Remember Bethlehem

(or why I won’t be singing O Little Town of Bethlehem again this year)

Some things don’t change.  This year things have only gotten worse in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.  A friend in Hebron commented, “There are so few signs of hope here now.”  And as a bishop once said, “My message for the churches at Christmas is stop mentioning the word Bethlehem unless you care about [the Palestinian community].  Stop singing ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem” unless you come and visit with its people, unless you do something ….”

My first guide in Palestine, Zoughbi Zoughbi reminds us: The Roman census brought the holy family to the Bethlehem cave where Christ was born.  The conditions of the current Israeli occupation would preclude even this humble birth.  Mary and Joseph would be delayed by over 500 check-points and the annexation wall would keep the Magi and their gifts away.  Angels would not find shepherds tending their flocks by night but barbed-wire around confiscated lands.  Occupation can block passage, hamstring commerce, annex all the land but the occupation will go broke before it takes away the star of hope and the spirit of Christmas: refuge for the homeless, safety for the vulnerable, bread for the hungry.

In Sabeel’s Christmas message, Naim Ateek echoes the prophetic witness in Zoughbi’s last words: The message that the Gospels record about Jesus’ birth include words that ordinary people living under occupation and oppression long to hear, “Do not fear! There is good news that will give joy to all people, a savior is born!”  God has sent a liberator, and he is born in a humble setting.  Indeed, liberation will neither come from the king’s palace nor from the courts of religious leaders but from among the people.  In addition to being a message of comfort, it is a word of invigorating challenge: a strong invitation for each person to take part in and witness to the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God.  

My friend in Hebron concluded, “perhaps there will be a surprise in store just around the corner. I certainly hope so.”

Virginia Tilley of the University of the South Pacific, however, calls the Christian community to task for its measured and careful witness: Each Christmas, it has become a seasonal ritual for Christians to call for new care and action on Palestine. Each subsequent year, the same empty, circumscribed, ineffectual gestures result. The courage of the Arab Spring exposes this shameful ritualised cycle of moral failure as a spiritual imperative. This year’s Christmas must be a time for spiritual renewal, frank self-examination, fresh insight, and new courage to set aside sanitised pleas and empty prayers, stop listening to the internal gatekeepers, reject Israel’s manipulation of Christian theology to serve militaristic ends, and demand that all Church leaderships, with one clarion voice, call for true justice in Palestine. If the teachings of Jesus mean anything today, surely they mean this: the salvation of all three Abrahamic faiths from the false gods of mutual fear and the scourge of oppression. The alternative is to stand before the Cross at Christmas 2012 with a deepening and well-earned sense of shame.

How will we respond to this call?  Will this be the year we ‘set aside sanitised pleas and empty prayers, stop listening to internal gatekeepers, reject Israel’s manipulation of Christian theology to serve militaristic ends, and demand that all Church leaderships … call for true justice in Palestine’?

And let us not sing ‘O little town of Bethlehem’ until we have acted on this call.

Donna Hicks