"Jesus is multiply displaced, made peripheral to the important places in the world."--Garry Wills, "What Jesus Meant," p. 3.
As recounted by Wills, His displacements include:
1)he comes from a despised city and region--Nazareth;
2)his parents are displaced by "decree of an occupying power;"
3)Joseph has no relatives left in Bethlehem with whom they can stay;
4)there is no inn--even for a woman well-advanced in pregnancy;
5)He is born in a barn and laid in a hay trough.
What an undignified entry into the world for the Creator of the universe. Wills sums it up:
"Not only is he born into an oppressed people, and forced out of his parents' city, and excluded from their common shelter--now the oppressed person, the homeless person, the excluded person must become a fugitive, driven farther away from the familiar; the comfortable, into an exile [in Egypt] that recalls the wandering of the whole Jewish People." Id. at p. 4.
What a blessing Garry Wills is to Christendom! He so aptly captures the other worldliness of Christ.
One Christmas, I was reading one of Luther's Christmas sermons to my children. Mathis, age 7 or 8, said:
"Jesus was born lowly so that all could come to Him. " That well explains Christ' entry into the world. Had he been born in a palace, He would not have been approachable by the common man. Had he been born into luxury, he would not have been approachable by the poor. Had he been born into high social class, he would not have been approachable by the social outcasts. Had he not suffered and died on the Cross, we would not understand that God is empathetic and involved in our pain and suffering.
So, praise God for His radical entry into our world and our lives.
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