The Rev. Austin K. Rios
24th December 2023: Christmas Eve
As I hear the Christmas story again and imagine the Holy Family in Bethlehem –bathed in light, warmth and smells of animals and shepherds—I find myself dwelling on current events in the land known as Holy.
I see the Holy family making their way from Nazareth in the north through a series of checkpoints, being searched by soldiers, making their way through the concrete and barbed-wire walls that demark the West Bank, and standing at the doorstep of an inn amidst ruin and rubble.
There is “no place” for this family traveling to be taxed, just as there is no place for the scores of world refugees fleeing war, environmental catastrophes, or economic instability in our time.
No place for them in the safety of those inn’s walls, where the fire keeps the guests warm, and the seasonal cheer is plentiful.
Like animals, the travelers must make do with whatever is left over—finding outside the only shelter that is available to them in the spaces where the oxen and ass eat their meager rations.
They are relative nobodies, in the middle of nowhere, with no place of their own to bring their child into the world.
And yet, it is through these characters and from that place of rejection and isolation, that the light of the world is born.
When I imaginatively transport the mother, stepfather, and child across the years and into our present age, I can see them being turned away by good, religious people who want to protect their countries from being overrun by outsiders.
I can see them in the ragged, smelly clothes of the unhoused, and can see the desperation in their eyes as they wonder if the child Mary carries will come to term.
And even if he does, what sort of life is waiting for him?
As the bombs fall, as violence and mistrust destabilize the nations, as the world warms, and as they face a never-ending future of being overlooked by the powerful and secure who make the decisions that delineate their lives.
And yet, the new life that begins unfolding at Christmas changes the story about what is possible with God and who matters in God’s conception of the universe.
The child that is born to Mary and Joseph changes them from forgettable footnotes in history to principal characters in the story of salvation.
Mary and Joseph will choose to care for their child and raise him, despite the risks and uncertainties that face them, and Jesus will grow up to announce good news to the poor, the outcast, the blind, the lame, the captive and the prisoner.
Jesus will take up the prophetic mantle of his forebears, and he will teach both Jews and Gentiles of an intimate relationship with God that transforms the world.
This child will be unafraid to touch the untouchable, unafraid to tell the truth about the disastrous collaboration between religion and the empire, unafraid to die a criminal’s death and unafraid to trust in the power of love to overcome even the grave.
The child that Mary bore and Joseph adopted didn’t receive a warm welcome from the majority of the world as he entered it.
But for a moment, on that cold night in Bethlehem over 2000 years ago, the angels and heavenly host broke out in song.
The animals looked up from the manger and beheld something new and extraordinary.
And shepherds, in the same region that produced the shepherd-king David, were drawn in hope and awe toward the place where that rejected family had gathered.
On that first Christmas, all the nowhere places of this world finally became some-place, and the space between hope and reality, and heaven and earth was bridged.
The song Somewhere, from the musical West Side Story, speaks of the human longing for a place and time when the world can be made right.
A place where the divisions that separate us will finally fall and where the hopes and fears of all the years will be met with transformative love.
Somewhere
We’ll find a new way of living
We’ll find a way of forgiving
Somewhere
There’s a place for us
A time and place for us
Hold my hand
And we’re halfway there
Hold my hand
And I’ll take you there
Somehow
Someday
Somewhere
Through the grace of God and the choices of a family living life on the margins, Jesus came into this world.
His life and witness, and death and resurrection remade the fabric of creation and opened a way for us to experience the joy and abundance of what life lived together can be.
As we enter this Christmas season once more, let us find new ways of living and forgiving in a world that is harsh and impersonal.
Let us open our hearts and lives to the way that the Christ showed us—and incarnate the good news in our own lives.
As we do, the nowhere spaces of this world will be transformed into some place.
The broken-hearted and rejected people of the world will become somebodies and siblings.
And all creation will begin to sing the new songs of redemption and resurrection once more.