December, 2005

Meeting Jesus in the Manger

Rose Wu

Today God's household of life is threatened in various ways.

On this year's International Children's Day—Nov. 21—our government as well as the community of Hong Kong were disturbed by the research findings of the Society for Community Organisation (SOCO) that found that more than 1,800 children under 15 have to work after school collecting cardboard and helping their parents collect garbage. Although Hong Kong has one of the world's highest gross domestic products (GDP), more than 350,000 children under 15 live in poverty with their families earning less than half the median income.

Based on SOCO's survey in the district of Sham Shui Po, the organisation estimated that one in every 154 children living in poverty had to work. On average, they work 6.7 hours a week. Some children though work as many as 23.5 hours a week but earn just a few dollars a month. The youngest worker in the survey was a 4-year-old girl from a single parent family. She has helped her mother collect goods for recycling since she was 2 years old.

According to Sze Lai-shan, a SOCO community organiser, these children have to earn money to pay for stationery, reference books and school activities because their families cannot afford the extra costs. Some children also have to make money to subsidise their family's income.

Yan Yan, a girl of 9, told the media that her mother has lymphatic cancer and has to stay at home all day or sometimes is admitted to the hospital. Since her father died last year, her family has to depend on Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA); and because they do not have enough to pay for extra school expenses, she and her brother collect cardboard to help their mother. However, every time when she collects cardboard she worries about bumping into her friends from school because she is afraid they will look down on her if they know her family is poor.

One can understand Yan Yan's worry because society is driven by a strong belief in self-reliance and resilience in Hong Kong, an ideology which favours those who are rich and competitive in the market. If a person is poor, according to this set of beliefs, it is because of their laziness or inadequacy to improve their capabilities.

Based on the experience of the community during the past three decades, we realise that economic growth does not help the poor in societies like Hong Kong where the distribution of wealth is highly unequal. As Hong Kong faces a widening disparity between its rich and poor, the poor struggle each day to survive, including their children. More and more people and their children are simply being left out and left behind.

The reality of the poor in Hong Kong and across the world today poses a great challenge to our understanding of the vocation of the Christian Church.

During this season of Advent, we must remember that Jesus, the Son of God, was born in a manger—a poor and outcast child. Mary, the mother of Jesus, travelled with Joseph from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea. There was no place for them in the inn. They experienced rejection by the mainstream society. They had to choose a very poor place for the birth of Jesus, the Son of God, who underwent the trials and hardships that many poor children in the slums of modern cities and rural villages have to suffer every day.

Mary may have been poor, but she was not hopeless. In her prayer, the Magnificat, she announces the promises of God to her people and proclaims a total reversal of values and structures in which the proud-hearted are scattered in favour of the poor and lowly people, a political revolution in which political power passes from the mighty to the powerless and oppressed and an economic revolution through which the hungry and starving are filled with good things and those who are rich are sent away empty. For many women and people of the Third World, the Magnificat offers spiritual support for today's struggles of the poor and marginalised for freedom and justice. (Luke 1:46–55)

Consistent with all that Jesus said and did, the human being who has no place to lay his head is the same "king" who owns nothing and must borrow, not a horse, but a donkey, to enter Jerusalem. (Matt. 21:5; John 12:15) According to the fourth Gospel, Jesus washes the disciples' feet, a duty considered so degrading that a master could not order a Jewish slave to perform it.

Although the image of Jesus as the Son of God identifies with the poor and oppressed, it is not the final reality of God's salvation. The Gospel of Jesus advocates economic equality and justice because the economy of God is an economy of life that promotes sharing, mutual solidarity, the dignity of everyone and love and care for the integrity of Creation.

John the Baptist urged the people of his time: "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none, and whoever has food must do likewise." (Luke 3:11) To those who wish to follow him, Jesus counsels them to sell everything and warns the rich that their access to heaven is more difficult than a camel passing through the eye of a needle. Those who are locked in the prison of greed and neglect the poor are presented with the prospect of their own death and divine judgment. (Luke 12:13–21; 16:19–31) To the religious people of his time, who claimed to be "holy" and yet continued to live in idolatry, Jesus challenged them by announcing, "You cannot serve both God and money." (Matt. 6:24, Luke 16:13)

Christianity defends the equal dignity of all human beings because Jesus promises life in all its fullness. What has the overwhelming poverty of our world to do with the Christian Church today? Can the Church stand in solidarity with the poor and challenge the mainstream economic structure which denies life and glorifies only the rich? Does the Church dare to leave our comfortable and secure inn and meet the Son of God in a manger who is humble and poor but full of mercy and love? I believe none of us in this world, not least we Christians, can have fullness of life until everyone has the basic needs of life.