Bogosity

I was just reading about a family who went through the most awful trauma. After being forced to travel by foot for several days, while the wife was heavily pregnant, they were unable to access accommodation and the woman was forced to give birth in very unsanitary conditions and in utter disgrace. One is reminded of the case of the woman who was left to miscarry in a toilet in a hospital this year or of the conditions that aboriginals are living in up north.

I’m not sure how out of the ordinary it was that Jesus was born in a stable and put to sleep in a food trough. Maybe it was actually a better situation than a noisy crowded inn where perhaps there would have been no privacy whatsoever. We often vilify the innkeeper who turned Mary and Joseph away at the door, forgetting that the he offered what he did have: the stable. On the other hand, there was a whole bunch of people in that inn who decided that their needs were greater than the needs of a woman giving birth or perhaps they just thought that this woman was of no consequence. Maybe they let it be somebody else’s problem.

I’ve been putting myself in the shoes of those people who were safely accommodated in the inn on that night of Jesus’ birth. They had their own problems, their own crises perhaps and then they were confronted by this family in need. It seems to me that the message in this story is the compassion that God has for the lowest and most oppressed in society. We are not supposed to be letting people give birth in stables, we are not supposed to be leaving our indigenous population to rot in their communities and we are not supposed to have people who are homeless even though they have full-time employment because the cost of accommodation is too high (story).

I’m very much like the people in the inn on the night of Jesus birth. No matter what excuses I find, the upshot of my actions is that I’m not doing anything to help (well I voted for a political party that I thought would help but that cost me nothing). The problems are too big and too much for me to deal with. I have my own problems so I just get on with looking after my own family and the rest of the world can look after itself.

Jesus taught that “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what good is it if a man gains the whole world yet loses his life” Matthew 16.24-26. My last thoughts on Christmas relate to this: Christmas is a time for us to be reminded not to lose our souls. We are reminded to give, to love and to reach out to the rest of humanity and especially to those who are on the lowest rungs of society.