If you have heard or felt you are “too much”, “not enough,” or “not quite fitting in… you have made yourself smaller, quietened your laugh, fixed your walk, not spoken when you should, or skipped the morning tea because it was easier, Christmas is for you!
Beloved ones, Christmas is God’s great “YES” to you!
When God chose to enter the world, God didn’t come through a perfect family, through tidy categories, or safe social norms. There was scandal, courage, chosen family, fear, and it all happened on the margins!
As I look through queer and affirming websites, services offered for queer people throughout Christmas. There is advice given to find chosen family, where you might be treasured, valued and gathered in, creating boundaries to leave unsafe spaces, and reaching out if you need company. Being queer (different, LGBTIQ+, unwell or otherwise) at Christmas can be deeply isolating, and even though Mariah Carey has defrosted for the year, you might be wondering when that joy might warm you up a bit as well.
I am reminded when I read the nativity, that God does not enter the world through normal, idealised domesticity. God widened the frame, and came humbly at the edge and margin, through the human Mary, the compassionate Joseph and the waiting shepherds and wise people. God crossed the boundary of divine to human, resting his head on Mary’s chest. This is good news for everybody… all bodies! This marginalised birth story, happens when a fearful girl says yes.
Let me say that again, God entrusts his own body into the arms of humanity. And He is welcomed in. It is our task (the church), to hold tender those bodies which are entrusted in our care. I am sorry that for some of us that has not happened, we have not welcomed the stranger, we have created margins where some are in and some are out, asked people to change to fit in, and some families have quite literally kicked out their children for being different. Having experienced a bit of this myself, it does feel like saying no, there is no space at the inn.
It has taken me a long time to embrace the queerness of Christmas, sometimes I have drowned out the internal voices of being without family by being busy with work, or Christmas services or serving as a volunteer until the late hours of the day returning to my bed alone and wondering where God might be in the mix of it all.
There is so much I want to tell you about my incredible husband, about friends who have become family, about the joy of being myself fully, and about the God who attends and celebrates it all with me. But what I want, what I mean to say is that Christmas is the thrill of hope that says; it gets better. We might spend a few years knocking on metaphorical inns where there is no room, but at some point, we find our people, our family, our place.
And so in your wandering this Christmas; Hear these deep truths, revealed through the narrative of the nativity;
Beloved ones;
God delights in our bodies, and our becoming.
God celebrates the ways we love, resist and create beauty.
God is found not in the expectations of others, but in the truth and tenderness you carry inside.
The holy family is bigger, queerer, and more expansive than we often imagine, and there is room for you in it.
Might you find rest where you have been exhausted,
Courage where you have been dismissed,
Companions where you’ve felt alone,
And hope that rises quietly but stubbornly in you…
Beloved ones, Christmas is God’s way of showing us; you are holy.
Your presence is a blessing, and you … just as you are … are enough.
James Baker, Young Adult Ministry Facilitator, Youth, Young Adults and Families, Uniting Church Synod of NSW and ACT
