By Gary Gunderson

Religion can be the way we tell ourselves apart, who to not trust, sometimes even who to fear. It is a stiletto in the hands of those who wish division, who feed on fear. The very same faith can also—in the hands of mature and skilled leaders—can also be the way we tell we are one, all children of one Creator who seems to like the crazy variations on the one common human theme.

Part of the FaithHealth Division, Dr. Jim Cochrane leads our work on the Leading Causes of Life while living with his wife in the tiny village of Göttelfingen in Germany’s Black Forest. His wife, Renate, is its last pastor in an almost unbroken string of 450 years. All the hopes of all the years across all the miles can be seen in our tiniest most remote towns in Germany or Western North Carolina.

Jim describes it:

From the East, not that far from Bethlehem, from Aleppo, Homs, Damascus and Kurdistan, 24 Syrians have arrived in what was until recently, a no longer functioning guest house. Millions on the move, but that means that here, since yesterday, 12 parents, 12 children (two born on the run, a month old, twins) arrived. On Christmas Eve Pastor Renate has spent hours with them helping with the practicalities of hospitality.

Now some of the younger folks have come to the church to find a Wifi connection. None of them can speak either English, German or French, only Arabic, though two “children” in the early twenties have a tiny smattering of English.  But connection is life, so incredibly important.

They are clearly middle-class families or artisanal, and one can only feel deep sympathy for what they have lost and what they have had to leave behind. But there is room in the inn… and new stoves, fridges, beds, bedclothes, baby stuff, and more that has been supplied by the state or provided by local people.

They are still, cut-off, in almost every sense. Yet not entirely alone. They find some coherence, in part thanks to local Germans who really are going astonishingly out of their way in a manner that warms me and I can only admire. How it develops over time we shall see, when these folks clearly are deeply traumatized if remarkably dignified, given that this is far from what they would choose.

In this little German town

Christmas came with a clue as profound as any shepherd’s cry. The Syrians’ arrival coincided with the traditional evening service led by Renate that was not only her last before retirement, but the close of a continuous 450-year period during which Göttelfingen has had its own pastor in residence. The massive cultural movements of millions of people reflect global forces almost beyond imagination. The culture is like the culture is melting as surely as the Greenland ice. The glacier met the sea on Christmas Eve in this little German town.

It was the classical service, with children doing the nativity play up front, a Christmas tree (pagan or not) on the side. The service was about to start, the church was full … and all of a sudden, having been invited by Renate, the Syrians arrived. All of them. Women and children included, and not separated. All Muslim, of course.

It was unthinkable to turn them away. But how to fit them in?  So cushions were fetched and all the children in the church asked to sit up front on them to make space for the Syrian families. Right up front, before the Christmas tree. The guests were deeply dignified, thoroughly absorbed by the nativity play and the singing, though of course they could not understand a word. They were humans with not only Spirit, but cell phones. During the benediction, because some of them had forgotten to shut cell phones to silent, lo and behold (appropriate words), their phones began simultaneously to play the Imam’s call to worship. Embarrassed, they quickly switched them off.

But what a symbolic moment and what a symbolic presence. Göttelfingen will never be the same, never. Their last Christmas service with their own pastor shared with a group of Muslim families. Not just Christmas – but the future has arrived. It is the best moment of my year, not even a question.

Jesus would have loved it. The fact that so many people are using his name to magnify difference instead of commonality is another signal of the advanced melt of the culture that has lost His way. And why his Way remains so promising and generative. The future isn’t done, yet.

A call to prayer in the midst of the benediction makes no sense, but all the sense the world so deeply needs. We are one, with capacities that make it possible for us to find our way out of the gross violations of war and the gross violations of the physical limits of the planet. We must find a way into a place where none of us have ever been, unlike the past and probably unlike our imaginations, too.

The city called “salem”

Far from the Syrian front, Winston-Salem is also welcoming dozens, then hundreds of the same people. While many look away, we do not, for we are a city of refugees and we remember. Our FaithHealth Division at the hospital called Baptist provides 50,000 hours of individual counseling every year to those in times of crisis and pain. Next month a few hundred of those hours will be in Arabic helping unspeakably traumatized men, women and children find a thread of hope toward a new life. We pray that the city the Moravians called “salem” when they needed refuge in the bitter winter may earn the name “salaam” in Arabic as a new generation finds the peace that God intends for all.

This move toward the Other doesn’t cost us our life, it is how we find our life and always have. Christmas is only two weeks ago, but always hard to remember, much less believe. Look to those left behind, excluded, ignored and despised. The face you see is the very face of God trying to make eye contact. Hark! Listen to the good news.

Photos: Black Forest. Candles from Creative Commons: Paolostefano1412, Anton-commonswiki.