Real-World Gospel in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
“What’s the play about?”
“It’s about Jesus.”
“Everything here is.”
The Gospel According to the Herdmans
It doesn’t matter if it’s the book, the 1983 shorter movie, or Dallas Jenkin’s instant classic film version from this season, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever always makes me cry.
And for good reason. Every variation is as adorable, and as pure in heart as could be. They all pull on the heartstrings with the force of getting peanuts out of the ground.
Yet none of this is true for the typical “good Christmas fiction” reasons we love in books and movies. What I take from Best Christmas Pageant Ever isn’t the same as Scrooge or Grinch or Home Alone. No, this story and all of its adaptions laser focus on why Christianity truly matters so much. They all communicate clearly the Gospel.
Of course, Charlie Brown Christmas does quote Luke 2 for us so we can “know what Christmas is all about”. But there is something beyond that in Barbara Robinson’s story and its adaptations. They show us exactly what Truth looks like in the messy real world. There are countless things I think any church can talk about and go out and do in response to this book that are Gospel issues. Here are just a few of the primary ones:
1. How God loves and wants to save ‘outsiders,’ to make them ‘insiders’
By biblical and modern definition I mean those who are sinful in our eyes and we presume do not fit in church community. In the Bible, especially the New Testament, you can see clearly there is an “in” group of people the Gospel is for, the Jews..and then there are the dirty pagan foreigners, the Gentiles. There was so great a division in these two groups Paul calls it a “wall of hostility” in Ephesians 2.
There was so much hatred for Gentiles and the very idea that the God of the Israelites could favor them, that when Jesus mentions two examples in Luke 4 from the Old Testament of how God did exactly that, they get angry to the point of attempting to kill him.
Jesus did this with the Samaritans especially, a group the Jews particularly despised. He made a Samaritan the hero of one story and the Jewish leaders the unconcerned, passive villains. He went out of his way (so to speak) to interact with a Samaritan woman once, to inspire her to go tell a whole village of hated Samaritans about him, so they could believe and be saved.
Or how about Tamar in the Old Testament? Gentile and prostitute. Yet there she is in Matthew 1 in Jesus’s genealogy, as well as in Hebrews 11 for her faith and James for her good works.
Essentially nothing in all of fiction reminds me of Tamar and the woman at the well quite like the Herdmans. Especially Imogene. Tamar had more fear of God and faith in God in Joshua 2 than ten of Moses’s chosen Israelite men in Numbers 13. The Woman at the Well was purposely avoided by God’s people but went from shame and disgrace to evangelist in a moment in time.
The real Gospel chases after the very people that not only the world avoids and scorns, but Christians often do as well. If churches do not know who the Herdmans are in their towns, they are failing. There is zero guarantee of success as in this fictional story. But we have to love them, serve them, and get the Gospel to them. And, get this: to welcome them as one of us, the way the New Testament Gospel does for Gentiles.
Ephesians 2 claims the Gospel isn’t just that Jesus died to reconcile us and the Herdmans to God. It’s that Jesus died to reconcile us and the Herdmans to each other.
2. The Importance of seeing the Christmas story through the eyes of someone who has never heard it.
If it becomes too familiar to us we stop asking questions and seeing how strange and even unfair (to our minds) some of it is. The nativity is so peaceful and serene to us, and I’m sure at times it needs to be. But I think we miss a huge part of the story if we don’t see the humility and lack of dignity in it, the way the Herdmans did.
Andrew Peterson accomplished this triumphantly with Labor of Love. Barbara Robinson did it with the most unlikely crew of fictional characters ever.
3. Reading, studying, and doing research to learn more about the historical context of the Bible
The Herdmans and their infatuation with what happened to Herod is so brilliant and heartwarming that I think about it all the time. Yet, in real life, it is very easy for us to be lazy and apathetic about digging deeper into the Bible and its real history and culture. The very idea of doing research in the library (or on the internet for us now), is not just reserved for pastors and preachers. We all should have the intellectual curiosity the Herdmans did.
Because their interest was based on concern for Jesus and the other children in Bethlehem. It was a Gospel concern.
The reason I want my people to connect Psalms 32 and 51 to 2 Samuel 11-12 is because they show the Gospel response to forgiveness as far as confession. The reason I want my people to connect Exodus 24 to Zacchaeus is because this shows the Gospel response to forgiveness as far as repentance.
Same for the Babylonian Captivity, Peter’s original audience in 1 Peter, and what Philippians 4:1-12 say in addition to 4:13. All of these things are not academic facts. They are Truth. The very contextual source for the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
4. Reality is messy instead of picture-perfect and how Christmas wasn’t for Mary and Joseph and isn’t supposed to be for us.
The actual narrative of Christmas in the first Gospel in our Bible starts with Joseph considering how he could quietly divorce Mary. Then there’s traveling while pregnant. And then the lack of appropriate lodging and place to lay the baby. Then there’s a red-eye flight to Egypt to escape death.
I get the desire we have for Christmas to be picture-perfect. It is on our cards and again, in our nativity portrayals. But in the real world when Jesus was born, it wasn’t. And it wasn’t for Beth’s family in the story either. The Herdmans look like refugees, after all. Or, pretty much like the original story.
5. How traditions are important but they can cause us to love them more than lost people. And how we can allow the Holy Spirit to use traditions plus what is unexpected to make the Gospel clear to us.
And of course, the ending with Gladys shouting the angel’s line in her own special way, the wise men bringing ham to Jesus, and Imogene crying show this in a powerful, powerful way1. The fictional church clearly loved the sinfully boring Christmas Pageant more than they loved the Herdmans. But then God used this broken family to rock the church (and real-world people by the millions) to their core. And they made it the best Christmas Pageant Ever.
But you see it even before that. When the Herdmans interrupted the first practice with questions, they did the most amazing thing. Even though it exasperated Beth’s mother to no end, in that practice and all the way to the dress rehearsal.
I know what this is like. My 5-year-old asks questions all the time when I’m just trying to get through Bible reading. In fact, ironically, I found myself getting frustrated with him while reading this very book! Because of his questions. And, if that weren’t enough, when we watched the new movie, he still interrupted asking questions! (As my two-year-old screamed and distracted us from the peace of watching the movie.) My son isn’t exactly a Herdman. Though he, like his father, is a sinner. But he teaches me the same way they do.
We’d love to hear in the comments things about the Gospel our readers learned as well, or commentary on my thoughts. Comment below!
- The touch Dallas Jenkins added here in his movie of super self-righteous Wendy saying “Mary’s crying” instead of “Imogene’s crying” was truly special. In that moment, the hardest heart was melted by a sinner’s response to Jesus. I weep just thinking about it. ↩
- Real-World Gospel in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever - December 17, 2024
- If You Quote Isaiah 7:14 This Christmas, Read This - December 3, 2024
- If You Love Andrew Peterson’s “The Sower’s Song,” Read This - November 8, 2024
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