Taking Jesus for a ride at Christmas

The parish priest was so proud at Christmas midnight mass!

He had been working for a year with the parish liturgy group to update the nativity scene. He knew that a good crib could help his parishioners to pray. He preached about the beautiful figure of the baby Jesus in his midnight homily and the liturgy group shared in blessing the whole nativity scene at the start of that mass.

So, it was with horror and disbelief that the parish priest arrived for the 9.30 morning mass to find that the manger was empty except for a depression in the straw where the figure had lain. He raised the alarm; people were shocked and began a search of the church without success. The liturgy group was angry that, after all their work, they had been robbed, and on Christmas day as well!

One of the parishioners was an inspector at the local police station and he called his colleagues and they agreed to dispatch two officers to start a search of the local area. It was only ten minutes later that the baby Jesus was found. He was sat in a toy car being pedaled furiously away from the parish by a four-year-old boy. “What do you think you are doing?” said the policeman who found him. “That is church property you have in your passenger seat! You need to come back to see the parish priest now!” The little boy was frightened at the presence of the angry policeman and said nothing, but he began to cry as they got nearer to the church.

The parish priest was so relieved to see his crib figure returned undamaged and he called the boy’s mother before he said anything. When she was reunited with her son, she asked him why he had taken the baby Jesus. Through his tears the boy explained that he had always wanted a car that he could sit in and pedal. He had talked about little else for the last month, his mother commented. Then her son explained, “last Sunday I came to mass and knelt in front of the tabernacle, and I promised Jesus that if I got a car for Christmas, I would give him the first ride.” The mother smiled and gathered her son into her arms with a huge smile.

The parish priest, cradling the figure of the baby Jesus in his arms said quietly, “this little boy has more faith than most of our parishioners!”

This is a quaint, perhaps sentimental, Christmas story that can be easily discarded with tinsel and turkey bones. But let the story ask you a few questions as you start your own adult Christmas.

• Will you offer Jesus the first and best part of your life this Christmas?

  
  

• Do you see Jesus as someone who is sharing your daily journey or is he just a passenger?

  
  

• Would you be ready to put Jesus in the driving seat in your life and let the Gospel guide your choices?

Answering these questions takes this story to a whole new level of challenge and significance. Allowing the Gospel of Jesus to direct our choices and priorities takes a nerve that few of us possess. Its easier to leave Jesus in the passenger seat as a comforting presence that is easily ignored. Its harder to treat Jesus as a navigator directing our speed, turns and destinations. Its even harder to stop completely and invite Jesus into the drivers seat which may be necessary at certain points in all of our lives.

Whatever our responses to these questions, the story reminds us that we need to put Jesus first in our lives. At Christmas especially, after a year of activity can we hear the instruction of Jesus to his disciple “Come aside and rest a while”? Can we accept that we, like the boy in the story, are small and short lived and do not need to be in control. Can we, like the Christ child in Bethlehem, allow the world to turn without us for a  few days this Christmas?