By Tommy Airey, re-posted from his weekly newsletter (12.22.2004)

On the first Christmas day, right after Mary the unwed pregnant teen gave birth to her first child, the Gospel of Luke says that she wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger.

Because there was no room in the inn.

On Good Friday, much later in Luke’s story, a rich man named Joseph took down the body of Jesus from the cross, wrapped him in a linen cloth and laid him in a tomb.

In the beginning of the story, Jesus is born and wrapped up and laid in a manger. The feeding trough is dirty and dehumanizing. It is made for animals, and colonized people, like Jesus, who empire deemed less-than-human.

At the end of the story, Jesus is crucified and wrapped up and laid in a tomb. The cross is an instrument of torture and death. It is made for those empire calls criminals, traitors, terrorist-sympathizers, insurgents and subversives.

The life of Jesus the dark-skinned Palestinian Jew is bookended by imperial wrapping paper.

Jesus was born in a smelly Bethlehem stable because Caesar ordered all residents of its colonies to return to their ancestral hometowns and be counted in a census.

Jesus was executed on a cross just outside of Jerusalem because he refused to comply with Caesar’s supremacy stories.

Jesus broke rank with the dehumanizing norms, expectations and conventional wisdom of empire.

Luke’s linen cloth shows up at the start and finish of the story, inviting us to take inventory of what we are wrapping Jesus up in.

Are we wrapping Jesus up in something to keep us warm and cozy?

Are we wrapping Jesus up in something to protect and preserve our social respectability and financial security?

Are we wrapping Jesus up in something to distract us from dealing with our grief and healing our trauma?

Wealthy elites have been wrapping Jesus up in propaganda for one hundred generations. They’ve attempted to turn the imperial resister into “the reason for the season” who avoids politics at all costs.

On Christmas, we must unwrap Jesus. He is not a meek and mild mascot of consumerism. He is not a white flag-waving patriot. He is not a nice, politically neutral diplomat.

Jesus is Something Else.

He is a Love supreme dreamer who breaks through boundaries of convention.

He is a gender-bending servant-leader who weeps in public for those suffering and oppressed.

He is a consciousness-raising revolutionary who comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable.

In the last chapter of Luke’s Gospel, three days after the cross, one of the disciples of Jesus runs to the tomb. The stone is rolled away. He stoops down and sees the linen cloths laying by themselves.

Jesus is unwrapped.
Jesus is risen.
Jesus is rising up.

Luke’s sequel – the Acts of the Apostles – says that the first Christians turned the world upside down, acting contrary to the decrees of Caesar. They believed that Jesus was born in them and that they were crucified with him and that they were buried with him and that they were raised up with him in a Power greater than empire.

This Christmas, we must refuse to allow the Christian nationalists and cold-hearted capitalists to determine who Jesus was and is in this world. We must dig in and do the dirty work of unwrapping the layers of neoliberalism, racism, Zionism, imperialism and hetero-patriarchy so we can reclaim this little one born to incarnate everything that is true, good, deep, beautiful, real and eternal – and to give his life to make Love supreme.