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Have you ever gone to see a new baby?  Maybe even a long-awaited baby? Did you take a baby gift? Have you ever done this for a baby or toddler that you didn’t know? A complete stranger? These are questions we explored Sunday morning when we discussed how truly unique the wise men were. They traveled a very long distance and brought weird but expensive gifts for a baby they didn’t even know. The whole story is quite unorthodox.

It's similar to “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” where 6 child siblings bully their way into the famous church Christmas pageant. They take all the lead parts – Mary, Joseph, the angel and the three wise men. Along the way, they have a lot of questions about the entire Christmas story because they’ve never heard it before.

And while they’re interested in the story, all the rehearsals are a disaster. By the evening of the Christmas pageant, they haven’t even been through a proper dress rehearsal. Beth is the narrator of the story, and her mom is directing the Christmas pageant for the first time ever. The night before the Christmas pageant, Beth says to her mom, “Is it still too late to replace them?”

Her mother pauses and then responds, “Don’t forget. The whole point of the story is that Jesus was born for the Herdmans as much as he was for us. We’d be missing the point of all of it if we turned them away.”

“But what if they ruin it for you?” Beth asks.

Her mother responds, “They probably will. But it’s not about me.”

From the moment that baby Jesus was born, it was clear that he came for everybody. Our most insider story, our Christmas story, the very birth of Christ, is invaded by outsiders. Not only that but those outsiders are an integral part of the story. The wise men were the first non-Jewish people to recognize and worship Jesus. 

If Jesus came for all, even from his very beginnings, and we are going to live as the Christians that God intends us to, that means all are welcome in the kin-dom. (Stay tuned for more as we’ll be talking more about kin-doms in the coming weeks.) But when outsiders come in, it changes things; just like Jesus changes things when he shows up.