The Advent of Justice – Seeing with Christmas Eyes

 

Which Christmas story is it that is so popular? Is it the romantic myth of a virgin conception by the Holy Spirit, or the stark reality of a young couple trying to make the best of an unchosen and confusing situation?

 

Is it the sugar-coated story of a meek and mild baby who didn't cry, or the reality of a blood red baby and a scared young girl, both weeping?

 

Is it the fanciful story of angels with golden wings and ruby red cheeks floating in from outer space with divine messages, or the reality of a frightened couple trying to follow their instincts and discern some possible meaning in their struggle?

 

Is it the quaint tale of a backwater inn surrounded by cute animals, or the socio- political reality of a young couple running for their lives?

 

My real concern is we don't live sugar-coated lives.  The sickly sweet fairytale Christmas story that is often presented offers nothing to the stark reality of our lives; teenage pregnancy, unwanted pregnancy, unchosen pregnancy, ethnic genocide, religious rivalry, family betrayals, gender inequality and personal anguish.

 

On the other hand, the historical context which paints a more accurate backdrop to the beginnings of a social revolutionary's life might just say something profound to the stuff of life.  It just might make a difference.

 

The Christmas Mary, instead of being the epitome of purity and otherworldly submission, should be revered as symbol of persistent activism in the face of oppression.  The Christmas Mary is honoured every time an abused wife, a displaced Sudanese woman or a frightened teenager, is empowered to find liberation.

 

The Christmas Jesus, instead of only being the bearer of salvation from the cares of this world, should be revered as the social radical who sought to reverse the injustices of this world.  The Christmas Jesus is honoured every time you and I stand in solidarity with those who have had their voice taken away, as we empower those who are running out of hope.

 

Don't get me wrong.  It's not that I don't believe in miracles or in angels.  I see angels, and speak to them often.  It's just that the angels I see “ain't got no wings.”

 

Let me tell you a story about Brad.  He was a homeless man who drifted to my church in Sydney and asked if he could sleep outside the building.  Brad looked physically like a stereotypical homeless man, but his nature was anything but.  He was gentle and thoughtful in the extreme, and he became a friend to me.

 

Brad asked to speak to me one day, so we sat in the cold and damp Gothic church building and chatted.  Brad told me some things in that conversation which haunt me.

 

He told me that he was an angel.  I told him that I knew that already.

 

He told me that many years before he had been abused by Catholic Priests and that was part of the reason he lived a restless life always on the move.  He told me that these men were an abomination to the Lord and he made it his mission to protect young people from churches.

 

Then Brad told me that very soon the time would come when he would need to leave this earth for 40 days to take on a battle in another world.  He said to me that one day I would come into the church and find him slumped over on the floor as if dead.  When that happened, he said, I might as well put his body in a cupboard and leave it there because it would be no use to him and, in any case, he would be back after 40 days.

 

I left that conversation scratching my head.  Seminary hadn't trained me to know how to deal with that sort of a situation.

 

A week later I walked into the church and as soon as I entered the building knew that something was wrong.  Sure enough, I found Brad slumped over dead on the floor of the church.  There was one stick of heroine still full on the ground next to him, and one empty syringe in his hand, more heroine than any one person could handle.

 

Investigations were carried out, a funeral was held.  His street friends came and wept like I have never seen a group of people weep.  Some of them finished weeping only to leave the church and shoot up themselves.  It was a desperate scene on the streets in those days after Brad's death.  They called him Bear, because of the way he embraced all people with his huge heart.  Bear was now gone.  The world was less humane for his absence.

 

I would be lying if I didn't tell you that forty days later I walked into the church, just to see…..and it wouldn't have surprised me in the slightest to see Bear in his familiar pose- head down, praying on the back pew.

 

Brad was an angel, make no mistake about that.  He was probably addicted to heroine.  He may even have been dealing it to others out of the church.  He most likely had a mental illness and he may even have committed suicide out of the delusion of his angelic mission.  All that aside, the most tragic of human circumstances, Brad was still an angel to me, the most unlikely angel.  He was an angel as he brought messages to me.  He brought meaning.

 

The message he brought to me was that the way we believe, the way we read the Bible, the way the faith stories are told to us, the way we are treated by church leaders are all justice issues.  In some ways, Brad was playing out the consequences of abuse, and yet he was an angel and was the birth of hope in the midst of my life and in the lives of so many street people.

 

The other message he brought was that life is not usually about happy endings.  Brad was well aware of his own poverty, of his limitations.  Brad knew that he was running.  It was out of this awareness of poverty that he offered such humanity to those around him.  The life of Jesus began in oppression, proceeded in frailty and ended in his execution.  From the time Mary became pregnant, to the decisions of a family living in poverty, to the life of a struggling revolutionary, hope was birthed every time people saw their own poverty and recognized in the other some angelic quality.  That's how lives are changed.  That's how social systems are changed, including oppressive religious systems, by seeing in the other the face of possibility.

 

We need be in no doubt; the sugar-coated Christmas story is not just quaint and harmless.  The ideology which needs an undefiled mother to deliver Jesus to the world as the Son of God, the ideology which needs angels to be of another world and body, the ideology which teaches that people are sinful in their bodies and need the salvation of this Son of God, King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the ideology which needs a literal Christmas story, is the same ideology which, when taken  to extremes  justifies racial genocide  on the basis that Jewish deaths are less significant than other human deaths.  This is the same ideology which when taken to extremes, justifies child abuse as, after all, it is only their earthly bodies, and in any case they are only children.  This is the same ideology which says to people, “Don't trust your instincts, don't seek professional help; rather, just pray and look to another world for answers.”

 

The Christmas story asks us to make some surprising connections.  What are they? The teenage pregnancy of Mary occurred in a hot bed of religious pressure and certainly class and social status, education and poverty are factors in cases of teenage pregnancy, as they were for Mary and Joseph.  However, we need to go deeper. 

 

The Advent of Justice is a call to see the world with Christmas eyes.  With Christmas eyes, we see our own poverty, born out of tragedy and sorrow, out of which our true power can emerge.  With Christmas eyes and out of the humility of our own poverty, we see others with possibility and humanity. 

 

The love that came to Bethlehem, or Nazareth, is not the easy sympathy of a paternalistic God, but a burning fire whose light chases away every shadow, floods every corner, and turns midnight into noon.

 

The Advent of Jesus is to be the change we want to see in the world.  I don't expect that Jesus set out to be ruler of the universe, some superhero.  Maybe he would've been surprised to find his face on Newsweek in 2004.  His revolution of peace and justice grew out of his awareness of the poverty into which he was born and his respect for all human beings.  So it will be in our justice work. 

 

Aren't you glad we have been freed by a Christmas story which is not sugar-coated to engage the stark reality of our world in the here and now? Our lives, our activism, our relationships, are all fuller for it.

 

Oscar Romero, the courageous Salvadoran Catholic Archbishop, summed up Christmas like this:

No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor.  The self-sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look down on others, those who have no need even of God - for them there will be no Christmas.  Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone.  That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us.  Without poverty of spirit there can be no abundance of God.

 

Romero understood what he was talking about.  He lived the advent of justice for and alongside the people of El Salvador through dark days of oppression, and then lost his life in that cause.  This brings to mind another hero who lost his life in the cause of justice. 

 

That was the life Jesus was born into.  That is the heritage you and I share, a deeply felt passion to stand alongside the oppressed wherever they are and to do so out of our own deep sense of poverty.  I'm not talking only about economic poverty.  The poverty you and I struggle with is a poverty of spirit, as we so often think we have it all.

 

As we look at the stark reality of our world, may we connect with Christmas eyes.  May we be surprised to find ourselves angels as we share in moments of activism and compassion.  May we be the birth of revolution which dwells in all possibility.

 

As we hear the ever popular Christmas story one more time this year, may we hear in the raw, the real, the radical, the earthy struggles of the family of Jesus echoes of our life and our world.  In this may we find inspiration to keep hoping against hope in life. 

 

Ian W. Lawton

Abridged: http://www.christ-community.net/