Today is not the day when you elbow your way through the maddening crowds to do your last minute shopping.
Today is not the day when you gobble all the leftovers (and more) from last night’s dinner to make you sick.
Today is not the day when you fight a ferocious war of words with your all too insufferable mother-in-law.
Toady we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, our Savior (for Christians) and a savvy teacher (for the rest of people)
In an excellent article in The New York Times, Peter Wehner said: “First-century Christians for what a radical and radically inclusive figure Jesus was, and neither are today’s Christians. We want to tame and domesticate who he was, but Jesus’ life and ministry don’t really allow for it. He shattered barrier after barrier.” He put the example of the famous parable of the Samaritan woman at the well (included in the fourth chapter of the Gospel of John) Even though he surely knew that this lady had a “disreputable reputation” (being married five times and living with the fifth without the blessing of a rabbi) Jesus Christ treats her with respect and dignity, without judging her a priori. Grateful with his kind and empathic attitude, she became the first woman preacher of the nascent Christianity.
Note – This picture of Carraci’s Christ and the Samaritan Woman at the well was taken from Wikimedia Commons.
The same author said: “For Christians, the incarnation is a story of God, in the person of Jesus, participating in the human drama. And in that drama, Jesus was most drawn to the forsaken and despised, the marginalized, those who had stumbled and fallen. He was beloved by them, even as he was targeted and eventually killed by the politically and religiously powerful, who viewed Jesus as s a threat to their dominance.”
In the United States of America there was a politician who followed Jesus Christ’s teachings: Abraham Lincoln. In a 1859 speech, he said: “Nothing stamped with the Divine image and likeness was sent into this world to be trodden on, and degraded, and imbruted by its fellows.” In these times of extreme political polarization, where half the country is “red” and the other one is “blue”, we need that inclusive discourse in our civic space more than ever. We must remember that the Founding Fathers created a nation for all the American citizens, not just for half of it. To emphasize the need to include each and every one of them in the great national project, they chose to speak in Latin.
E Pluribus Unum
(Out of Many, One)
Stay distant. Stay safe. Stay beautiful.
What do you think? Please tell us.
Don’t leave me alone.
