Last
month our church youth group took part in “Alive Pittsburgh,” an outreach to homeless people
held on the North Side. Hundreds of
volunteers and hundreds of guests spent the day together, meeting each other
and enjoying the festivities. The event
included clothing give-aways, competitions and prizes, vision and hearing
testing, haircuts, music, and food. Our
group was assigned to the prayer team, which meant that we got to spend time
talking with the guests, getting to know them, hearing their stories, and
offering to pray with them.
Of
the dozens of people that my partner and I got to know, one couple touched me more
deeply than the others. I would guess
that they are in their mid to late twenties, and if I had met them anywhere
else I wouldn’t have had a clue that they are homeless. They are living in a tent in a homeless camp
in the city. When I asked if there was
something they’d like to pray about, they told me that they are expecting a
baby. We prayed for the baby and
mother’s health, a safe delivery, and that they would find a place to live
before the baby was born. I couldn’t
tell underneath her heavy winter coat how far along the woman was in her
pregnancy, but the odds are that the baby will arrive long before the return of
warm sunny weather.
As
I reflected later upon my encounter with this couple, soon to become a family,
I realized that the Christmas story isn’t so warm and fuzzy after all. Mary and Joseph were much like the couple I
got to know: worried about finding a safe and warm place for their child to
come into the world. The reality of
Christ’s birth was much harsher than what is portrayed in the nativity scenes
we’ll enjoy this month, complete with stables, friendly animals, adoring angels
and worshiping shepherds.
When
we sanitize the Christmas story and convert it into heartwarming tale, we miss
the entire point. Jesus did not come to mingle
with the satisfied, with those who will give and receive frivolous and extravagant
gifts, with those who will gain ten pounds in December because of all the good
cooking. Jesus came to share life with
parents giving birth in the cold, with families driven from their homes out of
desperation or violence, with those whom everyone else ignores or reviles.
And
when Jesus comes into our hearts, he turns them toward the “least of these,” as
he called the suffering and abused people of the world in one of his parables
(Matthew 25:31-46). As we are
transformed more and more into the image of our Lord, we are drawn more closely
to those whose lives he came to share: those whom the world would rather throw
away than acknowledge.
As we seek the
coming of Christ during this Advent, may we care more about homeless parents
than Christmas carols, more about refugees than tinsel and lights, more about the
mistreated than a new pair of fuzzy slippers.
[PS: If you want to make a difference for the homeless in Pittsburgh, such as the couple I met, I encourage you to connect with LIVING Ministry.]
"The Nativity," by Gari Melchers
in my opinion, the most realistic depiction of Christ's birth:
an exhausted mother and a worried father
[PS: If you want to make a difference for the homeless in Pittsburgh, such as the couple I met, I encourage you to connect with LIVING Ministry.]
