The birth of Jesus: How Fr. Shibu and Kairunnissa are outing the inn (in)

St. Luke 2:6-7

The birth of Jesus is important not for cakes, decorations and celebrations but to be assured that humans are created in the image of God and will therefore live life loving and helping all that God has created. This is God saying that God has created human beings to reflect God’s self on earth. The birth of Jesus is indeed a happy event because it reminds and inspires us to do good even when everyone and everything around us does not. It is not to follow the world but to follow the voice and will of God.

The birth in unusual circumstances shows that the people of God cannot be limited to buildings and walls but should extend everywhere and anywhere because that is the real birth of Christ. The interpretation of no place being there in the inn is a reflection that God lives with the most ordinary of ordinary. Most of the things we have built on earth are an aberration of God's creation. It takes us away from the real birth of Christ. The church by moving into comfortable environs to celebrate the birth of Christ suggests our moving in to comfortable inns while the baby is denied a place inside the inn! The image of God is absent in such acts of celebration of the birth of Jesus. We do not have an affluent baby Jesus because a baby cannot be affluent by herself/himself.

The church has become too affluent for Jesus but all is not lost for the church and the people of the church. One can get rid of the affluence and try and make the birth of Jesus meaningful for everyone. Fr. Shibu K.Y., a Jacobite Christian priest donated one kidney to a Muslim woman Kairunnissa yesterday. By doing that he has challenged the affluent church to shed its affluence. Many were disturbed and uncomfortable with his decision and even suggested it was wrong to give away what God has given us to live a comfortable life. The argument that we need two kidneys because that is what God has given does not go along though with the fact that God was meant to be in heaven but chooses earth, was meant to be in the inn but ended up outside it and did not have to be crucified but was anyway. God gave up so that humans and the world would have and that is the birth of Jesus.

Fr. Shibu K.Y.

Fr. Shibu and Kairunnissa are offering us the opportunity to understand the birth narrative. We have gone far away from the born Jesus. This is an opportunity to come back to the narrative of what the birth of Jesus means. It is God loving and giving us. God need not but God does because that is what God is. The love of God encompasses everything we know. Fr. Shibu by giving and Kairunnissa by suffering and now receiving show us that Christ is born in them. We are getting an invitation to pray with them during Christmas. Of course we are not used to what they have done and so their spiritual invitation will also be difficult to accept and do. Never the less they have woken us up from institutional and individual slumber and we must thank them for that. From my facebook contacts I have also learned that Prof. Sakhi John is doing the same for Shaju Paul and they are following several others who have preceded them. Such individuals are challenging the church and the people in church to live Christmas or the birth of Jesus. The liturgy of their merciful church is not known to us and we haven’t heard the songs they are using. But there is a language of love that they are using and this is something all of us can follow if we take the effort to do so.

Prof. Sakhi John

St. Luke 2: 6-7 tells us that Mary and baby Jesus do not get space in the inn (‘in’). It is also that space in the inn is mostly not available to everyone as the inn has become institutional. It represents all churches which are not welcoming and loving. But Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus do not give up. They make the ‘out’ their home and that then becomes the place which the shepherds and the elders come to and see Jesus. Fr. Shibu and Kairunnissa and Prof. Sakhi and Shaju Paul among many others have not got a place in the inn (‘in’). But they did not give up and made the ‘out’ their inn. We can now join like the shepherds and see the birth that has happened. May the star lead us and the angels rejoice.

The truth of the manger during Christmas

Jesus born in a manger can be likened to Jesus born in front of a shop front (kada thinna in Malayalam) or Jesus born on the street. This season we reconstruct the manger in our homes and churches with baby Jesus surrounded by his mother, father, the shepherds and the wise men. Our construction betrays the very concept of the manger and the manner of the birth of Jesus. In a country where the aam aadmi (common (wo)man) is more an election slogan than a sincere move, it may help to go back to why the most powerful man in the world would be born in the most common (now despicable) of circumstances.

Was Jesus an aam aadmi? Was his power reflected in his commonness with the ordinary people around him and his identification with them? Why would God choose to be attached with the ordinary rather than have a royal and luxurious birth? Jesus’ birth and life can be said to be the rise of an ordinary man from the manger to the cross. In this way he chooses his entry and exit in the comfort of what we would call ordinary and powerless.

Our faith in these times is being symbolised with the huge churches and big homes that we build rather than the truth of the manger. Our march and expansive drives to our churches is crisscrossed by the images of the homeless sleeping on the streets, covering themselves with old rags and pieces of plastic stitched together. One can’t help thinking that we are maybe congregating to the wrong places. Our association to money and luxury simply goes against our Lord on the streets. In this sense does a king need a luxurious palace? A king is rather a king by what he does and how he lives. A true king in this sense will have people congregating to where he is. We obviously want that to be in the churches we build. But this season we should meditate on whether our churches should be more broad and expansive and not just limited to the boundaries of our church walls.

Jesus as an aam aadmi remains a slogan for us as well. We preach about the poor Jesus in our rich sermons in the confines of our rich churches. This is just as the politicians talk about the aam aadmi from within the confines of their political offices and election rallies. Rahul Gandhi tried to define the aam aadmi during the Congress Party plenary session on Sunday. He said “Aam aadmi in India is that person who does not have a connection to the system. Whether he is poor or rich, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, or Christian, educated or uneducated, if he is not connected to the system, he is an aam aadmi.” He further explained citing examples of a “tribal boy in Niyamgiri who is thrown out of his land without justice, the Dalit boy in Jhansi who is forced to sit at the back of the classroom; the young professional in Bangalore who cannot get her child into a good school; the university topper in Shillong who cannot get a job because he does not know the right people.” There are problems with his definition but what he tried to say I feel is the lack of opportunity that arises because of the lack of connect with a power system within India.

Jesus as an aam aadmi lacked this political ‘connect’ with people in power and yet he manages to inspire many and continues to do so. His lack of connect with the powerful becomes his connect with the poor. This is the truth which lies hidden in the manger. This is the truth of Christmas.