FOR SOME OF US, the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays may be the only time all year that we see some of our relatives. Some probably harbor anxiety or even dread at the difficult conversations on politics and faith that surface during meals with family members who see the world very differently than you do.
In Advent, our thoughts turn to the meaning of Christ’s coming and the deep significance of the season for followers of Jesus—“waiting” for him to come, which has special and poignant meaning for us in the deep political and moral crisis in which we find ourselves. In many ways Advent is my favorite liturgical season, because it demands of Christians that we do the work of preparing our hearts for what it means that God came and lived as one of us in a world that needed (and needs) to be changed.
It’s deeply important that we understand the radical meaning of Jesus’ birth as an event destined not just to culminate in a sacrifice for personal atonement and reconciliation, but also to radically transform the earth with the kingdom of God. From the beginning, the promise of good news for the poor and liberation for the oppressed defined the Incarnation. “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:52-53), said Mary, the mother of Jesus, who seemed to best understand the meaning of his coming. This is the Jesus who began his public ministry by quoting the prophet Isaiah, saying “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18-19). This is nothing less than a manifesto for turning society and the world upside down.
That is a hard word for comfortable Christians, and many have literally never heard it in their churches. But bringing our conversations back to that gospel, in keeping with the season, is better than starting with our political divisions. This Jesus is very different from the one who’s been appropriated and held captive by political actors masquerading as religious figures, at no time more so than since the election of Donald Trump.
This Advent, we need to prepare for the Jesus who taught us to love our neighbor as we love ourselves—and remember that our neighbor is the one who is different from us. We need to prepare for the Jesus who teaches that the “least of these” are the most important, even as they are treated as the least important by many politicians.
For some of us, this may be the last time we’ll speak to that relative whose politics are very different from ours before what could be the most important election in our lifetime. So, as we prepare for this holiday season, let’s remember the original meaning of the incarnation of this radical Jesus and prayerfully search for what that means today.
Jim Wallis is the founder and former president of Sojourners. He is the inaugural holder of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Chair in Faith and Justice at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy and director of its new Center on Faith and Justice. His latest book is The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy.
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