The Wrong Side of Bethlehem

By Carl Mazza

Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.
- 1 Timothy 6:17-19

In America today, children are born homeless. It's nothing they've done, or haven't done - they are homeless because their parents are. They join in the misfortune of their family.

So it was with Jesus, born in an emergency shelter, the child of a family desperately seeking refuge. Yet he was different, in that the circumstances of his birth were also the lesson of his mission: he came into the world on purpose to share in the deepest misfortunes of humanity.

Churches who open the doors of their halls and sanctuaries to persons in similar circumstances follow in that most ancient tradition of their faith: to share the sorrow of the community they seek to redeem. This is not social work or philanthropy, far from it. Rather, it is the heart and soul of who we are, the call of our spiritual life.

The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre foreshadowed the postmodern age when he declared the simplicity of being in the phrase, "You are what you do." It is surely a paraphrase of Jesus' words, "By your fruits, you shall be known."

One of our recent families at Meeting Ground was a mother with three girls, the oldest of whom was thirteen. Shortly after they arrived, I passed the teenager on the way to the dining hall and we stopped to talk. When I asked if she was okay with everything in her new surroundings, she unexpectedly became very still, suddenly quiet, and looked at me very directly. "I miss my friends," she replied, "I'd like to see them again, but at least I'm not living in the woods." For an instant, I was taken aback as what she said slowly sank in.

In my mind I connected her moving statement to something a homeless World War II veteran once said to me. We were working in the garden together, digging in the dirt and pulling weeds on an overcast spring day, when I casually asked him why, at his age, he was having so much difficulty getting his life together. He stopped working and looked at me in the same way as the young girl: "You don't understand," he said, "what happens to you sometimes never leaves you - you never get over it." "It never leaves you," he repeated, "it never leaves you."

There are many variations to the common wisdom, "don't judge another person's life until you've been forced to live it." It's a good saying because we know that our station and success in life is due to a myriad of factors beyond our control. For many, the circumstances of birth and upbringing are hard -- perhaps to distracted or uncaring parents, in a place of despair and base poverty, with sparse opportunity, a deprived education, and little hope.
The sign of our challenge as persons of faith is the one who was born on the wrong side of Bethlehem, the seamy side of a world in which there was no room.

His eyes opened on a society that was sorely in need of redemption, and he set to work to bring a new community into being. He was lavish in his generosity because he knew he had been loved generously.

He asks of us the same mind and work.