The Nativity Mystery: Where is Baby Jesus’ Farmer?

Oh, what a puzzlement are the populations of this dark earth! They know not the nearness of God. They elevate their emperors to the status of the divine; but at the descent of true Divinity, they go about their business unaware.

                                                                       -Walter Wangerin Jr., Preparing for Jesus

The question came for the first time six weeks ago when we excavated the children’s nativity set from the attic. Once the stable scene was erected and a tinny version of “Away in a Manger” rang out from the star atop the barn, Joshua began to search through the entire cast of pudgy characters. He picked up the smiling shepherds and placed them with their snow-white sheep; arranged the three wise men near the friendly camel, and plopped baby Jesus into the synthetic straw-lined manger. He put Mary and Joseph front and center and then began to study the scene. “Where is baby Jesus’ farmer?” Josh asked with a shrug of his petite shoulders.

“Who?” I questioned as I draped greenery in the entryway.

“The FARMER, Mom!” Joshua repeated. “The farmer for THIS barn,” he said as he pointed emphatically to the Bethlehem stable.

If truth be told, Joshua is rather enamored by the idea of a bona fide “barn birth.” He has asked many times if he used to have a “hay crib” like our humble Savior. And though I have thoroughly explained that Joshua’s baby bed was the same crib where his little sister Maggie now sleeps, he has decided that perhaps I just don’t remember the rustic nursery where he REALLY slept as an infant. Evidently, what bothers my youngest son is not the presence of the divine in the humble manger scene, but the absence of the one character who should have been an eyewitness to the miracle. After all, if there was a barn, there should  have been a farmer. SOMEONE had to own all those cattle that were lowing when “the poor baby woke” (Go ahead… hum “Away in a Manger,” as you read).  But the farmer in question remains a mystery. No nativity set, no gospel account, no children’s Christmas songs shed light on the whereabouts of the proprietor of the stable that sat beneath the Christmas star.

When God entered the world through the helpless cry of a newborn, only Heaven knows if Jesus’ farmer heard the sound of salvation ringing off of the walls of his Bethlehm “barn.” Perhaps, like the busy “innkeeper” whom no gospel writer mentions but all children’s stories depict; the unknown farmer was not a bad guy who purposely ignored the young newlyweds camped out in his stable. Rather, he was a busy man with much to do and too little time to do it. Distracted by the duties of the day, the taxing circumstances of the “census chaos” or the squabbles between the shepherds he’d hired to watch his sheep, the farmer may have simply failed to notice the unusually bright star that cast his humble stable in a glorious light on the night of Jesus’ birth. Then again, maybe the farmer had noticed the star after all, but he simply didn’t believe that anything miraculous would ever happen on his side of town.

I may never learn the answer to my son’s “farmer question”, but Joshua’s persistent inquiry has challenged me to ask a few questions of myself. Do I, like the absent farmer, miss Jesus when He is right beneath my roof? I don’t need to don a pair of bib overalls or muck a stable to relate to the character who failed to spot the Savior in his midst. I simply need to fix my eyes on the “census chaos” of my life- temper tantrums and tears, carpools and carpet stains- and when I do, I can quickly breeze by the very place where Heaven’s feet have tread upon my earth. This year, I don’t want to be the farmer, unaware of Majesty in my midst. Rather, I want to lift my head above the distractions of daily life and look for the gleam of God’s presence; a light in my darkness that proclaims: “I am here… in the muck and manure of your life; in the ordinary manger of your days, in place that you’d least expected to find me, I AM!”

Today’s Treasure: If you look for me wholeheartedly, you will find me… says the Lord. –Jeremiah 29:13