Jitterbugging for Jesus

(This is the first of regular blog posts I’ll be publishing the rest of the holiday season focusing on the poor and how we respond to them.)

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin? — Isaiah 58:6-7

In early Christianity, Christians were all about radical hospitality. Every Christian house maintained a spare room — called “the strangers’ room” — for anyone in need of shelter.

I agree with Pope Francis who said this during a visit with the homeless at St Patrick’s Parish in Washington, D.C.:

I want to be very clear. There is no social or moral justification, no justification whatsoever, for lack of housing.*

In super-wealthy San Francisco — home of so many famous liberal politicians being shuffled around in limos when they’re home from D.C., by they way — the homeless sleep outside the offices of Uber, Microsoft and Twitter day and night.

Almost half of the 7,500 homeless people in San Francisco live near those wealthy enclaves.

In a United States that increasingly claims to be “a Christian nation,” what possible justification can there be for the millions upon millions of Americans who have no shelter?

And by the way: what justification can there be for an American Christian bashing and scapegoating the homeless when hurricanes, floods and wildfires — along with the huge problems of income inequality and veterans coping with PTSD from stupid, endless wars — keep the homeless numbers spiraling?

Being a warrior to keep the ultimately meaningless “Merry Christmas” greeting alive is a convenient way for a Christian to avoid the true meaning of Christmas. Yet it happens every December, this outrage over “The War on Christmas.”

(See an old George Carlin video below for why there has never been a “War on Homelessness.” Hint: There’s no money to be made in it!)

The true meaning of Christmas is to see the face of Christ in the poor stranger and welcome him or her into your heart — if not a “strangers’ room” in your own home.

The true meaning of Christmas stems from the story of a homeless child born in the muck and mire of a stable, to homeless refugees.

Happy holidays.
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*See more about the Pope’s talk here.