The Second Sunday Of Advent

“Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ has come uninvited. But because he cannot be at home in it, because he is out of place in it, and yet he must be in it, his place is with those others for whom there is no room. His place is with those who do not belong, who are rejected by power because they are regarded as weak, those who are discredited, who are denied the status of persons, tortured, exterminated. With those for whom there is no room, Christ is present in this world.”
 — Thomas Merton

This is the sort of quote that usually gets hijacked by social justice types, whining that Jesus was homeless, that He was a revolutionary, that He spent all His time lolling about in whorehouses, that He never judged anyone. And the people who twist these quotes to their own purposes almost always end up marking Christ’s favorites as the skid row bums, the jailed anarchists, the self-styled victims of an oppressive patriarchal society.

No, this won’t do. What Merton wrote was true, but the outsiders, the weak, the discredited, those nonpersons who are tortured and exterminated are people who look like me. They are the descendants of those who settled and built the country that used to be America. They are the ones who have been told since birth that they are oppressors, villains, exploiters. They are not the parasitic rabble massing at the southern border. They are not the opportunistic takers who drain public resources while contributing nothing but their cultural filth and noise.

My people have no power. My people have no advantage, no privilege. My people are the only ones on earth who send out missionaries to people unlike themselves. My people are boisterous in their own groups, but silent and passive in the company of those who hate and use them. My people are passing from this earth, and it is likely God’s will that we do.

But I look at the writing of the skies, the scrawl of the seasons, and I find my hope rekindled in Advent. The waiting. The anticipation. The longing for my kinsman Redeemer who will tell the truth and set things right in the books of time and eternity.

Tonight the dark is deep and starry. My heart is dark and scarred. My doubts gather like superstitious villagers, waving torches and pitchforks and demanding that I act on their behalf. My unbelief multiplies faster than I can number its many facets. I pray more than I eat or drink; I fret more than I blink. I am preoccupied and ineffectual, bleak and finite and creaking.

But Christ is the Lord, and it has been within me to believe in Him since I was a child. Too often, I don’t trust Him or walk His path. But I do believe Him. The night I stop believing will be the night I slip down the side of that awful black slope.

I believe. Mary did speak her fiat in response to Gabriel’s announcement. Christ Jesus did enter this world in humility, and He did lie in a bed of cow-straw. He did raise His friend from the dead, and He did consort with the despised ones, the forgotten ones.

Tonight, I do not revel in nor magnify my “outsider” status like some political agitator. But I am an outsider. I am one of those Merton mentioned, those who have no room. I sit in my quiet corner of the December world and I wait. Not with much faith or faithfulness, but with hope.

I hope.

~ S.K. Orr