Resistance and Love in the Christmas Story
Christmas 2022
Merry Christmas from Dandelion House! Amidst all that is good about this season – family, community, joy – and all that is difficult – loneliness, consumerism, family dysfunction – it is helpful for me to recall the radical message of the Christmas story.
Both Christmas stories from the Bible tell of forced migrations as a result of imperial policy. In Matthew’s version, the holy family become refugees in Egypt as Rome’s client king, Herod “the Great,” commits mass infanticide in and around Bethlehem. In Luke’s telling, all inhabitants of occupied Palestine are ordered to submit to imperial registration in their places of ancestry, forcing thousands to migrate. In that story, we read that the newborn Jesus, wrapped in swaddling clothes, was placed in a manger “because there was no room at the inn.” I can imagine the good-hearted inn-keepers, overwhelmed by the demands from those displaced by the imperial census yet not wanting to turn away a pregnant mother and her spouse, offering them the only space available – their stable.
Dandelion House joins local activists in demanding that gun shops stop selling assault rifles.
Like the inn-keeper, each of us, in our own way, does what we can to extend hospitality while living under Empire. Here at Dandelion House, we recently welcomed a young man after he regained sobriety at a treatment facility. He’s joined us in serving hot meals at lunch on Fridays, and has been a regular presence at our community dinners, recently treating all of us to a spectacular linguine with Alfredo sauce! He is working hard to pick up his life after it was interrupted by addiction: getting his driver’s license and other documentation in order, attending 12-step meetings, reconnecting with his children as well as his parents, applying for employment… It is not an easy path, but day by day he is reclaiming his life.
Perhaps you’ve taken in a needy friend, relative, or stranger. Or maybe you offer hospitality by cooking for our hot lunch program, or delivering groceries to our house of hospitality. Maybe you write a prisoner, help at the local food bank, or tutor ESL students. These are the Works of Mercy, and they keep us human. It is a way of loving under Empire.
The Works of Mercy are good and necessary, but they are not sufficient. We also need to call to account the Powers that make impossible demands on people and planet. We must call to account the Herods, Caesars, Bidens, and Bezoses of this world.
Yet, as the Christmas stories make clear, the daily struggles of so many are not inevitable or simply “the way things are,” but the result of imperial policies, whether Roman or American. The Works of Mercy are good and necessary, but they are not sufficient. We also need to call to account the Powers that make impossible demands on people and planet. We must call to account the Herods, Caesars, Bidens, and Bezoses of this world.
Of course, it is easy to point our finger at others and gloss over our own complicity. Yet I feel torn about this, too. On the one hand, integrity matters, and we must each do our best to live in alignment with our values. On the other hand there are degrees of complicity, and even as we live imperfect lives personally, our own complicity pales in comparison to that of the Chase Bank executive, major Chevron shareholder, Raytheon lobbyist, or U.S. Senator. Scruples over our own imperfections cannot stop us from resisting structures of oppression if we are to live into a more beautiful world.
This Christmas, as we join the shepherds and the magi in adoring the newborn Prince of Peace, may we learn to reverence all who are hunted down by the empires of the world. Together, let’s respond, through the Works of Mercy and the resistance of our lives.