Christmas in the Camp

[Spoiler alert: Christmas falls on a Sunday this year. Therefore some of the following is likely to be repeated on Christmas Day 2011. If you prefer your sermons uber fresh, you might want to wait until Monday to read this. It was not my intent to write a sermon but sometimes it just goes with the territory...]

In the film, "Schindler's List," the main character finds himself drug into a world of suffering. He doesn't go looking for the suffering. In fact, he initially finds himself financially blessed by the Nazi war effort and the subsequent slave labor created by the Jewish Ghetto.

As the story turn even darker, and Amon Goeth arrives to oversee the construction of a concentration camp, Oskar probably begins to see the inhumanity and evil that is connected to his own good fortune. Nevertheless, he intends to bifurcate his own story from that of the Jews who are working in his factory. The rationale is simple. Schindler is a German and a businessman. Although what is happening around him is sad, it doesn't concern him personally... Or so he tries to believe.

However, the worse things get, the more Oskar finds that the world is shared--that those who benefit from the Nazi regime are, in fact, connected to those who are suffering under it. Though he might want to believe that his story is distinct and separate from the men and women working in his factory, his experience increasingly demonstrates otherwise. Perhaps despite himself, Oskar Schindler comes to realize that he sincerely cares about these people. Their suffering is his suffering.

This identification with the other is, I believe, at the heart of the Christmas message. It is God's identification with us--and especially with our plight--that makes the Christian message unique. Yet, it is also what makes it universal. The Gospel story emerges from a specific tradition but the message that it declares belongs to all of Creation. And he shall be called Immanuel--God with us...

I realize that Occupy Wall Street is something of a political issue for some, and an enigma to others. I do not know all the ins and outs of the movement but there are some aspects that I certainly respect. I respect people standing up for what they believe--even when they may not be able to exactly articulate what that is. I respect people who work peacefully for change in the world and refuse to be defined by others simply because they have more power and influence. And I respect that the OWS people have given all of us something to think about by using the simple ratio 99-1.

To suggest that there might be a ratio to describe injustice is a provocative claim. To point out the considerable distance between the many and the few in this regard is, I think, a revelation in our time. The way that I have been describing it of late, is to invite us to think of a refugee camp. To imagine that there is a vast enclosed space--probably not unlike a prison, except that this prison is so enormous and so full of stuff that we never actually see the fences.

What the OWS folks have done by lifting up that ratio of 99-1 is to point out the fences. They dare us to consider that we too are probably a part of the poor and the disenfranchised. This is a startling consideration. For we might say that in the world there is something like a refugee camp. And we might acknowledge that a great many of the world's people are living in it. But can we see ourselves living in it right now? A strange, and perhaps unwelcome, suggestion. Yet, if the world really is divided into the 99 and the 1 (or the 999 million and the one), then things are not as they seem--and we are not who we imagine ourselves to be. In fact, if this is true, then we are the very people that we very often look down up-on and disregard...

That's the news. But this news is not all bad. And for a number of reasons.

First, the Good News here is that Jesus is born in Bethlehem. So it appears that God identifies with (or maybe even favors) the refugees. But that's not all, if we come to understand ourselves as refugees, things look different. Suddenly we begin to see that perhaps everyone we know lives in the same camp with us. And, therefore, we have a connection with others that we may have never really seen before.

Like Oskar, we might have initially assumed that we would be better off identifying with the people who are running things . But at some point, we begin to catch glimpses. We see what the system is doing to people--not only to others but to ourselves as well. We come to realize that we too are being run.

It is an important day when we see how much we have in common with the person getting our coffee. It is a really important day when we come to see how much we have in common with the person picking the beans for that coffee. And it is a painfully important day when we come to see how much we have in common with people who have suffered and died to place that same coffee on our table.

Initially, it might be frightful--the revelation. But then it becomes a blessing. Because we can then see that we have many more friends and a much larger family than we once understood. We begin to understand why solidarity matters and why justice is a worthwhile goal. Peace, too, becomes a more tangible and needful desire. The world gets clear and we begin to look for and work for something better--something very much like the Kingdom that Jesus proclaims...