“Joy to the world! The Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And heaven and nature sing…”
Friday afternoon, and the remaining few students have completed the last of their semester exams. The school is empty, and I’m walking past our chapel, where a small Nativity scene is set up at the entrance. Above it on the wall are posters our students made weeks ago when ICE’s presence in Waukegan was peaking, and several neighbors and even parents of our students were seized. They offer gospel-based messages about loving our neighbors and welcoming those who are different. We didn’t actually plan to have the posters and Nativity together, but the coincidence is certainly a good representation of who we are as a school community.
In fact, we hadn’t planned on a Nativity at all this year until one of our maintenance team members brought in a handmade stable with figures of the Holy Family and the Magi. Clearly, a labor of love that he wanted to share with others. What began as a simple and sparsely populated panorama of Christ’s birth began growing over the last couple of weeks as students started supplementing the basic set with extra animals, more greenery, paper flowers, a star, and some miniature Christmas decorations. Even a snowman, Santa Claus, and some cartoon characters came to pay homage to baby Jesus at the center of it all.
As you can imagine, the sizes of many of the animals and other figures vary – some disproportionately big or small compared to the core figurines, but all added with care and good intent, using what was available, even if not a perfect fit. The result is a slightly edgy but highly inclusive and respectful creche.
It’s a reminder that the birth of Christ is an incredibly radical story. Not just the incomprehensible act of our Creator loving us so much that he chooses to become one of us, but more importantly, that God chooses to be human in the most humble and vulnerable way possible. Look at the central characters: Joseph, a refugee and not the biological father of the baby; Mary, the pregnant teenager repeatedly turned away by innkeepers; the Magi, distant foreigners of a different faith; nomad shepherds, some of the poorest and roughest of society; and, of course, baby Jesus, born under Roman occupation whose first bed was a feeding trough in an unheated shed. These are not the powerful or privileged, they are not Roman citizens or the respected of society. They are the marginalized, the rejected, the outcasts. Christmas slaps us upside our heads and proclaims that our God is a God of the humble, a God of the poor, a God who turns the world upside down with priorities and values that are very different from our human and societal expectations. Christmas demands that if we truly believe in the Christ story, then each of us is called to greater inclusivity and accompaniment.
Although there are examples everywhere, a Catholic church in Massachusetts recently received lots of media coverage and resulting mixed responses to their Nativity scene when parishioners added signage about ICE and the current cruelty, violence, and indignities our government is inflicting on immigrants (and even American citizens they think look like immigrants). Their Nativity intentionally connected the present brutality and viciousness in the United States with that ancient, sacred birth, whereas ours just happened that way!
When you consider the actual Christmas story, it’s impossible not to see similarities. The priest at the Massachusetts church said something profound, “[The Nativity scene] is not supposed to be something that you look at and admire. It’s supposed to challenge you, to move you, to help you see things differently, to maybe force some questions that you know need to be answered.”
Christmas should scandalize us out of our comfort zone. The radically inclusive nature of the Christmas story, with its message of embracing the marginalized and displaced, is more important than ever. At a time when so many forces are working to divide us and deny at least some of us our humanity, the Nativity scene should be a reminder that God is found among the poor, the suffering, the excluded, the persecuted, and the oppressed. God sides with the vulnerable and implores us to love them and act for justice on their behalf.
This Christmas, let’s allow God to turn our expectations and our priorities upside down. Let that baby at the center of the Nativity scene lead us to a new way of living, to a new way of looking at the world, where comfort and joy are not what the season brings to us but are what God calls us to bring to those on the margins. This Christmas, let every heart prepare Him room!
¡Viva, Cristo Rey!