A few things that belong together…
David Bentley Hart:
In Matthew’s [gospel], one’s failure to recognize the face of Christ – and therefore the face of God – in the abject and oppressed, the suffering and disenfranchised, is the revelation that one has chosen hell as one’s home.
[Rev. Munther] Isaac says the idea of a Nativity scene amidst a pile of rubble comes from the distressing images he sees every day on television of the “children in Gaza being pulled from under the rubble.”
“We’re tired of these images, and the justification of the world to these images, as if our children don’t matter, (but) we see the image of Jesus in every child,” he says.
Reflecting on the dire situation in the enclave, Isaac insists, “If Jesus was to be born today, he would be born under the rubble in Gaza, as a sign of solidarity with the children of Gaza who are dying every day.”
Isaac says with the symbolic gesture, the church wants to convey a clear message to the world that “this is what Christmas looks like in Palestine.”
Frederick Buechner:
As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me. Just as Jesus appeared at his birth as a helpless child that the world was free to care for or destroy, so now he appears in his resurrection as the pauper, the prisoner, the stranger: appears in every form of human need that the world is free to serve or to ignore.