How do we celebrate Christ’s birth this year? We find Christ in the rubble of Gaza and Ukraine, the moral rubble in our country, the broken and vulnerable rubble in our own lives. This is the only way I know how to make Christmas real this year and not leave the suffering world out of it.

As Dave Denny writes in his powerful Christmas meditation for these times, Christmas celebrates God’s solidarity with the oppressed through a child born under the rule of an empire’s ruthless puppet. Jesus was born in a food trough (“manger” is a prettified word), bringing good news to the poor, and grew up to give himself as bread to feed the hungry, whether starved for food or justice or both.

I love how Dave expresses his Christmas madness and joy this year: “The little child born in a food trough and quickly crushed by an empire is more alive and closer than ever, minute by minute rankling the mighty, threatening us and our shabby heartless empires with joyous, delicious liberation.”