Christmas, 2008
Letter #6 from Ethiopia
Dear Friends and Family,
We have finished our formal Amharic study, and will start our official work after the holidays. One of the striking things about the method that was used to teach us was that we weren’t allowed to speak for the first few weeks. Our job was to listen, to tune our ears, to clearly hear the sounds of this new language. Only then were we allowed to start struggling with our own sounds, to produce our own questions and answers. This strikes us as a powerful metaphor for entering a new culture: you don’t have the right to speak until you have listened well!
Ethiopia mother and child.
We explained to our friends here in Addis Ababa that we needed to write our Christmas letter to the United States well in advance, especially since Ethiopian churches don't celebrate Christmas until January 7. They laughed at how we Americans are always looking so far ahead and then they described how Ethiopians celebrate the holiday. So much of it sounded familiar! Candles at midnight church services? Of course! Special hymns? Special foods? Special time with families? It wouldn't be Christmas without them! The feasting is the same, the celebration is the same, the joy is the same.
There are some things, though, that are different. Our friends will join with neighbors and slaughter an ox instead of shopping for ham or turkey. A typical gift for a child is a new school uniform sweater or a new notebook rather than the latest toy. And in the Orthodox Church, incense, white shawls, and candles lit before icons will mark the services rather than the carols familiar to those of us in the West. These sorts of superficial differences are easy to see.
There are also deeper differences that reach beyond how we celebrate. People note with relief that Christmas falls on a Wednesday this year. This lessens the chance of confrontation with Muslims and the resulting violence, which is a danger when Christmas Eve services conflict with Friday evening’s Islamic prayers. Hotels and restaurants frequented by foreigners have initiated more stringent security procedures, and expatriates are warned not to gather in public places where we might present an inviting target for bombers. The Ethiopian government has announced that inflation this past year has been 55 percent, with the cost of food more than doubling, while the U.S. embassy reports that unseasonable late rains damaged the grain harvest this year. Severe food shortages are predicted to start as soon as March.
This sort of news is hard to hear when we want to splurge on presents and sing about “Peace on Earth,” but it’s curiously similar to the first Christmas, the one without the trappings and tinsel. Jesus was born into a time of confusion and fear. The government proclaims a new policy and the people obey, even though Mary is pregnant and has to travel to Bethlehem. There is no room in the inn, not even for a first-time mother in labor. Herod paces the floor of the palace in Jerusalem, plotting to kill any challengers to the throne. Babies are trampled in the quest for power.
But in the midst of this troubling time, there is courage. Joseph decides to neglect his society’s teachings about ritual purity. Instead, he stands by his betrothal and his unexplainable dreams. Emboldened by their own visions, the wise men directly disobey Herod’s commandment and return home by another way. Egypt somehow shelters the ragged refugees, and Nazareth provides a home for this family without honor.
Today we celebrate that courage that allowed God’s gift to be given to us, to all of us, to those of us who are scorned by our neighbors, to those of us who live in fear, to those of us who are powerless. And the gift is also given—and this is a great mystery—to those who scorn their neighbors, to those who proclaim the policies that debase others, and to those who seize power for themselves.
Christmas is not a time to celebrate our own nostalgia, to stuff ourselves while others starve, or to imagine that the stable straw was sweet and clean. Jesus was born into a world of manure. In many ways, that’s where we still are. We are still called to be courageous today, to make sure that this vulnerable hope has a chance to grow in spite of those who would ignore it or neglect it or kill it.
We picture you in your various churches, all across the country, pausing in your busy lives to commit some time to silence and wonder. Then we imagine you singing the old, old carols, more familiar than any advertizing jingles or hit songs from our youth. We think of you repeating those worn passages from Luke and Matthew, as familiar as our own life histories or favorite stories from family reunions.
But we also can’t help but look ahead. We can hardly wait to see what this new, new story will create in you! We think of each one of your faces in candlelight, each one of you illuminated like an icon where the face of God can be seen. We picture you holding to fresh dreams instead of outmoded doctrines, and standing bravely against the forces of fear and hatred and hunger. We picture you listening carefully to all the voices that need to be heard and then speaking the good news as we enter this new world together.
And we thank you for your support in our efforts to do the same.
Love and peace,
Lora and Bruce
The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer &
Study, p. 223 |
