“I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David! And you will recognize him by this sign: You will find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth, lying in a manger.” Luke 2:10-12
It’s that time of year: shopping, lights, indoor pine trees, and where I live, cold short days. In the Northeast we get to bundle up, walk just a little quicker, and pray that damn groundhog gets his vision checked and his prescription renewed before looking for his shadow. We are all running from point A to point B with purpose and intention. Well, not all of us. There’s another group of people who seem to be staying right where they are.
I walked off my train in New York Penn Station this morning and found the nearest staircase up to the main floors. At the top of the platform, on the lower level, I rushed into the station and looked around. There were bodies sprawled out on the tile floors in every direction. All of them were bundled in jackets that were either too big or too small, many of them ripped and stained with dirt. All of them looked uncomfortable and while there were at least five of them within twenty feet of each other, each was in his or her own world, completely isolated from the throngs of people who walked past and around them without any indication that they noticed the human being sleeping at their feet.
I tried to imagine what it would be like to curl up on a dirty tile floor to catch some shuteye while thousands of commuters walked around me every time a train arrives or departs. I tried to imagine how I would manage to completely surrender the shame of sleeping in public or the fear of being robbed. I tried to imagine what it would take to bring me to the point of saying, “Screw it, I’ll just sleep right here.”
How many times did that man have to try sleeping on the floor before realizing that he could? How many times did that woman reach out to every available option she could think of before she concluded there were no options left? How many times did that guy rationalize sleeping on the floor by telling himself that surely this time would be the “last time?”
The truth is that no one just spontaneously winds up sleeping on the floor of Penn Station for no apparent reason. Nobody wakes up one day in a warm bed with blankets and pillows and decides, “I think I’m done with this whole stability thing.” There are so many circumstances that have to go horribly wrong, so many traumatic experiences, so many bad relationships, so much abuse, so much pain, so much illness, so much disability.
The reality is that each individual sprawled out on the cold hard floor underneath Madison Square Garden is not just a victim of bad judgment, bad parenting, bad genetics, bad finances, or bad luck; my experience tells me that it is almost always a series of unfortunate, and often uncontrollable events over a long period of time.
The Bible tells us that each person sleeping on that floor is “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14). That each person reflects the image of a holy God who intentionally crafted them, body, mind, and soul. See, I believe that when God looks at those men and women sleeping on the floor of Penn Station he sees both the beauty of their existence and the burden of their experience.
Contrary to popular opinion, I also believe the Christmas story is reflected more accurately in the men and women sleeping on the floor of Penn Station than it is in the Hallmark card with the roaring fire and presents under the tree.
“You will find him wrapped snugly in strips of cloth, lying in a manger.”
The angels who made this announcement were not pointing the shepherds who were “guarding their flocks of sheep” to a hotel lobby or a rented house. They directed the shepherds to a barn where horses, camels, and donkeys rest in between long days of work. The baby in question was lying in a feeding trough, the last place one would expect to find a newborn. He was in “strips of cloth.” Or in other words, ripped fabric that was probably not made with this particular function in mind.
This baby was born into a traumatic and painful world. His mom got pregnant before she got married. His “dad” wasn’t his biological father, and he was born while his family was far from the familiar. Soon after his birth everything went from bad to worse when the local governor decided to kill all the babies born in his general area and with his basic description. So his family fled. They were refugees in Egypt. They probably didn’t speak the right language. Or if they did, it was at least with a thick accent. They were outsiders. They were strangers. They were different. They certainly didn’t belong.
I wonder if we could take a minute to reframe the story of Christmas this year. I wonder if instead of imagining the myth of a serene tearless baby, complete with parental role models, stability, and a college savings account, what if we pictured one of those grown men sleeping on the floor of a train station in NYC, wrapped snugly in strips of cloth with a stained and tattered coat. He is snoring. He is undocumented. He’s a stranger. He speaks English but with a thick accent. He’s all alone. He’s different. He doesn’t belong.
This is the story of Christmas that I know: God, the Creator of all life, matter, and energy, entered into our humanity but instead of entering with political power and financial opulence, came as a rejected and dejected homeless kid. Years after his death and resurrection, one of his friends wrote, “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.”
How do we celebrate the birth of our Savior in a way that honors his sacrifice, or at least reflects his priorities? I think we start by doing what his own didn’t do: we “receive him.”
We can do that by being open to a conversation with someone who is different, foreign, and alone. We can welcome refugees into our homes for a meal and fellowship. We can engage the man who is asking for some change in conversation or by offering to share a meal with him at the restaurant across the street. We can give gifts this year that honor the dignity of the human beings who made them by researching the labor conditions in which they work. We can give generously to organizations that serve and love our homeless neighbors well. We can try to forgive the family member who hurt us but who never did adequately apologize.
This year, we can celebrate the authentic Christmas story by looking for Jesus where he already is. And if you’re wondering where to start, may I suggest the lower level of Penn Station. I saw him there just a few hours ago.
