December 24, 2008
Grace Church
Rev. Robert E. Hensley

Isaiah 9:2-7; Psalm 96; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-14[15-20]

      Let us pray.  Come, Holy One, who hastens us now with cumbersome shepherds unto Bethlehem.  Come and abide in us that we may learn the things that make for our peace.  Give us that listening which hears thy compassion moving through all human loneliness, and in the midst of the high music, turn us toward the anguish of others.  In the snowfall air, in the anxious dark, keep us open to neighbor and stranger, to angels and kings; and make us all ready for Christ’s victory over Herod’s earth.  Amen. 

      There is a woodcarver in the city of Bethlehem today by the name of Tawfiq Salsaa; one of the craftsmen who carve those beautiful olive wood nativity sets that are sold to the tourists who venture into the ancient city and visit the Church of the Nativity. Like the other scenes so prevalent in the few gift shops that remain open, Tawfiq’s scenes of Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus and the wise men are arranged in a familiar tableau – with Mary and Joseph looking lovingly down at the manger, the shepherds peeking in the door and the magi leading their camels toward the open stable.

      But there is one glaring difference in Tawfiq’s work that you notice right away. In Salsaa’s scenes of the manger there is a wall between Jesus and the three wise men. “I wanted to give the world an idea of how we live in the Holy Land,” the 65-year-old Palestinian carpenter said in his workshop, his sweater speckled with sawdust. “I was inspired by our own wall.”

      The wall of which Salsaa is speaking is the 25-foot concrete security barrier that now rings the city where Jesus was born. 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. The bottom line is that if the magi were trying to get to Bethlehem today, they would have to go through some serious security screening for clearance.

      When you approach the wall from the Israeli side, there is a large, colorful sign painted on it near one of the guard towers saying, in English, Hebrew and Arabic, “Peace Be with You.” Approach it from the Palestinian side, 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.” The Bethlehem wall is a place 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 long lines for hours to be cleared to cross the barrier for jobs on the Israeli side.  It is a reminder to all that whenever walls are erected for whatever reason, suffering and a lack of hope soon follow for everyone involved.

      When we read the Christmas story and when we sing “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” this isn’t what we picture in our minds.  Since childhood, we have all loved the Christmas-card image of a sleepy little town with open streets and gentle, rustic stables. The fact is, though, that while there was no concrete wall around Bethlehem in the first century, there was no less a very marked contrast between the poor of this little village and the powerful holding court in Jerusalem and, even more so, in Rome. The emperor, Augustus, ruled over most of the Mediterranean world. Augustus was called “a man of peace,” but his definition of peace was that of every empire that has ever moved across the face of the world. For Rome, for Augustus, peace was about victory – about military and economic security.

      Augustus killed the opposition, occupied foreign lands and called it peace.  He taxed those conquered peoples heavily in order to fund his military, his building projects and his personal needs, and then called it prosperity.

      Under Augustus, Rome erected a virtual wall of separation between those who were in and those who were out, those who were rich and poor, those who lived and died. Peace was the luxury of the powerful elite.

      What we miss today when we boil down the Christmas story to a once-a-year celebration of mangers and mall-shopping is the stark truth that Jesus was born on the wrong side of the wall.  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 a few miles up the road from the manger in Jerusalem. If Augustus had heard anything about it, he probably would have simply acknowledged that another taxpayer from the working class had been born to help fill his treasury. No one of consequence was paying attention to what was going on on the other side of the wall.  It has always been that way with people who enjoy all the benefits of the kind of peace and prosperity the empire provides.

      Please note that the angels didn’t appear in Rome, or in the temple in Jerusalem. They didn’t perform a concert for the emperor or invade the dreams of wealthy merchants or military leaders. When the angels came, they came to Bethlehem – on that side of the wall. And they gave their performance for a group of shepherds, who in a place of poverty were the poorest of the poor. It was to them, the lowest of the low, the insignificant and forgotten people of the empire, that God chose to reveal the grand divine plan for the world.

      The plan that God was announcing through the overture of the angel choir was a plan of peace, but a peace radically different from that so often trumpeted by our human empires. God’s plan of “peace on earth” would not come through the power and might of conquering armies and vanquished enemies. It would not be a peace that meant prosperity for some and poverty for others. It was not peace through victory, but peace through God’s justice. That’s what shalom, the Hebrew word for “peace,” really means: well-being, justice, good news for all the people. It is the kind of peace that happens when God sits on the throne of the world and not Caesar. It’s the kind of peace described in the ninth chapter of Isaiah 9 – where the yoke of oppression is shattered and where the implements of war are “burned as fuel for the fire” (Isaiah 9:5). It is the kind of peace that Mary sings about in the “Magnificat” – a song should be sung in concert with the angel chorus: “[God] has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; God has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:52-53).

      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 depart and return to heaven we put away that vision for another year, leaving world peace to be the subject of posturing politicians and beauty queens trying to look and sound their humanitarian best. It’s a nice idea, but, there isn’t anything we can really actually do about it.

      I would like to suggest that perhaps we feel that way because we live on the other side of the wall from Bethlehem. 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, Iraq, Afghanistan and other locations around the world through our television screens instead of seeing war, genocide, injustice and poverty just outside our windows. And then when it gets to be too much, we can pick up our remote and just change the channel.

      I suspect that most casual churchgoers come to church on Christmas Eve 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 about 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, though, 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 sing that so easily, but the truth is that to really know what Christmas means, we have to really go to Bethlehem – to cross in our hearts and minds over to that side of the wall where we can hear the songs of angel choirs proclaiming that God is doing something wonderful and new about the real problems found 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 cave, in a manger, grew up preaching and embodying a message of the coming kingdom of God – God’s reign and rule on the earth, a kingdom that would bring justice and well-being to the whole world. He healed the sick, touched the untouchable, and called people to share their wealth, to feed 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, though, 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. After all, that is what empires do to those who have the audacity to 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 the angels sing – the true Son of God, the one called “Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father” and most important of all, “Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9:6).

      For us to celebrate Christmas, then, is to celebrate hope; not the kind of hope that’s printed in a Christmas card but the kind of hope that challenges empires and changes lives. It’s not a hope that ignores the pain of the world in favor of looking forward to heavenly bliss, despite the words in “Away in a Manger” (“fit us for heaven to live with thee there”). Instead, it’s about following Jesus in a mission that breaks down the walls of this world and makes God’s kingdom a reality. It’s a call for us to be living and working as if God is on the throne of Caesar. The promise of God is that one day, one day, it will be so. That’s what the hope for the future is on the other side of the wall.

      The lesson for Christmas Eve that we seldom focus on is from the book of Titus, but it may be the best summary of them all. “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all.…” (Titus 2:11). Salvation is offered to rich and poor, native and foreigner, sinner and saint, Israeli and Palestinian. Our task is to live out that salvation by doing and calling for the things that will make “Peace Be with You” not just a wish but an affirmation. Every time we serve the poor, fight injustice, speak for those who are voiceless, serve a meal to a hungry person, spend time in a prison teaching an inmate a new way of life, we break down walls of separation.  If we do that enough, even walls made of concrete will begin to come down. Every great work begins with small steps.

      Woodcarver Tawfiq Salsaa still makes his little olive wood nativity sets with the wall between the wise men and baby Jesus. But even in occupied Bethlehem, even behind the wall, there is hope. Every wall in every nativity set that Tawfiq creates – is removable.

      That, my friends, is what Christmas is and should be all about: peace on earth – a peace with no more walls. Amen. 
 
Sources: 
 
Harrison, Rebecca. “Three wise men hit a barrier in Bethlehem.” Reuters News, December 12, 2007. alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L10261075.htm.

 
Kaylor, Robert. Scriptures for the Church Seasons: Come to the Manger. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2008. Excerpts used by permission.