Christmas is always an interesting time to me. Advent (the weeks before Christmas) sets aside a season of waiting, to prepare our hearts for the coming of Jesus. While the church calendar sets aside intentional seasons and days for practices and celebrations, they are really characteristics of discipleship which we should be living all the time.
So I appreciate Advent for its attention to waiting, watching, and being prepared for the hope coming in Christ. But what always gets me is Christmas. It's not so much the story that gets me - though I do love the story - it is the incarnation itself that every time stops me dead my tracks and sends me into a world of wonder and awe at the mystery of our Lord. The fact that for some reason, God, in all the power and might that comes with being the divine One, chose to put on flesh. To be fully human and fully God and come to us, to be God with us - Emmanuel.
And that's where the story tells the beauty of this world changing event. Honestly, in the church we've heard this many times so sometimes it feels trite to say, but God did not come in power and glory. God came in an unexpected way, to an unexpected couple who found themselves displaced, in need, but still following God's call. God came to the world through a dirty stable, because the world said "sorry, there's no room for you here."
Most of advent I spend thinking about Mary. (I've spent 2 of my last 4 Advents in my third trimester of pregnancy.) What it would be like as a mother - knowing the very real humanness of being pregnant, bringing a child into the world, and how incredibly terrifying it is to love a child that much - it makes sense why the angel told her "do not be afraid".
I think of her as I put my boys to bed and what her call must have been like. This has been my unintentional Advent practice. But for about the last year, or since the photo of the 3-year-old Syrian boy who washed upon the shores, lifeless while only seeking a hope and a chance at life - as I tuck my boys in each night, I think of those mothers and their babies. I pray with Noah and I think "What if something happens? What if the world changes and we are in that situation. Will these prayers teach him the things I cannot, if we are separated? Will I know what to do to care for them if our safety, security, and personhood are threatened or worse, taken?"
And while I feel fear and grief for a moment, I simultaneously feel two following things:
1) the angels words to Mary, "do not be afraid" and
2) I have the convenience to say "do not be afraid" and mostly feel it. Because the fear, for me personally, is in my head. But for far to many of my neighbors, this is not true. For my neighbors in far too many places in the world, the fear is not just a scary thought.
That fear is dropped from a plane in the sky and landing on their homes.
That fear is seen the starving faces of their children, because community are cut off from food and humanitarian efforts.
That fear is realized in the young children who are not even crying anymore in the midst of the trauma, but are starring, because this trauma has become their daily life.
And then I become paralyzed. I think "well what can I do?" "the problems are too big and too complex and too unending"
but again, God comes in amongst the mess of humanity and shares with divine clarity.
Feed the hungry. Welcome the stranger. Clothe the naked. Care for the sick. Visit the imprisoned. Because just as we do it to the least of those, we do it to God. (Matt 25)
In this time of celebrating the birth of our savior, born in a world that said "there's no room for you here, go somewhere else," whose family fled genocide (slaughter of the innocents) and became refugees, let us remember this in these days that we are called to prepare the way.
One of the ways you can prepare the way is by giving to those who are helping. Helping those who find themselves, just as the holy family was, displaced, fleeing genocide, and seeking safe shelter.
While it is important to pray for them, do not feel 'let off the hook' of helping your neighbor because you said a prayer, unless it looks something like this "You pray for the hungry. Then you feed them. This is how prayer works" (Pope Francis). So pray. And then give to organizations like The White Helmets, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, Doctors without Borders or local efforts that support those who find themselves displaced like the Holy Family. And stand up for your neighbor. Show up for your neighbor.
We live in a world filled with hurt and brokenness. Seek community rather than power. Seek loving your neighbor rather fearing that if they are safe, you might be a little less safe. And rejoice that our God chose to put on flesh, enter this incredibly broken, repeatedly sinful world, and meet us where we are in it. Love us where we are in it. And call us and use us where we are in it to love God and love our neighbor. Thanks be to God.
