The God who draws near

Two passages from the prison letters of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the pastor and theologian executed by the Nazis, stick with me this season:

"From the Christian point of view there is no special problem about Christmas in a prison cell. For many people in this building it will probably be a more sincere and genuine occasion than in places where nothing but the name is kept. That misery, suffering, poverty, loneliness, helplessness and guilt mean something quite different in the eyes of God from what they mean in the judgment of man, that God will approach where men turn away, that Christ was born in a stable because there was no room for him at the inn -- these are things that a prisoner can understand better than other people; for him they really are glad tidings, and that faith gives him a part in the communion of saints..."

"A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes, does various unessential things, and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent."

Bonhoeffer gives an image of Christ not only as liberator, but as fellow prisoner, as one who opens the prison door and steps inside to suffer with us. How very like God to come in weak and humble flesh, signifying not only that he would bear the suffering of the world by dwelling with man, but that he would dwell in man. How very like us to remove him from the world, through neglect or abstraction.

I read somewhere about modern-day Pilgrims who eschew Christmas celebration, because of its pagan roots, as if any celebration we might devise would be anything but tainted, as if anything touched by the grace-covered hands of those gathered in God's name could not be made holy. It's fitting that we celebrate the Advent and birth every year, if only because we once again allow the God we so often make distant to draw near again, to open once more the prison doors we hold fast with our own hands, to ransom captive Israel with himself.