Christmas pageant

Moving in the neighbourhood by Rob Perry

t was Sunday and the day before Christmas Eve at 2:00 in the afternoon, and I was standing in the middle of the gymnasium, the chaotic centre of Christmas pageant rehearsal. In one corner of the gym, our musicians were setting up, desperately trying to find wall outlets that actually worked in order to power the sound system, and fighting over extension cords with the girls trying to decorate and put up Christmas lights. At the back of the gym, my fellow kids workers were frantically chasing their children around trying to drill the dance moves for the grand finale into their distracted heads. The tables at the back of the gym were being laid out with all kinds of Christmas goodies. The friendly hulk of a janitor was quietly and methodically wheeling in rack upon rack of folded chairs to be set up for the expected audience.

This particular year a local elementary school had agreed to open up their gym for our pageant. This school is one of the oldest in the city, with a proud but difficult history. It has serviced one of the toughest neighbourhoods in the country for as long as the neighbourhood has existed. Unlike the stereotype of many inner-city schools, the administrators of this school have a real commitment to their students and community. The teachers work there not simply because they can’t get a job elsewhere. Quite the contrary, they are extremely qualified, and approach their teaching with what can only really be called a sense of calling to work with these particular children and families in this particular community. The school gym is like any other school gym, with banners hanging high near the ceiling, the school’s team logos proudly painted beside the backboards, and climbing apparatus folded against the walls.

As we all scrambled around the gym getting ready for the evening’s performance, I was caused to remember the last time I attended a show in that very gym. It was a Remembrance Day assembly in which different students and teachers sang songs, played in percussion ensembles and rapped. Of course, being a public school there was nothing overtly religious apart from a very strong message of peace – peace towards one another, and peace for the world. The highlight for me that day was after all the classes had finished their presentations, when one classroom volunteer, a middle aged one-time-hippy with long tangled hair and a floor length skirt, accompanied only by her acoustic guitar, lead the entire school in a rendition of Jefferson Airplane’s “Come on people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another right now.” While I can’t say that the hip-hop obsessed grade 7 and 8ers at the back of the room really bought into the spirit of the sing along, I did appreciate the sentiment.

And now one month later, here I was standing in the same spot that the singing volunteer stood. I was in the middle of the gym surveying the happy disorganization that in a couple hours time would (I hoped) turn into a passable performance for the parents of our children’s parents. But, unfortunately, things often don’t turn out how we plan. To start it all off, the afternoon was already missing our corps officer (pastor). This was because only an hour or so earlier she had been called away to be with a mother from our church who had gone into labour. This mother is one of the over 51 percent of Torontonians born outside of Canada. Originally from the Congo, she is here alone with her six-year-old daughter while her husband remains in Africa. Since she was on her own, she had asked our pastor to accompany her to the hospital and support her while she gave birth to her second child.

This Christmas baby was the first of three to be born over the next few weeks. Earlier in the month, the church had a triple baby shower for three moms, all of whom were due to give birth within the next month and a half. Apart from our single Congolese mom, there was also a woman from Pakistan – a Muslim, who, along with her husband had been volunteering at our community cafe and attending our church and Bible Studies. The third couple was a pair of dedicated leaders at our church, white Canadians who grew up in large suburban Salvation Army churches. They each took very different paths in life until eventually finding not only their calling, but also each other at our little inner-city mission. It is a striking image, mothers from around the world, seemingly sharing nothing in common, but linked by blossoming faith, friendship, community, and now, the birth of their children.

However, on this particular day, the birth of a new baby was only the beginning. As I stood in the gymnasium that afternoon, I began to hear murmurings about a shooting that had taken place just out back of the school. Unfortunately, in our community shooting reports are not always big news. The sound of gunfire often does not even seem to warrant a police response, let alone create any kind of hiccup in the rhythm of the community. The scale of the community’s response generally depends on the answers to certain follow up questions: Was anyone hit? Was anyone hurt? Was anyone killed? To my shame, I must admit that one of my primary concerns that day was not the severity of the crime, or the presence or absence of a victim, but rather if the close proximity of the shooting would keep parents from attending the pageant that afternoon.

The report of a shooting next to the school brought to my mind the song sung by the hippy woman, “Come on people now, smile on your brother, everybody get together, try to love one another right now.” It also caused me to flash back to a similar situation which occurred seven years earlier: I had only been living in the community for four or five months, and I was coaching track and field at another local elementary school, a block and a half away from the school we were in that day. It was a warm spring afternoon at lunchtime, and I was in the field out back of the school working on long jump technique with the track team, when suddenly the teachers started patrolling the playground gathering all the children in. A man had been gunned down in the front yard of a town house right across the street from the school. I remember being struck by the sheer audacity of the murder. This particular school happened to be right next door to what was then our local police station. Someone had such small regard for local law enforcement that they shot down a young man not fifty yards from the front doors of the police station, and not thirty yards from the front entrance of a school. As far as I know, no one has ever been charged with that particular crime. It was one of seven shootings that would take place that summer, in what is still an infamous season in the recent history of our community.

And here we were at Christmas time, seven years later, and it was like déjà vu. However, information was sketchy at best, and we decided to continue as planned. Most of the pageant parents arrived and watched as their children put on a wonderful performance. Despite Joseph’s stage fright, he and Mary, along with their troop of angels, shepherds and wise men, all entered on cue. The children remembered their lines, dance moves went off without a hitch, and their parents, some of whom were attending church for the very first time, absolutely shone with pride.

Afterwards, we were all feeling pretty good about ourselves as we ate our goodies, gathered in the costumes, coiled the cords, and handed out presents with Santa. Slowly the crowd thinned, the pack-up finished and the night came to a close. By this time everyone was well aware of the shooting, and we began to reflect on the incredible juxtaposition of the day’s events. Inside, while children were celebrating the birth of Jesus and teaching their parents about the true meaning of Christmas, their minister was at the bedside of one of the children’s moms as she brought a whole new Christmas miracle into the world, a baby whose mother had come from a great distance, leaving her old life behind in hope of a new life for her children. And, all the while, police were partitioning off parts of the school playground with yellow warning tape, gathering evidence and questioning neighbours.

It was the next day, on Christmas Eve that we learned that the boy who had been killed was the son of another mother who attends our church. He was in his young twenties, and was his mother’s only remaining son. She had lost his older brother six years earlier, also in a neighbourhood shooting.

One week after the pageant, we gathered as a church or our normal Sunday meeting. And we gave thanks. We gave thanks for Raese, the son of a Congolese mother, born one week earlier, with our corps officer by her side. We also gave thanks for Eliot, born to our two church leaders just five days later, and we prayed for the son yet to be born to our Pakistani friends. And we prayed for the mother who had lost her second son to gunshot one week earlier. We remembered that Jesus came to be with us on earth. That Sunday, we came together as a church to give thanks, to pray, and to remember.

I like to think of our church as a Christmas church. This is because the concept of incarnation is so vital to who we are as a body of believers. The Message translation of John 1:14 says, “The Word became flesh and moved into the neighbourhood.” Jesus came 2000 years ago, and at his birth, mixed with the songs of shepherds and angels were the cries of the children Herod murdered. This was the world Jesus came into. This is our world.

Be near me Lord Jesus, I ask Thee to stay
Close by me forever, and love me I pray
Bless all the dear children in Thy tender care
And fit us for Heaven to meet with you there.