While many people in December rush straight on through to Christmas, at least a few Presbyterian churches are slowing it down: taking time during this Advent season for Las Posadas, meaning “the shelter,” the Latino tradition of re-enacting in the days before Christmas the journey of Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary, seeking a place to rest.
In the name of heaven, I ask you for lodging because to keep on going, my beloved wife is unable, the people sing in Spanish, rapping on the door of First church, Santa Fe.
The answer from inside: This is not an inn. Continue on your way. I cannot open the door, you may be some rogue.
In downtown Santa Fe, First church will celebrate Las Posadas on the Sunday before Christmas, along with the congregations of the Roman Catholic cathedral and Holy Faith Episcopal Church — the three historic churches that have remained a continuous presence in the center city.
A ceramic figure of the Christ child is making its way, home by home, through the entire membership of Kreutz Creek church in Hellam, Pa., during this Advent season, along with a book of prayers and Scripture readings, with places for the parishioners to record their own thoughts.
And along the U.S.-Mexican border, some Christians will celebrate Las Posadas across the divide, with Mexicans coming from the south and U.S. citizens coming from the north — with the questions, “Is there room for me? Am I welcome? Can I come in?” taking on a more political tone.
In El Paso, the two groups meet on the bridge crossing the Rio Grande, said Rebecca Phares, who helped organize a Posadas event the Religious Task Force on Central America and Mexico, an ecumenical group, held last year to call for changes in U.S. immigration policies and show solidarity with Central American immigrants. In San Diego, people come to both sides of a fence along the border, holding candles and singing songs, with those on the Mexican side asking if they are welcome, if they can come over. “Then the U.S. side has to sing back, “No you can’t,” Phares said.
Finally, a welcome is offered, and those on both sides share food they have brought. It is a commemoration of an ancient story, laden with the here-and-now.
“The theological assumption that all of us involved in border ministry understand is that Jesus is present with the migrants in their journey to find some safe place,” said John Fife, pastor of Southside church in Tucson. “The persons who come here undocumented are folks who live constantly in fear of being turned in to immigration authorities and being deported. And for themselves and their children and their families, it’s a constant source of anxiety.”
Fife said he’s also said his work with migrant workers has taught him the real-life meaning of hospitality. When he talks to pastors in Mexico, “they would always tell me it’s the poor who take Central Americans into their homes,” Fife said. “The rich never do, the well-to-do never do. We always depend on the poor to share what they have. That’s true throughout North America as well. The folks who are middle-class and upper middle-class tend to have this concept of private property and their home as a kind of island or place of refuge, so there are lots of gated communities in this area. But the poor have always practiced hospitality, because they’ve needed it in their own situations throughout their life. So they understand how important it is to share apartments and homes and food and everything else that goes into just surviving.”
Among some Latinos, particularly among Roman Catholics in the Southwest, Las Posadas is a very common celebration — “In fact, it’s almost a bigger deal than Christmas Day itself in some places in Latin America,” Phares said. In some communities, people dress up as Mary and Joseph, ride on donkeys, process by candlelight, sometimes each evening for the nine days leading up to Christmas. And, when the knock is finally answered and the door is opened, the people rush inside to celebrate with food and drink and music and laughter.
Some Presbyterians who’ve embraced the tradition have found it provides deep opportunities for welcoming people who might not otherwise come to their church; for focusing on the spiritual meaning of Advent, rather than the commercialism of the Christmas season, and for considering what the concept of hospitality is all about.
For Friday Harbor church on the San Juan Islands of Washington state, the Posadas celebration is a community-wide event, with involvement from Episcopalians, Catholics, Presbyterians, people from a non-denominational church, and anyone else who wants to show up. The event is a major celebration for Hispanics in the area, and “our Presbyterian church does not usually include those people, so that’s really cool for the church,” said Erin O’Rourke, who’s participated the last few years.
In Santa Fe, First church will for the third year celebrate Las Posadas with the Catholics and the Episcopalians, marching in procession around a downtown plaza, where the three congregations also celebrate Palm Sunday together.
“Los Posadas is a Spanish custom which was brought over with the Spanish, first to Mexico, then to New Mexico as the conquistadors came up into this part of the world,” said Sheila Gustafson, pastor of First church. “It’s a very ancient representation for the search for a place in the inn, it’s the Joseph and Mary story.”
And for these three historic downtown churches — First church; St. Francis, the Roman Catholic cathedral; and Holy Faith Episcopal — the Posadas celebration has helped nurture a growing ecumenical relationship, one that’s particularly significant considering the history of New Mexico.
“The Catholics process from their evening Mass on the Sunday before Christmas to the Presbyterian Church, crossing the historic Plaza on the way,” Gustafson wrote in an e-mail. “They bang on the door of our church and we begin the antiphonal singing back and forth through the closed door until, at last, the door is opened and they are welcomed in. After a brief service, both congregations process to Holy Faith, where we bang on their door, sing, have a service, and end the evening with festive refreshments and good wishes.” (The Catholics provide a traditional Hispanic cookie, the Presbyterians Scottish shortbread and the Episcopalians English mulled wine).
In an interview, Gustafson said she’s used Los Posadas as a way to talk about the idea of “God’s radical hospitality” — when the door is finally flung open, those inside sing, in Spanish, Enter, holy pilgrims, we receive you in this shelter with our whole hearts.”
And the idea of hospitality as “an act an act of resistance when it challenges the values and expectations of the larger community” is particularly true in New Mexico, Gustafson said, where in late 1800s and early 1900s in northern New Mexico, Protestants and Catholics experienced tremendous friction.
“The reason for that was because the Presbyterians came into New Mexico when it was almost 100 percent Catholic and started schools and clinics,” Gustafson explained. “Especially in the northern New Mexico villages, the Presbyterian schools were very threatening to the Catholic church. And indeed, at the very beginning the idea was to evangelize these Catholic children.” But when public schools were started, the Presbyterians challenged the practice of letting nuns teach in them, “which alienated the Roman Catholics for decades,” Gustafson said.
Several years ago, a reconciliation service was held in one of those New Mexico villages, and since then, the downtown churches in Santa Fe have been working hard to build ecumenical relationships, including pulpit exchanges, a jointly sponsored adult Christian education weekend and a communal blessing of the palms by all three congregations in the plaza on Palm Sunday.
The first time the Catholics and the Episcopalians came to First Presbyterian for Los Posadas, “when we saw the sea of candles coming over from the cathedral, we just could not believe it,” Gustafson said. When they were let inside, “I asked how many people were inside the Presbyterian church for the first time. And about two thirds of the hands went up,” even though these three congregations have stood just a few blocks from each other in downtown Santa Fe for 138 years.
At Kreutz Creek church, a redevelopment congregation of about 90 people in York County, Pa., south of Harrisburg, pastor Marion Haynes-Wellner introduced the idea of Las Posadas this year as an Advent journey. She wanted her congregation to think about what it means to be welcoming, to share one’s faith with others.
She took the porcelain baby Jesus from the congregation’s creche and placed it in a pretty box, along with a notebook with prayers and Bible readings, a description of the Posadas tradition, and a place for people to write their own reflections.
People are asked to write down what they were doing when the Christ figure came to them, to say “How did you feel? Were you too busy, were you annoyed, did you feel blessed, did you feel cared for?” They’re encouraged to read the Bible passages, to include their reflections on them, to write “whatever word they want to give to whoever will receive the book next,” Haynes-Wellner said. They’re given a copy of the church directory and “the challenge is to prayerfully select who they want to send the book to” when they are finished.
Some pass it on to close friends, others to people they do not know. Some call ahead, some just show up at the door. “I have urged everybody in the congregation to be anticipating Christ to come knocking on their door sometime this season,” Haynes-Wellner said.
In sermons, she’s also challenging her parishioners to think about being welcoming, telling them, “we are Christ to someone sometimes in a casserole and sometimes in a card and sometimes in this book.” When someone comes home from the hospital with a new baby, “you bring over supper. Why? Because that’s your ministry, you are in fact bringing Christ in your presence.”
The first person who got the Christ figure this fall, Haynes-Wellner said, was a stressed-out candidate for ministry who was about to move away. “I wanted her to have it before she left,” but “she was really, really busy and really didn’t want it,” Haynes-
Wellner said. (Some people, she said, have been skeptical of the whole idea, saying they thought Christ would just sit in a box in someone’s kitchen for three weeks and be forgotten.)
But the next Sunday, the candidate told the congregation she’d tried to do that — she’d set the box on the coffee table and walked away, “and set about to do other things,” Haynes-Wellner recalled. But it didn’t work — the woman said, “It was just calling to me.” She told the congregation she walked over “and lifted out the little porcelain Jesus, and then I couldn’t do anything else.” She sat there all night, praying and reading the Bible, and for all those hours, “Christ was in my home in a very, very real way.”
Another family drove around to three homes before they found someone at home, ready to accept Jesus. They weren’t frustrated; they saw it as an adventure.
“Sometimes we start out to witness in one place and end up in another,” Haynes-Wellnere said. And “how wonderful it is to have this notebook and know that when Christmas Eve comes, our baby Jesus has been in every home in the congregation.”
