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As a minister serving among people on the margins, I have learned to think contextually. How do the stories in Scripture connect with the lived realities of the people I am serving and with whom I am reading the Bible? How does the Gospel speak good news to my friends who are submerged in bad news?
I wrote the poem, “This Isn’t Bethlehem,” from the perspective of my friends in Winnipeg’s North End, an inner city neighbourhood where I have been living and serving for many years. As I walked with people in the community, hearing their stories, and seeing some of their realities up close, I recognized that the cheery and peaceful sentiments of Christmas must often seem worlds away from their lived experience. Sure, Christmas is a nice idea. The birth of a Saviour in the little town of Bethlehem, announced by angels sounds beautiful, but our life here and now, “this isn’t Bethlehem.”
For some, the Christmas season is a reminder of their aloneness and isolation, or the relationships in their life that aren’t working. I know parents who won’t get to be with their kids this Christmas because of conflict with their children’s other parent, because they are incarcerated, or because their kids are in foster care. At Christmastime we see people struggle more with depression, anxiety and substance abuse.
People in communities like Winnipeg’s North End experience regular reminders that they are at the mercy of others with more power: “landlords, lenders, lawyers and more.” Our Indigenous friends have often been treated as problems to be solved or recipients of charity, rather than people with gifts to be received and honoured. These experiences reinforce a sense of hopelessness and shame.
Sadly, my marginalized friends often conclude that their lives are inaccessible to the Christmas tidings, but I love to discover with them the many ways the Gospel accounts of the Incarnation describe suffering and social realities that are actually very close to their own experiences. Jesus’ people were colonized, living under the oppression of the Roman Empire. Shepherds, the divinely chosen witnesses to the Saviour’s birth, had much in common with the gang-involved youth I have visited in jail; both faced social rejection and mistrust. Jesus was born to poor, unsheltered parents. If Jesus were born today in Canada, I wonder if he would have been apprehended by Child and Family Services (CFS) due to his (un)stable living situation. Mary and Joseph would understand.
Jesus comes near.
Christmas is the celebration of the Word becoming flesh. The medium is the message(1); and God’s message in Jesus is his nearness, his identification with humanity in all our suffering and brokenness. “God [is] writing, ‘I am here. I know your tears,’ in the flesh of Jesus.” This message is good news to my lonely, poor, rejected and hurting friends in the North End.
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1. “The medium is the message” is a phrase coined by the communication theorist Marshall McLuhan.
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Andrew Reimer is a community pastor who has been living, learning and building relationships in the inner city of Winnipeg for over twenty years. He loves to walk alongside people who are on healing journeys or seeking to grow as disciples of Jesus and leading contextual Bible studies, exploring how the Good News of Jesus connects with people’s lives and community realities.
Andrew is Director of Community Discipleship with Inner City Youth Alive, whose mission is to “bring hope and a future through Christ to youth and their families in the inner city.” He enjoys books, music, being outdoors, and spending time with his wife Amie and their three daughters. He and his family are a part of Winnipeg Centre Vineyard.