Faith: Bring to this new year a practice of welcoming the stranger, building community
Happy New Year! As we look to the dawn of 2024, I have been thinking about those difficult journeys we make and those spaces of stopping and waiting. The multicultural faith community that I come from has two dramatic ways of marking that journey and that waiting in hope.
The tradition of Las Posadas puts us on the road together. Las Posadas remembers Mary and Joseph’s difficult journey throughout the city of Bethlehem, as they searched for a welcoming, safe place for their child to be born. The tradition remembers this journey in the way that liturgy remembers: by inviting the participants to enact the journey ourselves.
We are set upon the road with the Holy Family as we search for that safe and open space where something new can be born: a new family, a renewed community. We are invited to consider opening our own doors to offer a sacrificial kind of hospitality to the stranger — a provocative sign in today’s political climate.
We gather in the street to light our candles and to begin the journey together, young and old, neighbor and stranger. If you have ever been to a series of Posadas, you know that on the first night especially, everyone has to relearn how to sing the songs together all over again. After all, it has been a year, and people have forgotten the tune.
The other thing that happens as one processes from one place to the next is that people in different parts of the line end up singing at a different pace, so there is this constant straining to listen to one another to try to sing in unison and vaguely in the same key.
Las Posadas teaches the community to listen and to respond to each other in new ways. We learn to look out for those who are being left behind as we seek to stay together.
Ultimately, las Posadas is a liturgy that rigorously reorients the community to bear witness to God’s love. Imagine if we were to wear ourselves out building a new and renewed community, offering sacrificial hospitality to the stranger, and waiting for the one who will demand all that and more from us. What joy might then be born in us when we have come to see clearly God in our midst?
The journey of Las Posadas leads us to the threshold of hope and joy. This is where the tradition of Watch Night takes us by the hand, leads us on and helps us stand. The Watch Night service can be traced back to gatherings also known as “Freedom’s Eve.” On that night, enslaved Africans and free descendants of Africans came together in churches and private homes all across the nation awaiting news that the Emancipation Proclamation actually had become law. At the stroke of midnight, it was January 1, 1863; all slaves in the Confederate States were declared legally free.
When the news was received, there were prayers, shouts and songs of joy as many people fell to their knees and thanked God. Even though the news would arrive in Texas at Galveston a little later (June 19, 1865) and Article XIII of the Constitution would not be ratified until December 18, 1866, Watch Night services create a space for us to stand together in our continued longing for the liberation of all of God’s people.
May you gather up whatever hopefulness, love and gratitude has given you strength for your journey through 2023, and may you find that a new road opens up before you.
The Rev. Eileen O’Brien serves as the rector of St. James’ Episcopal Church, an inclusive and multicultural congregation in East Austin.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Reflecting on new year in Las Posadas tradition
