[written January 7]
“O come ye, o come ye to Bethlehem…”
Today is Christmas for the Orthodox Christian Church who comprise most of the Christian faithful in the Holy Land. Somehow, it is fitting that today we headed to Bethlehem, the city where Christian tradition holds to be the birthplace of Jesus. We even took the route through the Jordan River Valley, which may have been the very same route Mary and Joseph took from Galilee to Bethlehem, heading south before turning west at Jericho, passing both Palestinian villages and Israeli settlements on our first foray into the West Bank.
Yes, I was in Bethlehem for Christmas!!
But Bethlehem is not the idyllic city from the stories of Jesus’ birth I hear as a child. And, I know, it probably never was. I have spent enough time in the real world to know not to expect shepherds and wise guys and donkeys and angel choirs by a charming, rustic stable. But I certainly wasn’t prepared for how far this city is from the sleepy nativity scenes under a bright shining star.
Border. Wall. Checkpoint. Fence. Barbed wire. Armed guards. Dividing. Israelis. Palestinians. In my life, I have never seen a border like this. The closest I have come is the Texas-Mexico border, with great wealth on one side and extreme poverty on the other. When I suggested this analogy to Sarah, she said, “Yes, but the Texas-Mexico border isn’t as heavily armed.” And technically, Bethlehem is part of the same country. But our tour guide could not accompany us to the city of the nativity, for, as we were told, “it wouldn’t be safe for him (as an Israeli) to go there, and it wouldn’t be safe for us to be with him!” So unlike other tours, we had to get off the bus, walk through the gate, down the long fenced corridor, and into the slum that is the little town of Bethlehem.
Our Palestinian tour guide (an Arab Christian) picked us up and whisked us away to the restaurant for lunch. And what a restaurant it was! Marble columns! Crystal chandeliers! Paintings of crusaders on the wall! And a lavish buffet spread before us! A tourist’s feast. But oh, how I hate being a tourist! How could I eat in such a place, when the children of Bethlehem were starving in the streets outside? So I didn’t eat. I couldn’t. Instead, Sarah and I talked with the waiter, a bright though discouraged man close to my age. When asked what it was like living in there, his words echoed the man whose birth we were celebrating, “It is finished in Bethlehem. It is finished here.” He saw absolutely no future for him or his family in that city or even for the city itself. He told how he wished to leave, but being Palestinian, he has no passport as he has no nationality. Ah, the tragedy of bureaucracy!
The whole time we were at the restaurant, they were playing cheesy, synthesized Christmas carols. Talk about surreal.. Jingle Bells when we first walked in. And many, many others. White Christmas. The First Noel. During lunch, as we listened to an Arab Muslim journalist describe his experiences there, “Silent Night” was playing. Sleep in heavenly peace. And as that cheesy, synthesized version of the beloved hymn was playing, I thought, “Here it is, Christmas, when Christian people celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace, yet the ‘peace’ so many talk about is as cheesy, synthetic, and unreal as this muzack crap! We say, ‘Peace, peace!’ and cry, ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’ but we have no idea what real peace is.”
I think Martin Luther King said it best, “Peace is not the absence of tension but the presence of justice.” And I don’t know what will ease the tension in this troubled, holy land, but I know that what I saw today certainly wasn’t just.
I don’t imagine that tonight I will sleep in heavenly peace, but I will try to rest in the “city of peace”, that is, Jerusalem.
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