Merry Christmas

The Christmas story is not a sweet, sanitized story about a baby with familiar songs and images that fit neatly into our calendar. Instead, it’s compelling, counter-cultural, and disruptive! The Christmas story is far messier and uncomfortable — yet perhaps ultimately more hopeful — than we realize. The infinite God arrives as an infant, stepping into the chaos of the world at the worst possible time for the most unlikely people. “The transcendent becomes imminent. The unreachable steps directly into human life, not from a distance but from inside it. Not as a concept but as a presence. The incarnation of Jesus interrupts assumptions, disrupts the rhythms, reintroduces surprises, refuses to stay tidy, insists that something impossible happened, and doesn’t rush to make it comfortable.”

Jesus entered a reality much like that of the millions in the Middle East today, particularly in places like Palestine and Israel — a world of political unrest, economic hardship, and social injustice. He became a refugee and homeless, and hung out with the outcasts, sinners, and the marginalized. He disrupted dominant cultural norms, challenged the status quo, and resisted evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever form they presented themselves. Jesus turned the entire system upside-down through His life, death, and resurrection.

This Christmas, don’t settle for a sweet, sanitized version of the Christmas story. Instead, let us reclaim an authentic, disruptive Christmas story that offers the message of God’s love, radical transformation, and enduring hope. And may the power of the Holy Spirit disrupt us so that we can actively engage in the world with a commitment to participate in God’s ongoing work of redemption and reconciliation. Merry Christmas!

Rev. Edgar De Jesus

World President