WEEK FIVE
December 27- January 2
JESUS THE REFUGEE
With millions across the globe displaced, many are calling 2015 the Year of the Refugee. It seems inevitable that connections be made between the dispossessed peoples of our contemporary world and the unusual circumstances surrounding Christ’s coming to earth. Clearly, God ordained to incarnate His beloved son within the sphere of the refugee experience. Christ identified with and lived as a displaced and homeless person, while preaching a gospel of good news to the poor and marginalized. He taught that we are all strangers and aliens in a strange land. Through His words and actions, Christ tore down old borders and boundaries initiating the way back to those dislocated from their eternal home.  

Sunday, December 27
Scripture: Luke 2:7
And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

NO ROOM
Ukrainian artist Alexey Kondakov has taken the figures from William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s 1881 nativity painting, The Song of the Angels, and transported them to a rather mundane modern subway car to press upon us our time-transcending common humanity. While some might find Kondakov’s borrow expression inappropriately out-of-place (or even sacrilegious), perhaps we need to be transported out of our overly idealized—and even romanticized—views of Christmas. We too easily forget that the God of heaven sent His Son to a lowly state of existence. Jesus was not cradled in a mansion as the son of an earthly king, much less as the King of Kings; rather, His crib was a makeshift use of a livestock feeding trough. As the apostle Paul states it, Jesus “emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.” And yet, King of Kings He is. Even as Bouguereau’s classic figures show up in Kondakov’s digitally manipulated image, where we think they do not belong, so the Son of God on that first Christmas showed up where, in many ways, He was out-of-place. And yet, He did belong.

A similar transportation is captured in Matt Cardy’s photograph of a nativity scene in a refugee camp, where hundreds of Iraqi Christians sought to escape the wrath of Islamic State fighters in December 2014. The point is clear enough for all who place their faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. The Christian faith—one of God humbly entering into the story of humanity in a specific time and culture—is a subverting faith. It turns out that true faith in Christ is a trans-temporal and transcultural faith, and it calls us all to enter its story by the subversion of submitting to the humble Christ. The one who entered our disordered world as a child to save us from our sinful rebellion is our God and King. Perhaps we should adjust our idealized pictures of Christmas to fit with the revolutionary relief initiative that it really was.

Todd Agnew’s song, “No Room,” brings together several of these ideas. The lyrics give expression to the ideas of people who do not have room for Jesus in their lives (“... no room in the inn, if you were someone important we might try to fit you in... ”). But eventually they come to the subversive realization that, in order to be saved from the chaos of their lives, they must turn and submit to the one who entered into our chaotic existence as a humble child (“Oh, please, little baby, can you save me?”).

If you find yourself in a less-than-ideal situation or set of circumstances this Christmas, look heavenward and recall with gratitude that Jesus humbly entered just such a messy world on the first Christmas. In Christ the transcendent God of the universe willingly and lovingly enters the untidiness of our lives. 

PRAYER
Lord, when in Jesus You walked this earth, we were surprised that there was no room for You, that You had no place to call Your own. Your upside-down kingdom is staggering to comprehend. As we fling open our heart’s door to welcome You this Christmas season, make us conscious of those who have no place to lay their heads. We ask the Holy Spirit to open our eyes and our hearts to their distress and suffering. Forgive our indifference to the misery around us, and in your mercy bless and prosper all that is being done around the world to help those in need.
Amen.

Douglas S. Huffman, Professor and Associate Dean of Biblical & Theological Studies