Please read Luke 2:1-20
In 2019, Mary and I participated in a tour of Israel to walk where Jesus walked. We started within the walled-off city of Bethlehem.
I looked forward to seeing the place of Jesus’s birth. My expectations of what the place would look like were developed by annual nativity displays and Christmas pageants. I know I had seen several presentations and looked many pictures of others’ trips to the Holy Land in my lifetime, but somehow I hadn’t realized that Jesus was born in a church basement.
Well, not exactly. But the site we visited as the place of the birth of Jesus is in the grotto beneath the Church of the Nativity. Since the second century, according to Greek theologian Origen, this grotto has been traditionally believed to be the very cave where Jesus was born because there was no room in the inn.
I should have known, but learned on my trip to the Holy Land, that most of the holy sites have had various shrines and chapels built on them since the third century, CE, when Helena, the mother of Constantine, visited Jerusalem and Bethlehem.
Christian pilgrims from all over the world visit the Church of the Nativity. You enter bent-over through the Gate of Humility. Then you snake around the roped lines slowly leading to the steps down below to the grotto. You’re shushed several times for being too loud because worship services are taking place in other parts of the church. You jostle for position to see the very spot, marked by an ornate star. You’re invited to kneel and touch or kiss the star—this trip was pre-COVID—but then a monk urges you to move along because others are waiting. You can briefly pause to look at the manger, or perhaps a manger like the manger, where Jesus was laid. It is not a wooden feed trough like I had seen in my Uncle Bryce’s barn or in the live nativity at home. It is a rock shelf covered with marble.
I wanted to feel something when I saw the spot, knelt and touched and kissed it. I just wasn’t what I anticipated, and I was a little disappointed.
That same evening, we had the opportunity to break into smaller groups to visit the homes and have a meal with Christian families living in Bethlehem. Six of us from our West Virginia group visited a home in neighboring Beit Sahour, basically a suburb of Bethlehem. Beit Sahour is translated as House of Vigilance or, more literally, House of the Night Watch. This is near the area of the Shepherds’ Fields. The nearby Church of the Annunciation, which is built over the spot where the shepherds kept watch over their flocks, and where the angel appeared to them to announce Jesus’s birth. Our gracious hosts trace their ancestral roots to the shepherds who first received the good news. What a joy it was to meet them and to receive their hospitality.
While I had looked expectantly for Jesus in the grotto beneath the Church of the Nativity, it was in the breaking of the bread in the multi-generational home of our host family that I recognized the presence of Jesus. Sadly, their news is not so good today. Since the Six-Day War in 1967, Beit Sahour has been under Israeli occupation. The original Christian occupants are being driven out of town as Israeli settlements occupy land and Israeli courts rule Christian homes as illegal and subject to demolition.
The economy of Beit Sahour is largely based on tourism and related industries, such as the manufacture of olive-wood carvings. I know many of our group have olive-wood carvings to serve as reminders of our special time with the shepherds.
Today, I say a prayer of thanksgiving for the faith and witness of those vigilant shepherds watching their flocks on the first Christmas eve. And I pray for their descendants, keeping watch at night as they are driven from their homes. Come Holy Spirit, come!
Jeff Taylor
I looked forward to seeing the place of Jesus’s birth. My expectations of what the place would look like were developed by annual nativity displays and Christmas pageants. I know I had seen several presentations and looked many pictures of others’ trips to the Holy Land in my lifetime, but somehow I hadn’t realized that Jesus was born in a church basement.
Well, not exactly. But the site we visited as the place of the birth of Jesus is in the grotto beneath the Church of the Nativity. Since the second century, according to Greek theologian Origen, this grotto has been traditionally believed to be the very cave where Jesus was born because there was no room in the inn.
I should have known, but learned on my trip to the Holy Land, that most of the holy sites have had various shrines and chapels built on them since the third century, CE, when Helena, the mother of Constantine, visited Jerusalem and Bethlehem.
Christian pilgrims from all over the world visit the Church of the Nativity. You enter bent-over through the Gate of Humility. Then you snake around the roped lines slowly leading to the steps down below to the grotto. You’re shushed several times for being too loud because worship services are taking place in other parts of the church. You jostle for position to see the very spot, marked by an ornate star. You’re invited to kneel and touch or kiss the star—this trip was pre-COVID—but then a monk urges you to move along because others are waiting. You can briefly pause to look at the manger, or perhaps a manger like the manger, where Jesus was laid. It is not a wooden feed trough like I had seen in my Uncle Bryce’s barn or in the live nativity at home. It is a rock shelf covered with marble.
I wanted to feel something when I saw the spot, knelt and touched and kissed it. I just wasn’t what I anticipated, and I was a little disappointed.
That same evening, we had the opportunity to break into smaller groups to visit the homes and have a meal with Christian families living in Bethlehem. Six of us from our West Virginia group visited a home in neighboring Beit Sahour, basically a suburb of Bethlehem. Beit Sahour is translated as House of Vigilance or, more literally, House of the Night Watch. This is near the area of the Shepherds’ Fields. The nearby Church of the Annunciation, which is built over the spot where the shepherds kept watch over their flocks, and where the angel appeared to them to announce Jesus’s birth. Our gracious hosts trace their ancestral roots to the shepherds who first received the good news. What a joy it was to meet them and to receive their hospitality.
While I had looked expectantly for Jesus in the grotto beneath the Church of the Nativity, it was in the breaking of the bread in the multi-generational home of our host family that I recognized the presence of Jesus. Sadly, their news is not so good today. Since the Six-Day War in 1967, Beit Sahour has been under Israeli occupation. The original Christian occupants are being driven out of town as Israeli settlements occupy land and Israeli courts rule Christian homes as illegal and subject to demolition.
The economy of Beit Sahour is largely based on tourism and related industries, such as the manufacture of olive-wood carvings. I know many of our group have olive-wood carvings to serve as reminders of our special time with the shepherds.
Today, I say a prayer of thanksgiving for the faith and witness of those vigilant shepherds watching their flocks on the first Christmas eve. And I pray for their descendants, keeping watch at night as they are driven from their homes. Come Holy Spirit, come!
Jeff Taylor
No comments:
Post a Comment