At the time, A and I were both thinking about what an unconventional Christmas this was. In hindsight, the whole thing was quite fitting— what better way to remember Jesus’ humble birth in an obscure Palestinian town than by walking the dirt pathways of this forgotten corner of the world, past goats and cows and pigs and the simple homes of some of the first people to whom Jesus would probably choose to reveal himself if he were to be born again in our century?
It’s not as though Jesus was born into a peaceful, quiet world anyway. On that night when Christ was born, his homeland was under violent occupation by a foreign military, a zealot insurgency was going on, and before he hit the age of two, he and his parents would become refugees fleeing a genocide. He was born into a highly stratified society where the wealthy exploited the poor, and where racial, ethnic, and religious divisions fragmented the population (Romans, Jews, Samaritans, “sinners”…).
The more I think about it, the more appropriate the Christmas Eve ruckus of our neighborhood seems. Jesus didn’t wait for our chaos to subside, for all to become peaceful and for every heart to prepare him room before he came. He just came to us in the midst of our chaos. He spoke his peace over us even while we ignored and misunderstood him, and began to bring a new world into existence within the shell of the old.