Luke 2.1-7, 8-14, 15-20 [NKJV]
Christmas Eve 2014, West Camel
2 And it came to pass in those days that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This census first took place while Quirinius was governing Syria. 3 So all went to be registered, everyone to his own city.
4 Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, 5 to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child. 6 So it was, that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered. 7 And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
Google Maps won’t help you - if you want to trace the road from Nazareth through the West Bank hill country down to Bethlehem, the likely route which Joseph and Mary took. Google Maps does offer you a choice of lengthy detours on Israeli highways - swinging widely westwards on route 6, the Yitzhak Rabin Highway, or eastwards on route 90, hugging the border with Jordan, but both routes only take you as far as Jerusalem; a few miles further south, Palestinian Bethlehem seems out of bounds. The obvious route down the middle is Highway 60, but this is offline, outside Google’s remit, for south of the Arabic Israeli city of Nazareth it crosses into Palestinian territory, and clearly it’s a problematic road, a contested route. [1]
And so it looks on the ground. Highway 60 is a wonder of civil engineering with split-level carriageways and multiple interchanges ensuring that Israeli and Palestinian travellers never meet; with a complex of tunnels completely under-passing Bethlehem, parts of Jerusalem and other conflicted areas; with numerous checkpoints and diversions. Highway 60 is currently classed as ‘non-contiguous’ - the section through Palestinian Jenin being closed to yellow (Israeli) license plates and the sections north and south of the West Bank and through Jerusalem closed to green (Palestinian) license plates. [2] The likely route which Joseph and Mary took, today is officially not a direct route at all. It is part of what we call The Holy Land, but it is more like a hollow land, carved up into erratic segments which, though existing alongside each other, are designed never to meet. [3]
For all Palestinians the checkpoints are an arena of regular abuse and humiliation by soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces. Every expectant Palestinian mother will worry about the checkpoints, with the arbitrary treatment meted out to civilians and the often protracted length of time it takes to get through them. Standing squashed between security barriers she will remember the story of the Israeli soldier who refused to allow a Palestinian woman in labour to pass through a checkpoint outside Nablus, forcing her to give birth at the checkpoint - the baby was stillborn. She will be aware that of at least 68 women who recently gave birth at checkpoints, 35 miscarried and five died in childbirth. [4]
But, why dwell on the present troubles in occupied Palestine in a night which is meant to be about tidings of comfort and joy? Not to undermine those glad tidings, but to illuminate them even more. Because those very tidings of comfort and joy were born in a Palestine which was every bit as conflicted as today; because the journey which Joseph and Mary took from Nazareth to Bethlehem was shaped as fully by the demands of the occupation forces as the journeys which Palestinian couples take on that route today. The tidings of comfort and joy of which we sing are not a fantasy delivered in a dream-like state of consciousness; the gospel of Jesus was forged in the harshest of environments; the good news of the kingdom of God which Jesus promoted addresses - with generosity and hope - the most extreme situations with its eyes wide open to the realities of our troubled world.
8 Now there were in the same country shepherds living out in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And behold, an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were greatly afraid. 10 Then the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which will be to all people. 11 For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord. 12 And this will be the sign to you: You will find a Babe wrapped in swaddling cloths, lying in a manger.”
The hilltops where these shepherds once lived are now increasingly the site of Israeli settlements, which serve as strategic outposts across the West Bank, with sightlines overlooking main traffic arteries, Palestinian towns and villages and their immediate surroundings and approach roads. Estate agents promote them as picturesque places for Jews to settle, with their magnificent views of olive orchards, their pastoral charms in a biblical landscape. [5]
But Israeli architects Rafi Segal and Eyal Weizman perceptively uncover 'a cruel paradox': 'the very thing that renders the landscape "biblical", its traditional inhabitation and cultivation in terraces, olive orchards, stone building and the presence of livestock, is produced by the Palestinians, whom the Jewish settlers came to replace. And yet the very people who cultivate the 'green olive orchards' and render the landscape biblical are themselves excluded from the panorama. The Palestinians are there to produce the scenery and then disappear’. [6]
This resonates too with the biblical characters, for the shepherds, like Joseph and Mary, were powerless people whose function in the occupying Roman empire was to produce … what Rome required … and then disappear. Produce taxes - to oil the wheels of the military rulers; produce livestock - to fill the plates of the powerful in the land. The empire wasn’t interested in their needs: there was no room in Bethlehem for a woman in labour; there were no homes in the towns for the men who kept the sheep.
This is a world like ours - a world where the humble ones are exploited and then forgotten by the powerful. A world where the poorest ones are blamed for their poverty, where welfare is withheld from the neediest, where borders are closed to those seeking refuge from brutal regimes. And it is into just this sort of world that the good news comes. It is to just these sorts of people that the gospel is given birth.
13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying:14 “Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!”
Christmas invites us to reimagine our world as a place where peace and goodwill are possible - despite all evidence to the contrary. Christmas invites us to re-embrace God as the source of this peace and goodwill. Note that the choir of angels sang of peace and goodwill towards men - towards everyone.
We will go to sleep this night on a planet where over half the population (Christian and Muslim) revere Jesus either as Son of God or a great prophet of God, yet these same people are playing out old scripts that repeatedly have driven them to violence and counter-violence. [7] Christmas invites us to break out of these old cycles of violence by embracing Jesus, the child and the man, the messenger of the kingdom and the example of how that kingdom truly works, patiently, gently, to mend a broken world.
It has become apparent in recent years that for politicians who have grown to neglect the concerns of our society’s ordinary people it has become urgent to re-engage with this lost constituency. It is emerging that for Christians who have for centuries distanced ourselves from our Jewish roots and allowed ourselves to be scandalised by our Muslim brethren, the need is now great to build bridges, to seek dialogue, to discover how we can reconcile and live together peaceably.
Interestingly, in Israel and occupied Palestine there are those who are leading the way in this. Just as military strategists look to Israel for ideas about how to conduct operations in a complex situation [8], so also are the peacemakers of the world keenly attentive to the many pioneers of reconciliation who are at work in that area. [9]
But perhaps that should not surprise us. For the gospel of Jesus was forged in this harshest of environments; so the good news of the kingdom of God brings generosity and hope alive even in the extremest places of our world today. Once they had paid their visit to the Christ child, the shepherds took this good news back home, and Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart: Christmas invites you and me to do the same.
Notes
[1] Google Maps: direction results for Nazareth to Bethlehem state ‘Sorry, we could not calculate driving directions from "Nazareth, Israel" to “Bethlehem”'.
[2] Wikipedia: Highway 60 (Israel).
[3] This passage inspired by the the title and content of Eyal Weizman's seminal book Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation.
[4] Wikipedia: Israeli checkpoint #Criticism.
[5] Raja Shehadeh, Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape, p.xiv
[6] Rafi Segal and Eyal Weizman, ‘The Mountain. Principles of Building in Heights’ in Civilian Occupation: The Politics of Israeli Architecture, and quoted in Raja Shehadeh, Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape, p.xiv
[7] Brian D. McLaren, Foreword to Michael Hardin, The Jesus Driven Life: Reconnecting Humanity With Jesus, xiv.
[8] Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel's Architecture of Occupation, Chapter 7, ‘Urban Warfare: Walking Through Walls’, p.185-220.
[9] See, eg, B'Tselem - The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, and their Links. Amos Trust: Palestine offers a distinctly Christian collaborative approach in partnership with Palestinian and Israeli groups calling for an end to the occupation and seeking to promote community activism.
[10] Luke 2.15-20
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