Edges Magazine Issue 43 - Homeless and The Christmas Crib

EDGES MAGAZINE Issue 43

January 2006

Homeless & The Christmas Crib
Yet again, Christmas is upon us. I've just been down to the cellar to rummage through decorations and baubles. I dug out our crib: a terrible mess really; the straw has become nasty and all over the place, and because it has been a damp corner, it smells bad. I looked in the shops for a possible replacement and was faced with laserbeamed posh residences, more reminiscent of yuppie bijoux pads than the animal stalls one associates with the bible version! We'll stick to ours; it’s much more authentic!

Jesus was born to face a cataclysmic journey; yet far from hiding his forebodings in comfortable materialism, he made his entrance as he meant to go on, in complete poverty and vulnerability. Renaissance paintings and our contemporary views of the nativity are so pristine! Mary in spotless clothes, in spite of her recent long journey and labour; the baby smiling like a three month old and lying on spotless fodder (this in temperatures of minus 10!) - The animals looking on sweetly at this intruder hogging their grazing space; Joseph in motionless contentment watching his new family..... as any young dad would in an animal's stable on a freezing cold night far from home, worried by stories of persecution and with nothing to feed his newly delivered wife.

Let's go and spend Christmas Eve night in the garden shed. How long would we last? How pristine and content would we be looking by 3 a.m.? Jesus actually made his world-changing entrance in a smelly, damp, freezing animal stall, the only fanfare being a cacophony of sounds produced by bovine digestive tracts! He was also surrounded by a great deal of love in its purest simplicity; there was such wealth in his poverty.

That has to be the message of the stable for our troubled times where fear is hidden more and more behind an orgy of consumerism and selfishness. We could all have so much more wealth in a bit more poverty. How many thousands of times this coming winter will the circumstances of the nativity story be repeated over and over again, in the devastated mountains of Pakistan and Kashmir, for example? As we tuck into obscene amounts of food and open presents we don't need in our over heated and cosy houses, there will be thousands of utterly desperate young couples searching for the minutest corner of shelter from snow, winds and freezing conditions in order to give birth to new life, which stands little chance of survival. Desperate young husbands with terrified young wives facing the inevitable with no mod-cons, just a human will to survive.

There will be no inn-keepers because most of the inns are flattened rubble. There will be no kings, at least not until summer when it's safe and comfortable to pay a media-frenzied visit. In our churches and homes we will continue to gaze adoringly at designer nativity scenes ..... and completely miss the point!

The language of the stable is that of vulnerability and total giving of self – it needs to become more of a shared language. Mother Theresa said once: " We cannot do great things on earth; we can only do small things with great love".

We need to gaze at our cribs this Christmas and feel the cold and the vast devastation of the thousands living out this scene at that very moment, and feel above all the richness this baby had in his poverty ..... and why he came at all.