Christmas images—both sacred and secular—valorize hospitality during the Christmas season. As a holiday, one of the jobs of Christmas is to renew our love for good and true things, hospitality not least among them.
And yet, even at Christmas we cannot ignore the reality that there is no such thing as hospitality without risk. Arguably, a life of isolation is actually more risky, and there are beautiful and strategic ways to minimize the risks others bring into our lives. But the fact remains: sometimes someone gets hurt.
What do we do when we and those we love have experienced pain simply because they were being faithful to the way of Jesus? When the wall has been breached, do we mend as it was before, or add razor wire to the top and bar all the gates?
This Christmas, I found a prayer that perfectly captures both the weariness and hope of hospitality. It comes from one of my favorite texts—a poem called “Christ,” composed sometime around the year 1000 by Anglo-Saxon Christians living in England. Living in the ruins of the Roman empire, these “dark age” Christians knew a few things about looking for light in the darkness.
“Christ” is an Anglo-Saxon re-imagining of the ancient “O Antiphons,” which pray through the names of Christ in the days leading up to Christmas. The poet takes the biblical picture of Christ as “the cornerstone” (Isaiah 28:16) and turns it into a prayer to Christ as the cosmic craftsman, capable of restoring what sin has ruined. Eleanor Parker’s translation puts it thus:
Now is it needful for this work
that the Craftsman come, and the King himself,
and mend what is now in ruins,
the house beneath its roof. He created that body,
the limbs made of clay; now shall the Lord of life
save the weary multitude from its enemies,
the wretched ones from terror, as he has often done.
Amen and amen. Thanks be to God.
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