December 24, 2008
Sermon preached by Rev. Donald Ng at the First Chinese Baptist Church in San Francisco.
When I arrived in Tel Aviv for my sabbatical study in late May, it was still the middle of the night. I was given instructions to pick up a van shuttle outside the baggage claim area and tell the driver to take me to Tantur in Jerusalem. By the time I arrived, it was daybreak. I was the last passenger in the van and the driver dropped me off at the front gate. I walked up the hill dragging my one bag behind me. I didn’t know until daybreak that where I will spend the next four weeks was just outside of Bethlehem.
On the first day of our program, our directors took the 29 of us up on the roof of Tantur to have a panoramic view of Jerusalem. Right in front of us, just across the street from the campus of Tantur was the Bethlehem wall. I saw a 25-foot concrete wall surrounding the Palestinian territory. I saw a sentry guard tower and barbed wire and this barrier that rings the city of Jesus’ birth. Begun in 2002, the wall was built by the Israeli government to keep potential suicide bombers from entering Israel through Palestinian territory.
The Israeli government and its supporters view the wall as necessary to their security and safety, while Palestinians and their supporters see it as a form of apartheid. Bottom line is that if the magi were trying to get to Bethlehem today, they’d have to go through some serious security screening.
When you approach the wall from the Israeli side, there’s a large, colorful sign painted on it near one of the guard towers saying, in English, Hebrew and Arabic, “Peace Be With You.” Approach this same wall from the Palestinian side and you see darker images—those of a snake curling its way down the wall toward the checkpoint, a picture of a dove of peace wearing a flak jacket and signs spray-painted in English and Arabic saying, “God will tear down this wall.” I saw a skull and bone that says, “This is Israeli Occupation.” The Bethlehem wall is a symbol of deep sadness and contrast for people on both sides, most of whom would rather simply live in peace.
The wall’s construction has left Bethlehem struggling economically. Unemployment is high and people often wait in lines hours long to be cleared to cross the barrier for jobs on the Israeli side. Every time I crossed easily as a westerner, I saw at least one Palestinian denied entry. People who have inherited cherished olive trees can’t harvest them because the trees are now on the other side of the wall. It’s a reminder that whenever walls are erected for whatever reason, suffering and a lack of hope soon follow for everyone involved.
O Little Town of Bethlehem
When we read the Christmas story and when we sing, “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” this isn’t what we picture. We love the Christmas-card image of a sleepy little town with open streets and gentle, rustic stables. The fact is that while there was no concrete wall around Bethlehem in the first century, there was no less stark a contrast between the poor of this little village and the powerful people in Jerusalem and, even more so, in Rome. The emperor, Augustus, ruled over the Mediterranean world and he called himself a man of peace. But his definition of maintaining peace was from military dominance and economic repression. He taxed those who were oppressed to fund his military forces and building projects. There was a wall between the rich and powerful and those who were poor and ordinary citizens.
What we miss when we only celebrate the Christmas story in a once-a-year celebration is the stark truth that Jesus was born on the wrong side of the wall. The emperor Augustus never heard about his birth, nor did the rich and powerful just up the road in Jerusalem. The angels didn’t appear in Rome or in the temple in Jerusalem but they came to Bethlehem—on that side of the wall. The angels appeared to the shepherds, the poorest of the poor, the lowest of the low, the insignificant and forgotten people of the empire.
Peace on Earth
The plan that God was announcing through the angels was a plan of peace, but a peace radically different from that so often trumpeted by human empires. God’s plan of “peace on earth” would not come through the power and might of conquering armies and defeated enemies. It would not be a peace that meant prosperity for some and poverty for others. It was not a peace through victory, but peace through God’s justice. This is shalom—the Hebrew word for peace that really means: well-being, justice, good news for all the people. It’s the peace that happens when God sits on the throne of the world and not emperor Caesar Augustus.
This vision of peace is familiar to us on Christmas Eve. We like to sing of “peace” on earth, along with the angels, but when the angels retreat into heaven we put away that vision for another year, leaving world peace to be the subject of politicians in the world or Hollywood celebrities doing their humanitarian best.
Maybe we feel this way because we live on the other side of the wall from Bethlehem. It was always easy for me to show my US passport and the security guard would wave me through. We live in a place where we can spend our money on recreation instead of wondering where our next meal is coming from. We have the luxury of looking at places like the Middle East, Darfur, and other locations around the world through our television screens instead of seeing war, genocide, injustice and poverty just outside our windows. When it gets to be too much, we can just change the channel.
O how much I pray to not forget the experiences in Jerusalem and Bethlehem that I received this past summer.
Other Side of the Wall
Most of us probably came here tonight expecting to hear a message about a smiling baby, gentle shepherds, adoring parents and lowing cattle, maybe some precious memories of childhood, or a sentimental story of Christmases past, maybe a little something to bless all the gift-buying that we’ve done. After all, we’re supposed to feel good at Christmas, right? The problem is that the story of Christmas isn’t really at its core about any of those things. In very real terms, Luke and the other gospel writers want to take us through the gates of our own security and comfort to the other side of the wall.
The Christmas carols call us to “Come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem” and “Come to Bethlehem and see.” We have to go to Bethlehem to the other side of the wall where we can hear the songs of angels proclaiming that God is doing something about the real problems in the real world.
Jesus may have left Bethlehem, but he lived his life fully on that side of the wall. The baby born in a manger, grew up preaching and embodying a message of the coming kingdom of God—God’s reign and rule on earth, a kingdom that would bring justice and well-being to the whole world. He healed the sick, touched the untouchable, called people to share their wealth, fed the hungry. He spent his time with outcasts, loved the unlovable, and washed the feet of his disciples like the lowliest servant.
His mission and message drew fire from his enemies, whose version of comfort and security was threatened by his call for justice and grace. Rather than vanquish his enemies, he forgave them—even as he was nailed to a Roman cross, the ultimate symbol of the empire’s ability to kill and destroy. After his death, the empire walled him in a stone tomb and sealed the door shut. That’s what emperors do to those who challenge the status quo.
But what the empire fails to realize is that Jesus breaks down walls—walls of violence and injustice, walls that separate rich and poor, walls that define who’s worthy and who’s not, and walls of sin and death that separate us from knowing the love, peace and justice of God in this world. In Jesus, God showed that empires cannot and will not have the last word in this world. That word belongs to the true King, the one for whom angels sing—the true Son of God, the one called “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father” and the true “Prince of Peace.”
Manger Set
For me to have seen the Bethlehem wall this past summer means that I can’t never only think about Bethlehem at Christmas again.
The pieces of the olive wood manger set that we had up here on Sunday were bought in the Bethlehem side of the wall. I heard that there’s a wood carver in Bethlehem who has been carving a wall to go with his olive wood manger set. The 65-year old Palestinian carpenter said, “I wanted to give the world an idea of how we live in the Holy Land. I was inspired by our own wall.”
The hope of Christmas is that even in occupied Bethlehem, even behind the wall, there is hope. Every wall in the manger sets is removable. We hope and pray that the 20-foot high concrete wall surrounding the little town of Bethlehem can also be removable someday.
That’s what Christmas is about: peace on earth—a peace with no more walls.