Believing in impossible change: KAIROS Christmas video message for sharing
Dear Friends,
May we be ready this Christmas to really welcome the Holy One, the radical love and justice that changes everything. Let’s believe in impossible change and join our hands and hearts to the movements around the world that help make it so.
I would like to share with you a short video message (below) and invite you to take a moment to watch it and share it with your family, friends and community. You are welcome to post it on Facebook and Twitter, show it in church and/or share it through your e-lists.
From all of us here at KAIROS, Blessed Christmas to you and yours.
Jennifer Henry, Executive Director
Video transcript
“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence” (Isaiah 64: 1)
In churches this Advent, the apocalyptic readings are jarring. A huge juxtaposition from shortbread and sleigh bells and “deck the halls.” Hard, sharp edges in stark contrast to the soft, dreamy Christmas scenes of card and carol. Its tough stuff: “stars falling from heaven”, “powers being shaken” (Mark 13:25).
Apocalypse means “unveiling”. Stripping away denial so we can see injustice in the present, bringing bold imagination of world transformed in equity. It’s a wake-up call, a vision for the kind of shake up that will bring about a truly just future. Disruptive and unsettling, yes, but only if the status quo is working for you. And we know that the imperial world of Jesus’ time, the oppressive present of our time, and even the “normal” we are nostalgic for in this pandemic is not working, is not life giving, for so many peoples and our earth.
Because it is bold transformation apocalyptic is precisely the right pair of glasses through which to see Christmas. The best channel on which to hear Mary’s Magnificat. The right movement for the Jesus event.
The good news of Christmas is “turn-the-world-upside-down” news. Freedom for the captives. Liberation for the oppressed. Hope for the desolate.
Reparations for enslaved people. Resurgence for colonized peoples. Radical equality for women and gender and sexually diverse persons.
Release from occupation. Redistribution of wealth. Recovery of the Earth.
My friends, this year when you gaze upon a nativity scene—a creche with that infant saviour–I pray you feel the earth shaking. Shaking against injustice. Shaking in powerful hope, towards unfathomable transformation. Feel that Christ Child rock the cradle that is this aching earth.
May we be ready this Christmas to really welcome the Holy One, the radical love and justice that changes everything. Let’s believe in impossible change and join our hands and hearts to the movements around the world that help make it so.
From all of us here at KAIROS, Blessed Christmas to you and yours.
