Holy Land Pilgrimage: Day 6

Saturday, May 6, 2023

Today was a day of stooping down. That was true from the start, regardless of what we did, because we’re in Bethlehem, where the Word became flesh and deigned to dwell among us. For millennia now, God has been stooping down to meet us – walking with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening breeze, making covenants with Abraham, wrestling with Jacob, talking with Moses, raising up David the sheep-herder as king. Ultimately, God took divine stooping to a new low, becoming one of us in Jesus. And we spent today remembering that.

The "back room" of a cave such as Joseph's extended
family might have called home.

We began by going to the Shepherd’s Fields, a place honoring the ancestors of the Bedouin we saw yesterday keeping camels and goats near Jericho. The site also sets aside caves in the Judean limestone that would have been homes for Bethlehemites 2,000 years ago. And it’s in a cave like what we saw that Mary gave birth. The event and the language of Luke’s birth narrative make much more sense in the 3-D reality of this place. What we have in our heads is that Mary and Joseph traveled to Bethlehem from Nazareth and, because “there was no room at the inn,” they holed up in a wooden barn for the night. Well, here, there are so few trees that no one would have made a barn from wood. What they have instead is rock – in fact, hills with caves. And people lived in these caves, bringing in their precious livestock (a.k.a., their savings accounts) into the back of the cave at night for protection and then sleeping in the cave’s “front room.” Families with a bit of means would put up extra living space on the hill above their cave – in Greek, a kataluma, or guest quarters, there for the use of extended-family members. That’s the word the King James Bible translated as “inn” and the same word used for the “upper room” that Jesus told his disciples to find for the Last Supper. So, when Mary and Joseph arrived in crowded Bethlehem for the census, other family members must have already taken the guest quarters, meaning there was no room in the kataluma. But even if there had been a place, I could see Mary wanting to go to the back of the cave, with the livestock, to have a little privacy for the birth. The journey into the cave we saw today, complete with a rear area for the animals and a manger chipped into the cave wall, made God’s stooping down in the Incarnation so much more real. (The video is not great, but at least it gives a sense of the "front room.")

The Shepherd’s Fields also helped reveal the geography of the Bethlehem area in Jesus’ time. Here in Bethlehem today, as I look out to the horizon from my balcony, I see a city sprawling over the hills. Back in the day, of course, the hills would have been … simply hills covered with rocks and some precious stands of greenery. That’s the image you see at the Shepherd’s Fields.

The Separation / Security Wall in Bethlehem.

The group then spent some time at a gift shop, not the most rewarding part of the trip for me. But, after that, we went to see an example of present-day stooping on a large scale – the Separation Wall or Security Wall. We were struck by the way the wall affects normal Palestinian people who are just trying to live their lives. A military veteran in the group compared it with what he experienced of the Berlin Wall. I don’t know what the Israeli side of the wall looks like, but the Palestinian side features amazing graffiti, real-life political cartoons drawn large. 

Aspirational art on the Separation /
Security Wall.

The most noteworthy are from the street artist and activist Banksy, but many hands have worked this canvas. Where we stopped, my favorite piece illustrated a hole blown through the wall, opening a view of Jerusalem across the Judean hills. The al-fresco table and chairs in front of the piece point to the everyday aspirations of people who are just trying to live like people anywhere else. For them, sitting outside and looking into the distance is an impossible dream.

After lunch, we visited an orphanage, Bethlehem Creche. It’s a Roman Catholic ministry largely serving unmarried pregnant women and foundlings left on the doorstep. The stakes are high in a culture where unmarried pregnant women face the real threat of murder, especially from family members. Apparently, this is the only place of its kind on the West Bank, and the orphanage provides a beautiful, loving environment to serve children others reject.

Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

Entering the Church of the 
Nativity.

Then we stooped to enter the Church of the Nativity – literally. One of the hallmarks of this place honoring Jesus’ birth is that the entryway is maybe five feet high, the Door of Humility. It’s the second revision of a tall, majestic Byzantine entrance that was shrunk by the Crusaders to keep people from riding horses into the church, and then shrunk again during the period of the Ottoman Empire to discourage the building’s use as secular space. Now, it’s a good (if maybe unintentional) reminder of the humility to which Jesus calls his followers.

Lovely frescoes in the Church of the 
Nativity.

The beautiful "Smiling Mary" 
icon at the Church of the Nativity.

This is said to be the longest-running site of Christian worship in the world (begun by Constantine’s mother, Helena, around 330 AD), and the smell of centuries of incense greets you as you walk in. In the worship space, highlights include restored wall mosaics from the Crusader period, floor mosaics from the original building, a stunning iconostasis before the high altar, and what seem like countless lamps hanging from the ceiling. Beneath the high altar is the stone honored since the 300s as the site of Jesus’ birth. Along with the mass of humanity visiting at any given moment, you can go into the grotto under the high altar and touch this stone. The long line, the jostling for space, and the security guards barking for quiet all can be distracting, but people in our group came up from the grotto in tears. Glimpsing and touching the place where God stooped can do that to you.