A Christmas Eve sermon by the Venerable Colin Williams Eve

The story is so well known. Mary is going to have a baby. She and Joseph prepare for the birth. But just as the birth is about to happen they have to make a journey. Everyone has to go back to their own town to be recorded in a census. For Joseph that means going back to Bethlehem. And so he and Mary make the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem

The journey is perilous. At the end there lies no certain accommodation. But they make it . And the rest as they say is history – to be more exact the overturning of history – God in the birth of Jesus Christ in the little town of Bethlehem, which we see lying so still, God in Christ in Bethlehem signalling the making of a new beginning for the whole of the created order.

But supposing the journey were to be made today. Then the outcome might have been very different. It would have been much less certain that Joseph and Mary would have even arrived at Bethlehem. If they were to take that same route today on the way from Nazareth to Bethlehem they would be greeted by a 25-foot barrier wall, armed guards and a huge steel gate resembling those found on nuclear shelters. They could also be harassed for their identification papers, their belongings could be searched. Quite possible that they could be turned away, never allowed to enter Bethlehem. The journey could have been a very different one than the journey which Joseph and Mary in fact were able to make

In the name of security from attack by Palestinian terrorists, the Israeli government has begun to build a wall which separates the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967. The wall runs along the edges of Bethlehem. Which means that the Little town of Bethlehem has become a place where the residents are harassed and frightened.. Those who try and make a living there are cut off from their markets and despair of their livelihood, not least because they are taxed for what they try to bring through. Those who once went to work in Jerusalem can no longer get there, a factor in the estimated 65% of the population which is unemployed. The Christian community in Bethlehem is particularly badly hit. It is entirely possible that within a few years there will be no Christian community remaining in the city in which Jesus was born
The town fabled for star stable and shepherds is now a place dominated by concrete and barbed wire, where the hope for peace is replaced by a huge physical symbol of oppression, where residents cower before display of political and military might.
How profoundly distressing for all of us who bear the name of Christ that his birth place should be so treated. How profoundly saddening that in this as in other parts of the world communities are cut off one from another through fear and through lack of understanding and through the exercise of political might. Even though this year we have celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of one famous wall, physical walls diving communities walls still remain a reality in too many parts of the world. For Bethlehem too being walled off has become an everyaday reality.
But with the building of this wall around Bethlehem how much more profoundly symbolic has become the fact that it was in this town that Jesus was born. For Jesus is the destroyer of walls. The events surrounding his bring demonstrated that. He was greeted by shepherds and Magi, The visit of the shepherds, notorious for not complying with the stricter requirements of the religious law and the visit of the Kings, worshippers of the wrong Gods in the wrong place, symbolized at this earliest moment that this child was destined to break down barriers. In his own ministry he broke down so many of the barriers which threaten to divide us - Walls between Jew and Gentile, women and men, sacred and secular, teacher and taught, leader and led. None of those walls were safe from the stroke of his sledgehammer, none could withstand the powerful, wall-destroying love of God which he came through his teaching and through his very being to demonstrate. In his death and rising again, he broke down once for all the walls which cut us off from the healing love of God.
At several points in the last years, the Christian communities of the world have been challenged by the Christian community in Bethlehem to speak out against the wall which has been erected in their midst. And from Christians in Bethlehem that message is very poignant. Because from which Christian community other than the Christian community into which Jesus was born can we better be reminded that we who are foolhardy enough to take on us the name of Christ are called in his name to break down walls. Called to speak out on a political level against walls – be they physical walls like the one around Bethlehem or psychological walls which unjustly separate race from race, religion from religion, ethnic group from ethnic group. In our own community we are called to be the ones who challenge the walls which divide us in the place in which we live – and maybe at this particular Christmas in this particular city, that means that we need to be ones who will be active in building up relations with the Moslem community in this city.
And in our families and in our own personal relationships using the telling again of the story of the birth of Christ in a stable in Bethlehem to challenge us afresh to do what we can to repair the walls which we have been so actively building over the last twelve months between ourselves and those we love, between ourselves and those whom we once loved but now find it hard to love, between ourselves and those who have been part of our network of family and friends, but with whom relationships have become strained or difficult.

O walled town of Bethlehem, o beleagured town of Bethlehem, o war-stained town of Bethlehem, how ill at ease we see thee lie.

Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light
O hush the noise ye men and women of strife and hear the angels sing

Copyright (c) Colin Williams 2009