24th December 2007

A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE

THE HOSPITALITY OF GOD

One of the most sad and moving expressions surrounding the birth of Jesus is to be found in these words from the Bible: “and there was no room for them in the inn.” So Mary gives birth to Jesus outside the place in which he was to be born. He is born in a manger or stall for the housing of animals.

Paradoxically, this “visitor from on high” finds no room, no hospitality, in the city which he can call his own. His birth takes place on the margins, beginning a pattern to be realized over and over in his life and ministry. The visitor from God, who could not find hospitality in his own city, will nonetheless introduce to, and institute in the world the hospitality of God. The poor, marginalized shepherds of Bethlehem were the first to experience it.

Many in the world today live in the margins. We think of the homeless, the unemployed, those approximately two million people in Kwa-Zulu Natal who live with the dreaded HIV/AIDS virus. Then there are those – including children – who carry the emotional and psychological scars of sexual abuse. And, looking beyond our borders, how can we forget the refugee camps in the Middle East where there is so little to look forward to, except the future.

I wonder what it must feel like this Christmas for the people of Kennedy Road informal settlement just outside the centre of Durban, people who live in such terrible circumstances. When I recently visited there, it was raining heavily. I can’t even begin to describe the dehumanising conditions, not to mention the unbearable stench as a result of poor and even non-existent sanitation. The list of those who live in the margins is frighteningly long and, in a well resourced country like ours, unacceptable.

To the company of the marginalized, God offers hospitality which is his very self. And he does so, not from a safe distance but by being fully with us. This is what Christmas is about: God coming to us in our every condition, taking upon himself our human nature (not our sin) and seeking to transform us and our circumstances.

However, it is not just the materially poor to whom the hospitality of God is revealed, but also to those who are “poor in spirit”, for whom “life” has been replaced by the trappings of “life style” and other distractions.

In his Christmas message, based on this Biblical text from Hebrews (11:16): God “is not ashamed to be called their God”, the Archbishop writes: “what an odd expression to say that God is not “ashamed”! It’s as though we are being assured that God, in spite of everything, doesn’t mind being seen in our company… He has heard our cries of weakness and self-doubt and unhappy longing, he has seen our wonderings and anxieties, and he is not ashamed to be alongside us in this world, walking with us in our pilgrimage. And because he is content to walk with us, we are challenged about whose company we might be ashamed to share. So easily we decide that we would be ashamed to share the company of the sinful, the doubting or the outcast. But God, it seems, is not “ashamed” to be seen with such people.

So at Christmas, the One who comes as visitor and guest, in fact becomes host and offers a hospitality in which human beings and, potentially, the entire world, can become truly human. And as we seek to receive and celebrate God’s hospitality, let us be mindful of the need to be hospitable to others, especially the stranger and the marginalized. By doing so, we are in fact extending the hospitality of God. In addition, we will be creating a more human South Africa where race, colour, gender, culture will be seen to be soul-mates and not antagonists, things that are meant to unite and not divide.

Hospitality means inviting the stranger into our private space, whether that be the space of our own home or the space of our personal awareness and concern. And when we do so, some Important transformations occur. Our private space is suddenly enlarged; no longer tight and cramped and restricted, but open and expansive and free.

May we know the hospitality of God this Christmas and throughout 2008.

Bishop Rubin Phillip

Christmas 2007