Open the door, Our Saviour is waiting outside….

Open the door, Our Saviour is waiting outside….

In our Christmas nativity plays, we watch very lightly about Joseph’s request to the Inn Keeper’s to give a space to his wife and child. We have seen that inn keepers wave their hands in the meaning of NO. There may be many reasons for that. I am not taking that incident literally but that is the NO gesture continues even today even though we have multi-storeyed palaces or buildings with enough space. Today the reasons may be different.

No Space; There was no space in the inns for the Son of Man to take birth. Jesus later said, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Luke 9:58). Denial of space to God in human form was the ‘NO’ sign to the arrival of the Kingdom of God inaugurated in Jesus Christ. It happened in history and still continues in variety of forms. ‘No Space’ is not only a simple denial of space but also ‘NO’ to the CRY of a tired and helpless family.

No Space should be read today as, No to your cry, no to your problems, no to your struggles, pains, hunger, rights, dignity of your body and mind, nakedness (I don’t care…) This alienating world says, “you are other to me and you are an outsider and you don’t have enough qualification to get in to my spaces”…..NO GESTURE continues. However, we allowed the corporates and capitalists of this world to occupy our spaces (spaces at home, language, decisions, mind, and imaginations) instead of the people who desperately need a space.  “For if a person with gold rings and in the fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, ‘Have a seat there, please’, while the one who is poor you say, ‘stand there’, or, sit at my feet’..”(James 2: 3). We need people to sit at our feet or to stand beside us but we don’t allow them to sit with us (a Superior –inferior relationship). Even God-given spaces are colonised by a few. We are talking about the corporates and their existence but we are silent to the people who are waiting outside for a space in the political, religious, social, economic spheres of lives.

Jesus – An Outsider to the Powers of this World: Our Saviour was an outsider in his birth time, in his earthly life and it is a reality even today. He walked through the outskirts and lived and did his ministry in the outside gates of the city and he killed as an outsider. Many times, people who occupied the spaces thrown stones at him and pushed him outside the mainstream. Jesus said, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you, desolate.”(Matt 23: 37, 38).

We may talk about Jesus, we may sing the songs of Jesus, we may worship in his name, we may do miracles in his name, but it is high time to make sure whether Jesus is an insider or an outsider in all realms of our lives. Jesus said, “ On that day many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name? Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers” (Matt 7: 22, 23).

Powers of the world denied space to Jesus and hence Saviour born at the outside, he was pushed out. Christmas reveals the truth that, Christ was not born inside the realms of powers of this world but outside their realms and thereby the Kingdom of God is at the outside the gates of the Powers of this world. 
An old hermit was once invited to visit the court of the most powerful king of the day.
“I envy a holy man, who is content with so little,” commented the sovereign.
“I envy Your Majesty, who is content with less than I.
“I have the music of the celestial spheres,
“I have the rivers and mountains of the whole wide world,
“I have the moon and the sun, because I have God in my soul.
“Your Majesty, however, has only this kingdom.”