September 11th, 2001. Remember how chaotic and terrifying that day was?

When the towers fell, most people with any sense ran away from lower Manhattan. According to evolution, that's pretty much the right instinct. When buildings are collapsing, and the air is full of toxic ash, you get out. You find someplace else to eat your bagel.

But Steve Buscemi ran toward the fire.

You know who I'm talking about—the actor from Fargo, The Big Lebowski, that guy with the face you can't quite forget. But before Hollywood, Steve Buscemi was a New York City firefighter. And on September 12th, 2001, he showed up at his old firehouse. Engine Company 55.

He didn't call the media. Didn't put out a press release. Just grabbed his old turnout coat and asked if he could help. For five days, he worked twelve-hour shifts on a bucket brigade. "Instead of water going up," he later wrote, "it was rubble coming down. Once in a while, a body bag was passed, though none weighed much at all. That was disturbing."

He wore a surgical mask, partly for the toxic dust, partly to avoid being recognized. He refused interviews. When someone finally asked him about it years later, he basically shrugged it off. "It was a privilege to be able to do it," he said.

Like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like when your city is burning, and people are trapped, you don't have to think about whether to go. You just go.

According to conventional wisdom, there are two kinds of people when catastrophe strikes: those who turn away from danger and those who run into the burning building.

Steve Buscemi ran into the burning building.

And here's what I can't stop thinking about when I read John's prologue: That's the same impulse God had. God ran into the burning building, too.

But God didn't set up a command center. Didn't establish headquarters on safe ground. God pitched a tent in the rubble. Because when the Word becomes flesh, the throne room is a refugee tent.

"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us."

Not away from state-sponsored violence—the way refugees flee persecution, the way the holy family fled Herod's massacre of the infants, the way 123.2 million people worldwide are forcibly displaced right now, running for their lives from war and climate disaster and persecution.

God ran INTO state-sponsored violence. INTO the Roman imperial furnace. INTO the whole toxic system of exploitation, power-worship, and the trampling of the vulnerable that we politely call “civilization.”

John uses this word: tabernacled. Pitched a tent. Set up camp. God moved in like a refugee. Nothing flashy. It was temporary shelter. Right down there among people unsure of where they'll lay their heads that night, people without permanent homes, people living on the edge of polite society. But God wasn't fleeing FROM the fire. God was running INTO it.

And the divine throne room? It's a tent. It's mobile and pitched right there among the displaced.

In 2025, the United States stripped legal status from 1.6 million immigrants who’d followed every rule, filed every form, and done everything right. Families who'd been here for years suddenly found themselves zip-tied by masked agents in the back of black SUVs. People woke up one morning to discover the government had decided their legal pathway was no longer valid.

123.2 million people worldwide are forcibly displaced … right now. One in every sixty-seven human beings on this planet has been driven from their home by persecution, violence, war, or climate disaster.

And, I suspect, there are bound to be more of them after we bombed Venezuela yesterday.

And in the United States, politicians who proudly call themselves “Christian” are claiming God's blessing on policies of mass deportation. Christian nationalism, which is neither Christian nor nationalism in any good sense, is telling us that God wants walls, wants enforcement, wants "law and order" … even when the law manufactures disorder and unbearable suffering on the least of these.