A Christmas Reflection
Christmas is about human exclusion as much as divine solidarity.
“He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.” (John 1:11)
A couple excluded from the hotels and guest-houses of their home town,
and later forced to flee as refugees from state persecution. A child who is
excluded from his community and eventually from life itself, dying in
solidarity with all who suffered the shame of crucifixion.
The best way to celebrate Christmas, therefore, is to reflect
on- and repent of – the way we exclude other people and other voices from
intruding on our comfortable existence.
I think today, Christmas Eve, especially of my Palestinian
Christian brethren. They are caught in a vulnerable position between, on the
one hand, an aggressive Israeli settler movement and an equally aggressive
Islamist militancy, on the other. Rarely, if ever, are their voices heard in
mainstream secular news media.
The only exposure to Palestinians on “Christian” news channels
is of stone-throwing children or the remains of suicide-bombers. How humiliated
Palestinian Christians must feel by constant references on the part of Western
Christians to “the Holy Land” (a sentimental phrase that is not found in the
Bible) combined with a wilful ignorance of history and a fundamentalist abuse
of “biblical prophecy”. The global Church needs to listen to their voice.
Read more at
https://vinothramachandra.wordpress.com/2017/12/24/a-christmas-reflection/
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