the middle eastern refugees

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In a little less than a month there will be middle eastern refugees looking for a place to stay. You will be asked if you have room for them. As usual, many will close their doors to them, until finally this runaway family will end up living with animals, and there a child conceived out of wedlock will be born. At least that's how two of the Gospel writers tell the story. Two of them don't even bother with the birth story, in those Gospels we just jump right to the ministry.

I have my favorite family stories of the Christmas experience that I carry in my memory, and we are building happy memories for our son as he grows and finds the surprising gifts under our Christmas tree on December 25. We're also being careful that the American-Santa theology is not the only thing our son learns this time of year; he is also learning about God's Incarnation in Jesus Christ. American-Santa stories and songs teach that if you're good you are rewarded, and if you are bad you get coal (personally, I'd love a bag of charcoal for Christmas, since I love to cook out! Hint-hint, Laura.) What we learn from Jesus Christ is much different, and perhaps much less convenient. What we learn from Jesus is that no matter what we do, God will love us. God loves us not because we are good, but because God is God. God does not wait for us to earn that love; even at our most disparate, darkest times, God loves us and Jesus will be born into our hearts. It's no accident that we celebrate his birth at the darkest time of the year. 

It was not to the good, religious folks that Jesus reached out, but to the people on the edges of his society. Jesus called the fishermen to be his disciples, he used the despised of society as the example of how we are to love our neighbor, and made room for those considered "least" (children, tax collectors) among people who considered themselves the favored ones. Jesus even forgave the very people who killed him even as they were killing him. The way of Jesus is not to reward good behavior, but to love until a person is transformed by that love. 

The writer of Hebrews reminds us that Jesus came into the world at a particular time and place to redeem the whole world regardless of what time or place we might have been born. Whatever we perceive as separating us from the love of God, God is willing to overcome. Through that love, indeed we are transformed, and we too might begin to love as God does. We too might practice incarnation by allowing God to be born in the wild manger of our hearts. As we move toward December 25, we might practice, spiritually at least, welcoming in the middle eastern refugee family, and trust that God is at work in them, just as God is at work in each of us. What might it take to make room for them? What might it take to make room for Christ to be incarnate among us?

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