Recently I visited New Orleans for the first time. I had traveled to Gulfport, Mississippi for a church mission trip to help the Presbytery of Mississippi in Katrina rebuilding.
I arrived a day ahead of the team and decided to take the opportunity to visit the Big Easy. Not knowing where to go, I looked for familiar street names. I found my way to Canal Street, and then onto Bourbon Street, and into the French Quarter. As I drove through the French Quarter, looking at the homes and the architecture, I had the distinct feeling that I had been there before. Something about the place just seemed very familiar. I couldn’t quite place what it was.
I love the Christmas season. Though in recent years I have found myself recoiling due to the absurdity of the earliness with which retailers have come to celebrate the season, in years past I looked forward to the day after Thanksgiving as the first acceptable day to get out the Christmas music. And though I have heard the passage from Luke 2 read many times in church, it is Linus, of Peanuts gang fame, whose voice I hear proclaiming, “…and the angel said unto them, fear not for behold I bring you tidings of great joy which shall be to all people for unto you is born this day in the City of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord.”
While winding my way through the French Quarter, I realized what seemed so familiar about the place. The realization at once brought relief at having identified the mystery, and also a bit of horror at the revelation. For though I had never been to New Orleans before, I had, as a child growing up in Southern California, been many times to New Orleans Square … right after waiting in line to ride the Haunted House and Pirates of the Caribbean.
Not only was I troubled to realize that my concept of reality had been that influenced by the pseudo reality at Disneyland, but if I must be completely honest, the real New Orleans came up short. It didn’t look quite as nice as the one I knew from the Happiest Place on Earth. The Disneyland version definitely did not have the range of shops found on Bourbon Street, to put it politely. You mean Mint Juleps have alcohol in them? Worse, much to my taste buds’ dismay, the beignets at the famed Café Du Monde didn’t even compare with the sugarcoated fried balls of grease known to me only as New Orleans Fritters. That’s not even to mention that the Disneyland version has none of the suffering, poverty, and devastation that are such a part of the real thing, even more so since Hurricane Katrina made her way through town.
A week after arriving home from Mississippi I boarded another plane, this one bound for Tel Aviv. I returned to the Holy Land, my second visit, to attend Sabeel’s 6th International Conference, The Forgotten Faithful: A Window to the Life and Witness of Christians in the Holy Land. Sabeel is an ecumenical grassroots liberation theology movement among Palestinian Christians which seeks to deepen the faith of Palestinian Christians, to promote unity among them toward social action, and works to promote a more accurate international awareness regarding the identity, presence and witness of Palestinian Christians as well as their contemporary concerns.
This was Sabeel’s first ‘progressive’ conference, and though the theological sense of the word would probably fit, in this case it was geographic. So, after spending the first two days in Jerusalem, on the third day all 300 conference attendees packed our bags, loaded them on the buses, and headed to Bethlehem.
Even though Bethlehem is only about 6 miles from Jerusalem, it took thirty minutes to get there. We could not take the direct route, due to the newly finished Bethlehem checkpoint, because we had local Palestinians on the buses with us, who, had we been searched, likely would not have been allowed to pass through the checkpoint. So, we looped around to Bethlehem by another way, not unlike the Wise Men of 2000 years ago, thus avoiding Herod’s questionable motives.
A thought was beginning to take shape in the back burner of my mind. Though I couldn’t quite identify it, it continued to simmer there in the background. Something about this situation was beginning to feel vaguely familiar.
We arrived at Bethlehem University, where our conference day began with an introduction to the university itself. Bethlehem University was founded in 1973 and currently has 2,600 students, Palestinians, both Muslim and Christian, male and female. Despite being closed twelve times by Israeli military imposed orders, once for three years, the teaching has continued.
The thought that seemed to be taking shape began to move from a simmer to a slight boil, still not identified, still on the back burner, but somehow gaining in intensity.
Presbyterian minister and New Testament Theologian Kenneth Bailey was our next speaker. Having heard about him, I was expectant as I awaited the Bible study on the parable of the prodigal son. “We look at Scripture through spectacles,” he began, “but we don’t look at the spectacles.” Sounds intriguing so far. “Our task in exegesis,” he continued, “is to rescue truth from familiarity.”
That’s it! What was simmering had finally boiled over. The thought had taken shape. What had been troubling me was the realization that my familiarity with the Christmas story, as told by favorite carols, the Peanuts gang, and, dare I say, as I have heard it preached about in church, is that it bears little, if any, resemblance to the truth of what is occurring in the real City of David. As I pondered this realization it occurred to me that the Bethlehem of my Christmas story was a bit too much like the New Orleans from my Disneyland experience.
But as I continued to think about this parallel, what became more disturbing even than the difference between the two versions was the realization that at least a part of me, in spite of myself, preferred the anesthetized, happified versions. They were so much more, well, actually, so much less messy than reality.
As I had discovered in the real New Orleans, the reality of life in the actual town of Bethlehem is quite messy. The carol’s phrase “O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie” is most definitely true in Bethlehem today. The problem is, this stillness is not born of peace, but of suffering. But unlike New Orleans, this suffering is not due to ‘an act of God’ but is a result of the Separation Wall that now almost completely encircles the Bethlehem district. In commenting on the situation Archbishop Desmond Tutu stated, “It is unconscionable that Bethlehem should be allowed to die slowly from starvation.”
This Separation Wall around Bethlehem is a concrete barrier twice as high (26 feet) as the Berlin Wall. Jimmy Carter, in his new book Palestine, Peace not Apartheid, notes that “the wall ravages many places along its devious route that are important to Christians … enclosing Bethlehem is one of its most notable intrusions.”
Bethlehem proper has a population of 27,000 of which 65% are Muslim and 35% Christian. Approximately 136,000 Palestinians live in the greater Bethlehem district. Close to one third (about 15,000) of the total number of Christians in Palestinian Territories can be found in the Bethlehem District. Tourism used to employ up to 20% of the population of Bethlehem. But that was before the Wall.
Andy Gans, a Presbyterian minister from Central Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, Georgia, was one of the conference attendees. As part of the Joining Hands Against Hunger campaign, the Greater Atlanta Presbytery has developed a partnership with a network in the West Bank. “One of the things that amazed me when we were in Bethlehem,” reflected Gans, “was that we walked right into the Church of the Nativity, right into the birth place, with no waiting. Normally it is a 45 minute wait to see it, once you get inside the church. But no one was in the church.” Gans continued, “There were no tourists, because of the Wall. That’s one of the biggest things that struck me about Bethlehem. It is totally cut off.”
The Bethlehem district’s almost complete encirclement by the Wall now makes it a virtual prison. “I didn’t know what to expect,” said Gans about this, his first trip to the Holy Land. “So it was very eye opening for me. To be able to be in those places, but to see those places and how they’ve been sealed off from the world. It is not what I would hope for and expect.”
After pausing a moment Gans commented with a bit of sadness, “the birthplace of the prince of peace is not a place of peace.”
