Writer and activist Kelley Nikondeha reminds us of the location of Jesus’ birth in occupied territory:
Advent narratives reveal the Incarnation as more than God entering a human frame. They are also the revelation of God engaging with human trauma of a specific place and specific people. God experienced the excruciating reality of empires and economies from the position of the weak and powerless ones. God absorbed loss and pain in that body.
The Incarnation positions Jesus among the most vulnerable people, the bereft and threatened of society. The first advent shows God wrestling with the struggles common to many the world over. And from this disadvantaged stance, Jesus lives out God’s peace agenda as a counter-testimony to Caesar’s peace. [1]
Liberation theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez (1928–2024) encourages us to reflect on the implications of Jesus being born as part of an oppressed community:
There, on the fringe of society, “the Word became history, contingency, solidarity, and weakness; but we can say, too, that by this becoming, history itself, our history, became Word.” [2]
It is often said at Christmastime that Jesus is born into every family and every heart. But these “births” must not make us forget the primordial, massive fact that Jesus was born of Mary among a people that at the time were dominated by the greatest empire of the age. If we forget that fact, the birth of Jesus becomes an abstraction, a symbol, a cipher.… To the eyes of Christians the incarnation is the irruption of God into human history: an incarnation into littleness and service in the midst of the overbearing power exercised by the mighty of this world; an irruption that smells of the stable….
It is in the concrete setting and circumstances of our lives that we must learn to believe: under oppression and repression but also amid the struggles and hopes that are alive … under dictatorships that sow death among the poor, and under the “democracies” that often deal unjustly with their needs and dreams. [3]
Nikondeha shares the empowering hope of incarnation:
This is the story of advent: we join Jesus as incarnations of God’s peace on this earth for however long it takes. God walks in deep solidarity with humanity, sharing in our sufferings and moments of hope. Amid our hardship, God is with us. Emmanuel remains the name on our lips in troubled times.
Advent isn’t the acceptance of status-quo peace, but an incarnation of God’s peace that we live in the world. The peacemakers formed by advent are those who resist empire, who practice hospitality with neighbors, and who enter into solidarity with God in the work of liberation for everyone.
May there be calm, bright nights ahead for the peacemakers, the meek, and all people God accompanies through advent still. [4]
References:
[1] Kelley Nikondeha, The First Advent in Palestine: Reversals, Resistance, and the Ongoing Complexity of Hope (Minneapolis, MN: Broadleaf Books, 2022), 182–183.
[2] Manuel Díaz Mateos, El Dios que libera (Lima, Peru: CEP, 1985), 273.
[3] Gustavo Gutiérrez, The God of Life, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991), 85.
[4] Nikondeha, First Advent, 183.
Image credit and inspiration: Nathan Dumlao, Untitled (detail), 2020, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. We are born into this world a holy incarnation.
Story from Our Community:
I discovered the CAC about eight years ago, when I was beginning my own faith deconstruction from evangelical Christianity. I deeply resonated with the path of non-dualism and embracing radical love through the lens of “both/and.” As a pastor’s spouse, I have often felt invisible, but I now see that living under the radar has offered me a gift of insight that I now share with folks in luminous, liminal spaces as a spiritual director. I am grateful to have language and communal understanding of my own mystical experiences within the divine Trinitarian dance.
—Linda C.
