We all know the answer. From John and Nisha Whitehead at rutherford.org:
“When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart.”—Howard Thurman, theologian and civil rights activist
Every Christmas, Christians celebrate the birth of a child born into oppression—an occupied land, a climate of political fear, and a government quick to crush anything that threatened its authority.
Two thousand years later, the parallels are unmistakable.
If Jesus were born in modern America, under a government obsessed with surveillance, crackdowns on undocumented immigrants, religious nationalism, and absolute obedience to a head-of-state rather than the rule of law, would he survive long enough to preach about love, forgiveness and salvation? Would his message of peace, mercy, and resistance to empire be branded as extremism?
As familiar as the Christmas story of the baby born in a manger might be, it is also a cautionary tale for our age.
The Roman Empire, a police state in its own right, had ordered that a census be conducted. Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary traveled to the little town of Bethlehem so that they could be counted. There being no room for the couple at any of the inns, they stayed in a stable (a barn), where Mary gave birth to a baby boy, Jesus. Warned that the government planned to kill the baby, Jesus’ family fled with him to Egypt until it was safe to return to their native land.
