The scene with the Herdman’s ham. I don’t know why it was that scene that really got me, but it did. It was originally a gift to the Herdman family, who rewrote the Nativity narrative just slightly to include it. They didn’t feel like gold, frankincense, and myrrh were appropriate gifts for the baby Jesus. The king of the universe deserved better. So, they family without enough food…brought the best food they had, and the Herdmen wisemen laid it at the foot of the manger.
The Herdmans were a mess. The community feared them. They saw them as nearly unsalvageable. They were juvenile delinquents whose parents weren’t there for them when they needed them. When they showed up to be cast in the community’s beloved Christmas play, they weren’t welcome. They certainly weren’t the top choices for any prime parts in the nativity play. Those roles were reserved for only the best actors and best families.
I am not going to give you any more information. If you have read the book, it should follow it pretty closely. During the first half of the movie, it is guilty of being a bit cheesy. During the second half of the movie, it is quite frankly one of the best re-tellings of the gospel of Jesus that you will see on the big screen anywhere.
From Dallas Jenkins, one of the creative minds(well…God is the author to be clear!) behind The Chosen, comes a beautiful story of a family who had never heard the story of Jesus. Then, they got to live it.
Do yourself a favor. Go see it. It came out today on Apple Streaming. I would guess it is also on other platforms.
The following two clips (from Dallas Jenkins’ YouTube page) feature the cast being interviewed and an excerpt from the movie about who is welcome in the Kingdom of God.
