Common Dreams
The story goes that when the nonviolent Jesus was born into abject poverty to homeless refugees on the outskirts of a brutal empire, angels appeared in the sky to impoverished shepherds singing, “Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth!” That child grew up to become, in Gandhi’s words, “the greatest nonviolent resister in the history of the world,” and was subsequently executed by the empire for his insistence on justice.
This weekend, as tens of millions of Christians across the country celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace, the U.S. wages war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia and elsewhere; crushes the hungry, homeless, elderly, imprisoned and refugee; and maintains the world’s ultimate terrorist threat—its nuclear arsenal. Like Herod, Pilate and their soldiers, we have rejected the angels’ call for “peace on earth.”
When Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their warmaking supporters celebrate Christmas, they mock Christ and his steadfast nonviolence, and carry on the massacre of the innocents. If the angels are correct, then Christmas requires us to welcome God’s gift of peace on earth. In such a time, that means we have to work for an end to war.
Christmas calls us to become like Christ—people of active, creative, steadfast nonviolence who give our lives in resistance to empire and war. … When Gandhi was asked one Christmas day for his thoughts about Christmas, he spoke about the connection between the wood of the crib—Christ’s poverty—and the wood of the cross—Christ’s nonviolent resistance to evil. He said Christmas summons us to the same lifelong nonviolence.