wfn.org | Raiser Issues WCC's 1996 Christmas Message

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20-December-1996 
 
 
96501       Raiser Issues WCC's 1996 Christmas Message 
 
                         by Konrad Raiser 
        General Secretary of the World Council of Churches 
 
Editor's note: Following is the text of the annual Christmas message from 
Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the World Council of Churches. -- Jerry 
L. Van Marter 
 
     "Jesus was born away from home while his parents were on the move 
against their will, forced to go to Bethlehem for a census. The gospel of 
Matthew tells us that soon after his birth the family had to flee to Egypt 
to escape persecution. 
 
     "Today, to remember and celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ is to do 
so in a world where millions of people are also compelled to be on the 
move: refugees driven from their towns and villages by war, children on the 
road without a home, asylum seekers rejected and deported from a country of 
refuge, migrants separated from their families. They all knock at our door. 
Will we open it for them?  
 
     "In Jesus Christ, God came into our human world. But God came as a 
stranger, unacknowledged.  There was no place for the one sent by God and 
finally he was pushed out of the world and on to a cross as a criminal. 
This Christmas God is still on the move with the millions of uprooted 
people who look for a safe place to be received. 
 
     "The World Council of Churches has declared 1997 the Ecumenical Year 
for Churches in Solidarity with the Uprooted. When the WCC decided to call 
for this special year it said: "We challenge the churches worldwide to 
rediscover their identity, their integrity and their vocation as the church 
of the stranger. Service to uprooted people has always been recognized as 
diaconia - although it has been peripheral to the life of many churches. 
But we affirm that it is also an ecclesial matter. We are a church of the 
Stranger -- the Church of Jesus Christ the Stranger (Matt. 25:31-46)."  
 
     "In the encounter with the stranger we encounter God. In Jesus Christ, 
God has come into our midst. But God remains an unwanted alien. God shares 
the lot of those who do not fit our acceptable categories. To this day, 
people try to prove that Jesus' claim to have been sent by God was 
illegitimate, just as many Western governments seek to prove refugees and 
asylum seekers are bogus.  
 
     "For those who do receive God in Christ, the world changes. To 
encounter God is to encounter truth and to discover that we are children of 
God.  
 
     "God is still on the move to us. We can close the door to God. We do 
so every time we deny an uprooted person safety and sanctuary.  We can also 
open the door. In the refugee, the migrant, the internally displaced, Jesus 
comes to us again this Christmas. To allow him entry is to receive God -- 
the stranger who wants to share our lives!" 

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