, by whatever name, is not merely above us, but also within us, beside us, bound up in our common life—not the “cosmic end,” but the “near side,” close to wherever we also encounter beauty, truth, goodness, love.

To quote, as I have done before, Harry Emerson Fosdick, “Wherever such spiritual experiences are, there is God, too, not far off, but here, not outside us, but within. That is where we really meet God—within ourselves” (A Great Time to Be Alive, p. 233).

And here, in my best moments, is where the simple, touching, and, in some ways, heartbreaking story of the birth in Bethlehem speaks to me and answers the little boy’s question, “Where does God fit in?”