However, given where we stand as a nation now, we might well confront ourselves with some of the origins of the season of Christmas. Maybe our Christian political leaders could face their actions in response to desperately needy people and ask who their faith calls them to be.
Mary, the mother of the vulnerable child, Jesus, was dependent on the love of those around her, especially that of Joseph, who could well have left her, given that the child she carried was not his. The imaging of the people who recognised and gathered around the Christchild might well invite in us a new respect for people who are of different faiths or occupations. In the shepherds, it was the poor working people who listened to the heavenly voices of the angels and committed themselves to finding the child. In the Magi, the “three wise men”, it was people of another country and possibly of a different faith who came to be with Mary and Joseph and the Christchild.
In recreating the moment of Christmas in our lives, we could well look around us and see who lacks respect and resources in our world. Maybe refugees and asylum seekers hear a voice of hope when they flee their countries and assume that a country, which often claims to be predominantly Christian, would gather them in with the same compassion to which Christ later called his friends – to love their neighbours as themselves. Could we look and find the vulnerable and struggling and give them gifts in foreign aid?
Could the arrival of Christmas invite in us a new respect for those whose journey of faith has been different from our own? If we were prepared to come closer to them in dialogue, maybe we would find our own faith deepened by their insights and see the integrity of their lives and beliefs. Perhaps we could sit around them in support and friendship, sharing our gifts.
Then we could think of those for whom Christmas is a painful reminder of their loss, grief or pain – lives lived in a terrible contrast to the gift-giving and partying around them. For those people, I have written the following poem:
A blue Christmas
The night seems dark
and it is hard to see the guiding star above us.
Invitations to joy sparkle around the sky,
but their cheerful light is so bright
that they sometimes make the shadows grow deeper.
If we turn our faces away, what will we see?
Nothing that we want to see?
The sounds of celebration,
the surrounding love of family and friends,
and the decorations of anticipation and shining hopefulness,
sometimes become a comment on what is not there for us.
The contrast between the excitement and preparations
for the coming of peace and love,
and what we experience, is writ large in our lives.
However, if we dare to look, perhaps we will find
a glimpse of loving kindness breaking through?
Let us share our grieving,
daring to touch its reality in the silence.
Let us hold each other in trembling hope,
we who stand on the painful margins of this moment.
And may new life arise, deep within us,
the Child of love be born in an unexpected place
and the life-giving Spirit lead us towards a star.
Those of us, who gather in faith, will be thinking of the community around us with love as Christmas dawns. May you all find gifts of grace and hope.
