Immanuel

Christmas 2019: Most Welcome

I’ve just had a wonderful weekend in the bosom of my birth family. Five of seven Prescott siblings spent time together at Lake McConaughy in the Nebraska sand hills. It has become a sort of tradition as we make our ways from eastern Colorado and eastern Nebraska to meet in the middle. It is the way we spend Christmas together, if not actually on Christmas day. The next generation and their significant others join us and are not too put off by the goofiness and teasing of those who are now the elders.

Yup. With Susan crossing over to her sixth decade in a few months, we are now officially a majority of sixty-somethings.

Prescott siblings 1966. FIrst Christmas without mom.

That seems weird as I contemplate the Christmases of our youth. Our gang of seven kids would descend upon Grandpa and Grandma Piskac’s home along with the cousins who are the children of my dad’s siblings. I can only remember it vaguely because I was so young, but I think my grandparents on that side must have been saints to invite such mayhem into their house. People were everywhere! As we got older, and grew to ten, it moved to our house. How those gatherings can still make me smile as I remember the fort of presents around the tree and Aunt Hon’s Christmas tree cake and Aunt Tillie’s box of perfect cookies. And people were everywhere! When Jana and I bought a house to ease the burden on our parents, the celebration moved to Chicago Street. Potluck food! More Christmas cookies! Even more cousins! People were everywhere!

I appreciate the quietness of Christmas now, as Jana, Steve and I will open our gifts on Christmas day after spending Christmas Eve at the candlelighting service at our church. The advent wreath will be fully lit: purple, purple, pink and purple, for hope, peace, joy and love. The center white candle will also glow with the incarnation, the presence we have anticipated and waited for these past weeks. The quiet singing of Silent Night, Holy Night, as the church family passes the light from candle to candle has come to represent for me the perfect experience of oh holy night, the night that Christ was born. Because it was quiet, right? Says so in the song.

I have come to believe that it is especially those moments, in the bosom of family gathered, whether birth family, adopted family or church family, that is the Christmas story of Christ’s birth. In traveling back and forth to the Middle East for almost ten years, I have been a grateful student of those of who live in that context. They live and raise families in the place where Christ was born. They introduced me to a scholar named Kenneth Bailey who gave me a whole new vision of how that holy night was experienced by the family of Jesus, the Immanuel, God-with-us. And I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a silent night!

We think of the words of Luke 2:7, “And she brought forth her firstborn son; and she wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn,” and believe that Jesus was born to his parents alone in the night, rejected by everyone. Oh, that innkeeper! How rude! But read that link and discover this word: kataluma. That is the Greek word used in the passage that is not the same word for inn used in the story of the Good Samaritan. It is a word that describes a part of a typical house of that place and time where guests would stay. At this time in the world, all were gathering for the census and people coming from all over would go to their ancestral homes for the count.

In other words, Joseph’s family’s home was packed! People everywhere! No room in the kataluma, because the house was stuffed! Middle Eastern hospitality says, “Family! Come in anyway! All we have left is the place where we brought the animals in to warm and be warm, but you are most welcome!”

That’s where Jesus was born…in the bosom of family. Most welcome.

“Most welcome” are two words I hear over and over as I travel to be in the bosom of family in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. Right now it is nine time zones ahead of me and the darkness of night has settled in there. Candles are being lit. Hymns are being sung. And the darkness of war and protest and violence does not overcome the light that is born this night. If I was there, I would be most welcome, and so would you. We would gather around that manger and marvel at the gift of God-with-us.

Jesus is born in the bosom of family. Oh come, let us adore him. You are most welcome.

Light in the dark places

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and he went to the synagogue, as his custom was, on the sabbath day. And he stood up to read; and there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it was written,

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.”

And he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” And all spoke well of him, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth; and they said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” And he said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Physician, heal yourself; what we have heard you did at Caper′na-um, do here also in your own country.’” And he said, “Truly, I say to you, no prophet is acceptable in his own country. But in truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Eli′jah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when there came a great famine over all the land; and Eli′jah was sent to none of them but only to Zar′ephath, in the land of Sidon, to a woman who was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Eli′sha; and none of them was cleansed, but only Na′aman the Syrian.” When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and put him out of the city… Luke 4:16-29a NRSV

P1080389This passage came back to me this week as I have been reading Kenneth E. Bailey’s Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes. It took me back to a staff retreat day in March, 2010, where I first met my friend and mentor Marilyn Borst of The Outreach Foundation, a day that changed my life. She used this passage of the inauguration of Jesus’ ministry to launch into her topic which was the church in dark places.

This week as I read Dr Bailey’s chapter on this passage, I was struck anew as to just how radical Jesus was with his message of loving God and loving our neighbors. Dr. Bailey writes that Jesus took a very familiar passage from the book of Isaiah, chapter 61, verses 1-7, and edited it as he read to bring a new message to these people. These folks knew this passage as a prophecy which would put them in charge and their oppressors underneath them, to be dealt with as they had done. And Jesus turned it on its head. He uses sermon examples of Gentiles being open to faith in Yahweh, the God of the Israelites, not of conquering Hebrew heroes like David or Solomon. And where they had thought his sermon started out well, in the end they just wanted to kill him.

The points that Bailey makes that strike me are these:

  • Salvation comes from beyond the community; it is not community generated.
  • Ministry involves proclamation, justice advocacy and compassion. Compassion is meant to inform both witness and advocacy.
  • And lastly, “Jesus refuses to endorse the narrow nationalism of his own community. Instead he stands in prophetic judgment over it.”

It’s not really a text for Advent, and yet that is when I am taking this all in, and recent news stories cause me to stop and think about it.

I wonder what Jesus would think coming to the U.S. as many of us light the candles of Advent leading up to Christmas?

Watching the news yesterday morning I heard a story about one of the most popular Christmas gifts this year: a new gun. The store owner interviewed even stated that “best way you can show love to your loved ones this year is “to give them a gun.” For the ladies they even had thigh holsters covered in bling.

We have had the president of a Christian university declare to the student body that if more of them had concealed-carry permits, “we could end those Muslims.”

We have presidential candidates talk about shutting doors to Muslims, carpet bombing Syria until the desert sands glow, hating the media (“But I wouldn’t kill them,” added as an afterthought), and insulting every ethnic/gender/faith group except the one that looks like them.

We have people saying, “Merry Christmas!” like it is a threat instead of an invitation or salutation.

We get up in arms because a huge chain of coffee shops has a red “holiday” cup instead of a “Christmas” cup, but pay $7 for the coffee anyway.

But where are we when the only cup that really matters is lifted humbly with a plate of bread? The cup poured out for all that we might have life. The cup of the one for whom we light those candles each week.

I am grateful for that day back in March, 2010, when Marilyn introduced me to the church in dark places, for I have been gifted to walk with them in Syria, in Lebanon, in Iraq. They remind me that Jesus is not an American, not a pandering politician, not a guy peddling $7 coffee in a red cup, not a guy carrying a gun with a concealed-carry permit, not a it’s-Merry-Christmas-not-happy-holidays! season’s greeter yelling back at the customer service rep.

He is the Christian woman declaring on a bus stopped by Syrian rebels that the young Alawite man next to her is her son, and they may not take him.

Basrah crossHe is in the Shi’ite neighbors guarding the church in Basrah, saying that rebels will not bomb this church.

He is in the evangelical school in Tripoli, in Sidon, in Kirkuk, in Baghdad, in Aleppo, in Homs, educating Christian and Muslim together in the ethics of reconciliation.

He is in the woman of the Bekaa Valley who ministers to the refugees of the war next door, knowing that her own family is in danger.

He has come from outside of every community, in judgment over our selfishness, our hatred, our greed, our twisting of the meaning of his birth.

He offers us the compassion of his lifeblood poured out for us and invites us to the table of grace.

He is the mighty God, prince of peace, wonderful counselor. He is Immanuel, God with us.

He is the light of the world.

Let us light the candles for this one.

(References from Dr. Bailey’s book, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, are found in chapter 12, The Inauguration of Jesus’ Ministry.)