The world is such a tender place that it can be hard to remember to take care of one another – yet to me, this is the imperative of being human. For me, Christmas underscores the call to care for one another. It’s a reminder that every person is worthy of love, and that we belong to each other as members of the human family.
I grew up in a family and in a faith tradition that placed Jesus at the heart of the Christmas season: the infant Jesus who grew up to be a teacher of love and radical inclusivity. Throughout his ministry, Jesus – consistently, reliably, and not without clear instructions to his followers – turned his attention toward those who were pushed aside, disempowered, rejected, or forgotten. He allied himself with, and drew to him, the people who most needed to hear the message that they were not alone … and he did so without inviting discussion as to whether they “deserved” that care.
Although I left that faith as a young adult – and spent a few years as an atheist before arriving at my current stance of wonder and reverence for the Great Mysterious – neither my soul nor my ethical framework has surrendered the responsibility 20to ensure that the most vulnerable and the most marginalized among us are being cared for.
In fact, even in my second decade as a pastor (and yes, the universe demonstrated quite the sense of humor by calling an atheist to be a minister), my faith asks me to keep examining, and broadening, what it means to say “us” or “we.” When greed or fear creates the division implied by a “them,” where is connection still possible, and how widely can we draw the circle?
When I get lost in our cultural arguments over who Jesus was and what he intended his followers to do with his teachings, I turn back to the stories themselves. The birth narrative related in Matthew’s gospel calls to me most powerfully this year. Unlike Luke’s narrative, there’s no mention of a stable, shepherds, or angels singing “Alleluia.” Instead, the writer glosses over Jesus’ birth to focus on a sinister subplot.
When Jesus is born, learned scholars, or magi, go to Jerusalem to visit Herod, the Roman empire’s puppet-king. A cruel, manipulative ruler, Herod is so threatened by the child’s birth that he instructs the magi to return with a report about where to find Jesus. But after encountering Jesus, the story goes, a strong sense of foreboding prompts the magi to disobey the king’s orders. They make the life-giving choice to resist abetting cruelty.
Joseph then receives a similar warning: go to Egypt. You are not safe here. Jesus and his parents left their homeland of Judea, sheltering in Egypt for several years. They chose to become refugees, accepting loss and risking the unknown, because staying meant certain death. Their refuge was life-giving, allowing Jesus to grow into the prophet he became.
As I write this, the world is learning of another young child and father who fled violence in their homeland, and sought safety in another land – ours, days ago. That story has a tragic and damning ending: the death of 7-year-old Jakelin Caal inside our border, within a culture of cruelty.
No political rhetoric, however craftily spun, can divorce these parallel stories, 2,000 years and half a world apart: one of a refugee child who died not just of dehydration but also of apathy, and another refugee child who went on to wield his power – a “power with,” not “power over” – on behalf of the most vulnerable.
Every person reading this message knows what it’s like to struggle – with loneliness, with fear, with poverty or addiction or grief. Many of us have experienced the pain of feeling alone in our struggle, in our brokenness. The life-giving message of Christmas is that we do not journey alone; we do not struggle alone; we do not heal all by ourselves.
In these deep winter days, amid both the tenderness and terrible harshness of the world, may we remember that we’re all in this together. All are worthy of love. All are worthy of receiving life’s gifts. And all of us have a role to play in bringing healing to the broken places.
(The Rev. Erika Hewitt is the minister of the Midcoast Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, which meets at Skidompha Library in Damariscotta. She came to Maine in 2012 after serving Unitarian Universalist congregations in California for a decade. She lives in Bath.)
