Pastor’s Column Dec 2003
By Pastor Jens Arne Dale

The Christmas gospel says "....there was no place for them in the inn." Luke 2:7. The Holy Family faced homelessness.

St. Matthew even tells that they had to flee to Egypt. A common point in a Christmas sermon would be to make room for Jesus by living by faith in our hearts. We may also relate this story to the situation of refugees today, and to the issue of housing.

In the month of December, the congregation has a fundraising program for "I Love a Parade". This organization is doing a wonderful job for homeless people. (see the column on the right). But it seems like the general situation for poor people in this country is getting worse. Federal minimum wage, which impacts the take-home pay of 6.9 million people, has remained fixed at $5.15 since 1997 (real value today would be $4.75). In the fastest growing segment of the economy—retail jobs, a normal wage would be $7.50/hr. A new report calculates that a single adult in the Twin Cities needs $11.97/ hr just to afford a basic standard of living. A growing amount of people can’t afford what most of us would consider normal in a middle –class lifestyle. Some can’t afford health insurance or even a place to live.

Christmas is the time of year when we often talk about sharing. Faced with the facts I have mentioned above, sharing might be a challenge to every one of us. And it’s one of the biggest moral and political questions for the richest nation in the world: How it treats the poorest part of its population.