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Remembering those who have little voice in a noisy and overly-abundant world–these words again…

He was born to an unwed teenage girl

Born in substandard housing

He was first greeted by some of the most marginalized people in his culture.

Under fear of death by a powerful politician, this boy and his family fled to another country and lived some time in exile.

The man who raised him was not his birth father

He spent his most significant adult years as a wandering teacher without a permanent home.

He was executed by a coalition of religious and secular leaders afraid of his revolutionary ideas.

This one, born homeless, has become the one who offers hope to the world.

As we get ready to celebrate Christmas, it is good to remember Jesus’ earthly beginning, and his self-emptying, servant stance. Jesus reached out to the marginalized throughout his life. Jesus cared for those who were aliens and marginalized following the grand tradition of the people of Israel who once were aliens themselves.

Jesus is Emmanuel: God with us. He is still God with us. He has stepped into our neighborhood and everything changes.

He stepped into the messiness of our lives–so as his followers, we must step into the messiness of our world.

Bono of U2 spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington a few years ago. He called attention to the poor and the vulnerable in our world. In that talk before then President and Mrs. Bush, King Abdullah of Jordan, politicians and religious leaders he said:

“God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives…, and God is with us– if we are with them.”

The celebration of Jesus’ birth stirs us to look beyond ourselves and towards others.

Desmond Tutu said: “Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good
put together that overwhelm the world.”

This season is about the greatest event in history–God in Jesus is working to set the world right.  We are called to enter into that  work by the power of the Spirit.

In little ways–in little bits of good, we can practice the ways of Jesus.  These little bits can overwhelm the world. The hopes and fears of all the years, in all of our lives are met in Jesus.

Merry Christmas!

Its the season of Advent—anticipating the celebration of Christmas.  For a few short weeks each year, we try to be nicer people.

This Christmas spirit of giving mirrors the grand Christmas story: to us a child is born, to us a son is given; for God so loved the world that he gave his son; Jesus emptying himself for us. The practices of Christmas lived out all year long would change our portions of the world.

Every year I share this story. Its called “Christmas Morning, 1949,” part of the National Story Project. The Christmas practice shared in this story changed two families one Christmas morning. It changed the course of their lives. Christmas practices can change people all year long. The Christ story can so grip our hearts and minds that we are changed all year long. The season for giving and kindness is an all year long season. It is the way of Jesus.

“Christmas Morning, 1949″ (found at NPR National Story Project)

A light drizzle was falling as my sister Jill and I ran out of the Methodist Church, eager to get home and play with the presents that Santa had left for us and our baby sister, Sharon. Across the street from the church was a Pan American gas station where the Greyhound bus stopped. It was closed for Christmas, but I noticed a family standing outside the locked door, huddled under the narrow overhang in an attempt to keep dry. I wondered briefly why they were there but then forgot about them as I raced to keep up with Jill.

Once we got home, there was barely time to enjoy our presents. We had to go off to our grandparents’ house for our annual Christmas dinner. As we drove down the highway through town, I noticed that the family was still there, standing outside the closed gas station.

My father was driving very slowly down the highway. The closer we got to the turnoff for my grandparents’ house, the slower the car went. Suddenly, my father U-turned in the middle of the road and said, “I can’t stand it!”

“What?” asked my mother.

“It’s those people back there at the Pan Am, standing in the rain. They’ve got children. It’s Christmas. I can’t stand it.”

When my father pulled into the service station, I saw that there were five of them: the parents and three children — two girls and a small boy.

My father rolled down his window. “Merry Christmas,” he said.

“Howdy,” the man replied. He was very tall and had to stoop slightly to peer into the car.

Jill, Sharon, and I stared at the children, and they stared back at us.

“You waiting on the bus?” my father asked.

The man said that they were. They were going to Birmingham, where he had a brother and prospects of a job.

“Well, that bus isn’t going to come along for several hours, and you’re getting wet standing here. Winborn’s just a couple miles up the road. They’ve got a shed with a cover there, and some benches,” my father said. “Why don’t y’all get in the car and I’ll run you up there.”

The man thought about it for a moment, and then he beckoned to his family. They climbed into the car. They had no luggage, only the clothes they were wearing.

Once they settled in, my father looked back over his shoulder and asked the children if Santa had found them yet. Three glum faces mutely gave him his answer.

“Well, I didn’t think so,” my father said, winking at my mother, “because when I saw Santa this morning, he told me that he was having trouble finding y’all, and he asked me if he could leave your toys at my house. We’ll just go get them before I take you to the bus stop.”

All at once, the three children’s faces lit up, and they began to bounce around in the back seat, laughing and chattering.

When we got out of the car at our house, the three children ran through the front door and straight to the toys that were spread out under our Christmas tree. One of the girls spied Jill’s doll and immediately hugged it to her breast. I remember that the little boy grabbed Sharon’s ball. And the other girl picked up something of mine. All this happened a long time ago, but the memory of it remains clear. That was the Christmas when my sisters and I learned the joy of making others happy.

My mother noticed that the middle child was wearing a short-sleeved dress, so she gave the girl Jill’s only sweater to wear.

My father invited them to join us at our grandparents’ for Christmas dinner, but the parents refused. Even when we all tried to talk them into coming, they were firm in their decision.

Back in the car, on the way to Winborn, my father asked the man if he had money for bus fare.

His brother had sent tickets, the man said.

My father reached into his pocket and pulled out two dollars, which was all he had left until his next payday. He pressed the money into the man’s hand. The man tried to give it back, but my father insisted. “It’ll be late when you get to Birmingham, and these children will be hungry before then. Take it. I’ve been broke before, and I know what it’s like when you can’t feed your family.”

We left them there at the bus stop in Winborn. As we drove away, I watched out the window as long as I could, looking back at the little girl hugging her new doll.

– Sylvia Seymour Akin
Memphis, Tennessee

I am working on turning my PhD dissertation into a book for church leaders.  I appreciate Wesley Granberg-Michaelson’s  language of settled or sent congregations.  It is not simply either/or but it presents a mindset. This is our goal– The missional church places its commitment to join in God’s mission in the world at the heart of its life and identity (in Unexpected Destinations).

Ray Anderson expresses it this way: “Athens-based faith, where the message is domesticated and diluted by new cultures it encounters, nor by a Jerusalem-based faith where the message is tamed and contained by a dominant culture from the past but rather an Antioch-based faith where the gospel message never loses its wild untamed essence but like a spring of living water or vibrant new wine, it always flows and is never contained by old forms (An Emergent Theology for Emerging Churches). The church is always on the move. Here is some of what I am writing–

The church must continue to press towards to vision of Roland Allen who imagined a vital, living, emerging church:

The spontaneous expansion of the church reduced to its elements is a very simple thing. It asks for no elaborate organization, no large finances, no great numbers of paid missionaries….What is necessary is faith. What is needed is the kind of faith which uniting a man (sic) to Christ sets him on fire (The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church).

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, out of his own sense of frustration over the irrelevance of the church institution, wrote prophetically, offering a picture of a church reimagined:

The church is only the church when it exists for others. To make a start, it should give away all its property to those in need. The clergy must live solely on the free-will offerings of their congregations, or possibly engage in some secular calling. The church must share in the secular problems of ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and serving. It must tell men (sic) of every calling what it means to live in Christ, to exist for others (Letters and Papers from Prison p. 282).

These are radical concepts for those connected to the established church order. This work is not for the faint-hearted. Rudolf Bahro says: “When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure” (quoted in Margaret Wheatley Finding Our Way). These are the ecclesial heretics who live and dream at the margins. These heretics, while creating dis-ease and disruption, must be listened to, and encouraged. The ecclesial heretics help the church to imagine and innovate, while not letting go of the best of heritage and tradition.

The church in the West exists in a liminal, transitional time. It is a time of chaos. This chaos does not lead to anarchy and the elimination of structure, but rather as it embraces the unpredictable and complex, new social and missional structures emerge (William Berquist The Postmodern Organization). These new structures will exist outside as well as inside ecclesial bounds. New missional imaginations will bring renewal to established churches and denominations.

We must stir the imaginations of church leaders who desire a new day for the church. We will probably become fearful and anxious along the way as change is never easy. The abandonment of old forms brings anger and sadness. Yet this torment of loss and dizziness will lead to new fires of missional imagination, resulting in new forms of church emerging that will impact the world for good, in the name of Jesus.  So bring on the insecurity, the chaos, and the fire!