Christmas is a special time in the city. Jesus Christ was born in the city of Bethlehem. Jesus Christ loved the city and Jesus still loves the city. For those of us who live, love and serve people in the large cities of our nation, especially in the disinherited and economically powerless communities of the urban ghettoes, the Christmas season has a special meaning, and is a time for reflection, praise, prayer and action.

As we work together with God to transform the desert-like places of these communities into oases of hope, prosperity and productivity, the true meaning of Christmas can be more fully understood as we place the manger scene in the context of the purpose of God for sending his only begotten Son into the world. We contrast the Christmas card picture of the Baby Jesus so meek and mild, laying so gently, warm in a neatly clean manger, with the picture of the Jesus who grew up, lived an amazing life and died for the sins of the world, and who hung on a cruel cross out on a hill far away. He died as a rebel, as a criminal and a blasphemer. When we look at these two pictures, suddenly our understanding is shaken to understand the peril that still surrounds us in our daily experiences in America.

As we reflect upon that scene, a scene so paradoxically mixed and filled with evil, pain and suffering, this contrast shakes us to face the reality of the world in which we live. It is a world of great paradoxes -- great wealth and extreme poverty, places of great power and places of powerlessness, places of affordable housing, good health care, quality education, economic stability, and places of homelessness, no medical care, poor schools, joblessness and severe unemployment.

Christmas is a wonderful time for people everywhere to take time to reflect upon the real meaning of life. What wonderful gifts we all have to bring healing, to bring dignity and justice for all, by giving ourselves and our resources to empower people to help themselves out of poverty where so much death and destruction in our cities and world is bred each day. Christmas is a time of giving. We can reflect upon the true spirit of giving. Giving material things, yes -- our money and other things that we give tell of our care and concern for others -- but the best gift is the gift of one's self. Let us give more of ourselves in the cause of peace and justice with dignity. Don't just give a hand-out, give a hand up, so that your gift will empower others and not make them more dependent. When we give both our material goods and ourselves as fuller expressions of our caring and concern, both the giver and the receiver are blessed and life becomes more complete.

Christmas is the time to reflect upon the disproportionate sharing of wealth and poverty. It is a season to examine our attitudes toward wealth and poverty, and free ourselves from biased thinking, prejudice and judging others on the basis of economic status. Wealth may well indicate hard work, intelligence and wise decision making, or it may mean that someone was simply born into a wealthy family, or it can be a sign of greed. It can be a sign of selfishness and dishonesty. By honoring someone who simply dresses better than others, we could easily make appearance seem more important than character, or ownership of material things more important than the values of character and integrity. Let us examine our attitudes about wealth this Christmas season so that a false sense of pride won't deceive us to value things more than we value people.

Let us also examine our attitude toward poverty. Poverty is the absence of wealth, but the absence of wealth does not mean the absence of values, standards, intelligence, integrity, dignity and character. Material poverty is not bad in and of itself. It is being powerless and voiceless that makes being poor in our country and in our world so disastrous for so many million people.

In our big cities, we see so much violence and crime, vice and institutional decay. It is the isolation, the separation, the alienation, and the lack of opportunity that our youth -- especially young, inner-city males -- experience on a daily basis that breeds contempt, hostility and violence.

At Christmas time, poor people have a time to reflect upon their plight and find new and creative ways to dialogue, build bridges and relationships with other communities that will empower them to transform their lives into productive and positive activities, rather than sink into the abyss of pessimism, dislike and bitterness. Christmas is a time for all of us to celebrate the goodness of life. We are faced with great challenges and problems. Some may even feel that we are presently in America's darkest hours, but out of darkness light shines, making our darkest times luminous, filled with awesome expectations and surprises.

When people of all races, colors, and creeds, people of various faiths and religions and all economic classes reflect upon the true meaning of Christmas as expressed in the angelic chorus, "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace and good will to men (to all humankind)," Christmas really happens and should be celebrated every day of the year. This Christmas season let us give the best gift, that is, the gift of ourselves in the task of bringing our diverse communities together to celebrate, to laugh, and to enjoy the goodness of life which is the giftedness inside each of us to be shared with all of us.

During this Christmas season, let us so live, let us so love, and serve this present age, until heaven and nature sing and shout, "Joy to the world!" Let our reflections on the true meaning of Christmas move us out of our comfort zones, out of our safe places, to where we can actually feel the spirit of joy and peace within us and surrounding us. We work for the coming of a new creation, a new heaven and a new earth transformed by a people loving their God. The best of the Season to each one of you and may God bless you and give you the peace and joy that comes at Christmas.

Dave Hardin: Herb, you talked about giving of ourselves. As an inner-city pastor, you see the needs, the deep poverty and the problems that go with it, like drugs. This Christmas season and every other time, as you said, all year around, how can I give myself to the poor of this city?

B. Herbert Martin: Christianity for me is indeed a social religion. We celebrated the wonderful day of Christ's birth yesterday and it would behoove us to look around the table and see actually who was there, outside of our own families. How did we share yesterday with another culture, with another person of a different economic background or a different race?

Hardin: Is friendship one of the issues here? For example, most of my friends don't have good friends of color.

Martin:  Friendship is very important -- partnership, building bridges between communities that are different than ours. It would be good for me to know someone's address in another community, their name and their telephone number -- breaking the geography down, reaching out across the superficial barriers that separate us as people.

Hardin: I have some good friends, younger people, who get involved in the tutoring programs in the inner-city. What do you think of that?

Martin: A good way to make use of skills and talent and energies and resources, because many of these tutoring programs do not have the necessary talent and skill that other communities have. This exchange, this cross-pollination, will be very helpful.

Hardin:  I have seen studies that clearly say that if you know somebody of another race well, if they are a good friend of yours, it makes a lot of difference in terms of how much prejudice you allow yourself to have.

Martin:  You build a relationship through dialogue and communication with each other. It is vitally important for those of us who are different in our background to come to some kind of a common table so that we can dialogue, build linkages and bridges across these barriers.

Hardin:  Are food baskets a good idea?

Martin:  It is a good beginning, but the food basket must come with the person who has the food basket to deliver. The giving of one's self along with the material good dignifies the gift and also dignifies the receiver. Many times the receiver has something to offer back to the giver. It is this exchange of dialogue that needs to be created between those who seem to have the least with those who seem to have the most.

Hardin: You had the interesting job of chairing this Commission on Human Relations. What worked for you and what needs to be done?

Martin:  Breaking through the superficial, geographical boundaries that separate people and bringing people together, mind to mind and heart to heart, hand to hand.

Hardin:  Did you have any failures that you learned from?

Martin: Many, many, many, but the failures were lessons. The mistakes were building blocks rather than discouraging things to keep us from continuously reaching out across the vast chasm of diversity and difference in our city.

Hardin:  You were deeply involved, in fact you chaired this Housing Authority. A big discussion problem in Chicago today is affordable housing. What seemed to work? What is affordable housing?

Martin:  Housing that is available to everybody regardless of class or economic status or race. The issue of housing is critical. In our large urban areas so many homeless people, not only single men but entire families, are without shelter. It is critical that affordable housing become possible in our country.

Hardin:  Herb, we are seeing a lot of government money pumped into the inner-city and the housing arena. It doesn't necessarily seem to be working too well. What are they doing wrong? How could they do it better?

Martin:  Money is not the answer, but the teaching of human values, helping a belief system, respect and understanding. With the money must come those types of support mechanisms that help build neighborhoods and help maintain institutions.

Hardin:  The high-rises, Cabrini Green, Robert Taylor Homes, don't seem to be working. Why not?

Martin:  They don't work. There is not a commitment to quality housing and those buildings were not meant to become permanent housing for the masses of poor people. Unfortunately, temporary housing, or transitional housing, has become permanent housing for the masses of poor people.

Hardin:  So, what should we do with Cabrini?

Martin:  That is the sixty thousand dollar question. Many people say it should abandoned, should be torn down, etc. The real question comes, how do we develop communities as if people really matter? If the bureaucracies of our nation can answer that question and then put forth an affordable, quality-housing program that will meet the needs of this nation's poor, it would be wonderful.

Hardin:  Thank you very much for being with us.