Chasing the Divine in the Holy Land (12 page)

“Was Jesus born in Bethlehem?” Stephen asks again. “The question is more difficult to answer than might appear. Yet there are some good reasons for us to answer, ‘Probably yes.' ” Again, there is shifting in the seats.

For openers, not just one but two Gospels, Matthew and Luke, record the Nativity as taking place in Bethlehem. So the Bethlehem tradition is very old, dating back to the first century, perhaps even before the written record, and is well-developed in the earliest literature. As for Bethlehem versus Nazareth, that conundrum isn't really so difficult. We all understand that a birthplace and a hometown can be different places.

Stephen presents scholar Raymond Brown's suggestion that Christology developed retrospectively, beginning with the cross, and moving back toward the birth. “The idea of objective history
is a Western Enlightenment idea that we often mistakenly apply to Scripture.” I glance at Shane and notice that he's scowling. My heart softens. Stephen's lecture is not new material to me, but I remember when I learned all this and found it threatening. Biblical criticism is a lot to absorb, especially if you're already overloaded by the sights and smells and people of the Holy Land.

“The upshot?” Stephen says. “After you balance faith and history — the Gospels, the Epistles, and the tradition — Bethlehem is a reasonable answer to the question of where was Jesus born.”

Then come some easy facts.
Beth-lehem
means “house of bread” in Hebrew. The fourteen-point star is a symbol of Bethlehem because Jesus' genealogy is recounted in three groups of fourteen generations in Matthew 1:17. It is a pleasure to write down these undisputed facts.

We board the bus for the five-mile trip to Bethlehem. As usual, we documentary folk sit in the back of the bus. “So, what did you think of the lecture?” JoAnne asks Shane.

“Why do you ask?” he responds.

“Because it reminded me of seminary, I guess. It's not every day you hear a lecture like that. So I wondered what that was like for you.”

“Why? Because I haven't been to seminary?” Shane says. “I'll tell you what. I don't think any of this is as hard as people make it out to be.”

“The Bible is compli — ” JoAnne begins, but Shane cuts her off.

“Maybe I'll never go to seminary. I don't have to. I'm already doing ministry.” Shane's voice has an edge.

“Good for you,” says JoAnne. “You're doing what you want to do.”

There's a little lull as people let go of the conversation and turn back to their seatmates. “When you went to seminary,” I ask Michael, “did they dismantle everything you thought you believed?”

He grins. “They sure did.”

“It's good to know the Lutherans do that, too,” I say.

Stephen gets on the bus's loudspeaker to alert us to the fact
that we're passing through Gehenna Valley, which was the city's original garbage dump. In the Bible it's referred to as a place that's constantly burning, a place where the outcasts scavenged a living. It's significant because it gave birth to Scripture's Gehenna/hell imagery. The bus windows are open, but I don't notice any overpowering odors, which is disappointing. I have a good nose and had hoped to catch the stench of hell itself. But I've smelled much worse in New York City during garbage workers' strikes.

The bus winds through city streets and then suburbs, never leaving greater Jerusalem before we arrive at the Wall of Separation between Israel and the West Bank. We are armed with our passports. A teenager in a dark green uniform and black beret boards the bus carrying a rifle in both hands. He strides down the aisle, swinging his head from side to side for a cursory glance at our papers. He doesn't stop to examine anything. When he passes me, I notice that his cheeks are peach-fuzzed.

The bus gets the go-ahead and begins to move. Camera Michael scrambles in front of me to film out my window. We both strain and crane as we roll past the barrier. The Wall stretches twice as high as our bus and casts a long shadow, both literally and figuratively. It is an obstruction that demarcates inside from outside, Israeli from Palestinian, citizen from noncitizen. My heart beats faster when I see a large group of soldiers and a tank at the ready. I wonder if the young men in uniform like being on the side they're on, or if they feel locked into this conflict in complicated ways.

In Bethlehem we stop to pick up our guide for the day: Sam, a Palestinian Christian. The staff at Saint George's always hires a Palestinian guide when the pilgrim tours cross into the Occupied Territories. They do this partly as a courtesy, because this is Palestinian land; but they also do it as an act of justice: the people here are desperate for employment. The Second Intifada in 2000 decimated the tourist business — it declined by some 90 percent.

The bus heads to the Shepherds' Field on the eastern side of Bethlehem, grinding gears as the driver downshifts on a long,
steep hill. On either side of the street are boarded-up businesses and barred windows. There are very few people out and about. Sam tells us that the population of Bethlehem is currently 28,000, and nearly everyone is unemployed. He gives us the religious breakdown: 70 percent are Muslim and 30 percent are Christian, although both groups may include large numbers of atheists.

I remember Tercier, the atheist we encountered at the Monastery of the Flagellation. He was from Bethlehem, and told us the joke about Jesus being trapped on the wrong side of the Wall. I recorded that joke just as I now record Sam's statistics. I tell myself that I'm writing down facts to use in sermons later; but in truth I'm trying to capture this experience so that I can process it later. I want to appreciate each point of view. There is so much I don't know, and the statistics are the least of it. To me the real growth comes from meeting Tercier, and Sam, from passing through the shadow of the Wall, from seeing everything here firsthand.

Sam explains that the Shepherds' Field is the setting for two well-known Bible stories. As I hoped, he mentions Ruth and Boaz. I love that story, and I delight in being Ruth's namesake. She was so brave! I want to have access to her courage and resolve. She was powerless because she was a woman, as well as an outsider, a Moabitess. Yet she ended up in the covenant line because she gave birth to a child who was one of Jesus' forebears. She is named in Matthew's genealogy, the passage immortalized in that fourteen-point star we'll be seeing in the Church of the Nativity. Certainly that makes her a chosen one.

Ruth's combination of outside-ness and chosen-ness has always struck a deep chord in me. These two poles are also important to my life story. Because I was born into an ethnically tight faith community with a strong theology of the covenant, I always felt chosen. We were all chosen, my whole Dutch Reformed community — born into that covenant and chosen by God. How I would like to talk to a Jewish person about this sense of chosenness, which seems to be a double-edged sword! But I have no idea how to begin that conversation. Besides, I was chosen, but I
was also a woman, and because of that I had a certain role to play. When I felt called into ministry, I moved outside the acceptable boundaries of the community. I had no choice but to leave the womb of my early world and become an outsider.

Palestinian Sam is quoting a familiar Scripture passage: “In that region there were shepherds abiding in the field. . . .” And the whole busload of us shouts in unison, “Keeping watch over their flocks by night.” We grin at each other as the bus lurches down the hill.

Finally we arrive. The Shepherds' Field is rocky and steeply sloped. We go single file, making a hairpin turn around a precipitous drop, which exposes the entrance to a cave. Single file down eight or so stone steps between rough rock walls. The steps are spaced evenly enough to have been hewn.

By the dim light I can see that the cave is made entirely of stone. There are niches chiseled into the wall here and there. In certain spots the walls and ceiling are black with soot. I imagine the fires that people burned in those places to chase the chill away. One “room” has enough space for us to gather. Sam explains that this empty pocket occurred naturally in the hillside, and over the centuries has been enlarged.

This is a sheep fold, used to shelter flocks at night. The cave protects sheep from wild animals and also from cold. Since a couple hundred sheep can fit into the cave, four or five shepherds and their flocks share the space. The shepherds rotate keeping watch at the single entrance. The shepherd on duty is called “the Door” or “the Gate.” This familiar Scripture reference, heard in this unfamiliar place, slices into me with new power. This underground cave is far removed from a Sunday school picture of a white-robed shepherd sitting on a well-placed rock contemplating the landscape while holding a picturesque staff.

“Jesus said, ‘I am the gate for the sheep.' ” In the shadowy cave, Sam is standing in a shaft of light, and I want to go throw my arms around him and kiss his cheek. Maybe his white hair reminds me of my father, or maybe he has become my father by
leading me to something precious about my faith, a faith that I've certainly inhabited my whole life but am embracing anew.

We wander around, and Sam tells us that we are like the sheep, referring to the way we're mixing freely inside the cave. That's what sheep would do. Each shepherd has his own call, and the sheep respond to it. Sheep are herd animals. They like to be together, and that makes them much easier to herd than goats. Goats don't bunch together, and they don't listen. “Goats like to wander and plunder,” Sam says.

Maybe I'm more goat than sheep. I'm definitely some sort of wayward animal. Even here in the Holy Land I've felt the pull to do things I shouldn't do. The tradition in which I grew up would simply say this was my unworthiness. But I'm starting to think it's something different. I am no more or less unworthy than anybody else. Still, I'm a human being and have choices to make — all the time. Something seems to be shifting in my theology on a visceral level.

Sam is pointing out a stone trough like the one Mary used as a manger. I picture Mary placing Jesus in that furrow of rock. Wouldn't a stone manger be cold? I remember the tombs from yesterday, deep inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre: the dirty oven tomb and the clean marble tomb. Both were cold. Whether natural rock or worked marble, stone is cold. For the first time it really hits me that Jesus not only ended his life lying on stone, but began his life that way. Our Christmas card pictures are downright cozy in their contrast to reality. What a chilly reception for a divine being who voluntarily entered our flesh. Flesh is warm, yet only for a brief span. And to think within that span, such coldness! I think of how often I've preached on Jesus' incarnation, and how little I understand it.

Sam talks more about shepherds. He explains that the business of the town of Bethlehem was to provide sheep for the Temple at Jerusalem, only five miles distant. Masses of sheep were born and raised here in Bethlehem, only to be slaughtered on the altar in Jerusalem. It's not hard to find the metaphor there: Jesus is not only the Good Shepherd, but also the Lamb of God.

Sam explains that shepherds played a unique role in Temple culture. They were crucial to Temple life because they provided an essential commodity; yet, at the same time, they were outcasts, excluded from Temple functions. They were sinners, ritually unclean. These were, of course, the holiness laws coming into effect; these laws also excluded Gentiles and women. Shepherds were unclean because they touched sick animals, excrement, and blood. They were stained. The irony is clear: the shepherds provided the means for other people's sins to be forgiven via blood sacrifice, but they themselves had no access to forgiveness. Jesus is the Good Shepherd. Perhaps the metaphor works because he didn't need forgiveness like an ordinary shepherd.

Someone in the group asks whether the shepherds owned their sheep. “No,” Sam says. “Most of the shepherds were hired hands.” He goes on to explain that it was often the Sadducees who owned the sheep, as part of their role in maintaining Temple operations. In fact, sheep were the greatest source of the Sadducees' wealth. Still, being a shepherd wasn't a bad job. Shepherds were paid relatively well, and often owners and shepherds worked together for a lifetime and passed their positions to the next generation. “The shepherd's well-being,” says Sam, “was tied to the well-being of the sheep.”

Now someone asks about stone itself, and Sam talks about “generativity.” That's another word we don't use much. Sam says that a cave is a symbol for the womb, embodying safety and nurturing. He elaborates on what we heard yesterday: cave theology. This was first proposed by Eusebius in the fourth century. Not only did Jesus' body spend its first and last moments on a rock, but all the pivotal biblical stories about him — birth/death/resurrection/ascension — happened on a rock or in a rock cave.

Sam talks about swaddling cloths, how they were used for both newborns and corpses, and thus encapsulate birth and death in one image. This is not a new tidbit for me; in fact, I've used it in sermons. But when I hear this while standing in a rock cave — both birthplace and tomb — the poignancy of the image hits me almost physically. I suck in my breath. Jesus was
wrapped in death rags from the moment he drew breath. You have to wonder why he did it! Why would a deity bother with the mess and inconvenience of flesh?

Sam segues into leadership: “God often used shepherding as a way to train leaders. A good shepherd is a good leader because he has to search out the good lands, has to negotiate with other shepherds, has to be attentive to his flock.” That concise description brings me up short. For years I've rebelled internally against the image of pastor as shepherd — even though the two words are related — because the image seems clichéd, both sanitized and overused. Perhaps I've been influenced by the sentimental hymn arrangements of Psalm 23, or the Sunday school pictures that show a clean white lamb slung around the shepherd's neck, but the pastor as shepherd seems to suggest that the job of a pastor is primarily reactive, to scoop people up when they fall. Standing in the shepherd's cave in Bethlehem, I suddenly realize that this notion severely shortchanges the biblical image.