Crossing the wall

Last year I was in Israel, this is a story from my sister and I's midnight trek to Bethlehem on Christmas morning...enjoy!

There was tension as soon as we crossed the wall into Bethlehem at 1 AM on a rainy Christmas morning. We knew we had crossed a barrier, a visible and invisible line, a deep rift and a crack in the heart. While traveling through the rubble left after the collapse of the Soviet Union Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, “Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts.” Yet here, on the border between Israel and the Palestinian West Bank a 40 foot concrete wall testifies to man’s inability to see past the blinders of politics and religion. A kind of art adorned the high walls, angry protests against an enemy that existed more in the propaganda shouted from bull horns than in the daily headlines of the newspapers sold at the local café. On one side the barrier screamed that Israel must die along with the supporting West, while the other side of the wall stood grey and faceless.
A stones throw from the wall the first houses of Bethlehem stood dark and empty. They were empty and deemed dangerous due to their close proximity to the 40 ft. concrete slabs jutting into the black. Walking the stone streets at 2 am we passed houses with painted murals commemorating fighters who had been killed in the war for the liberation of Palestine.

On one side of the wall is a people who have undergone a holocaust and now desire freedom from living in fear, freedom from always being the victim. Contrasting this are the walled-in, a people who desire freedom from Israel and their land returned to them. And there, in the very midst of the turmoil, is Christ. The One who was birthed in a cave, crucified on a hilltop, raised from a tomb, and now stands before the Father interceding for us. In His divine freedom He chooses to see us, be with us, and deliver all these groans to the Father.

Arriving at the Church of the Nativity everything ceased to exist except the flickering candles, the thick smell of incense, and the low murmurings of the monks. The church was vast and empty except for a small, crowded room underneath the main floor. Sitting atop the steps that descended into the basement, we watched the faithful through the arched doorway; they were lighting candles to symbolize the One who came as light. A few robed Pilgrims came and went; their incessant, echoing chants remembering the innocent Virgin Mary and the Incarnation of Christ. I thought about the razor wire, the wall, the bombings in Gaza and Sederot and the aching and pain of two peoples who each desired a form of peace. The sacred, unfamiliar chanting thus became a voice for the dying in which we are all engaged, partly because the world is a place of death and is passing away, partly because God gives new life, but only in the pain of death. “It is because God is at work even in the pain of such death that we dare enter God’s presence with these realities. They have to do with God.” (Brueggemann)

Leaving the church several hours later we joined the mass of men gathering at the wall. It reminded me of the cattle chutes I had worked during a summer in Nebraska, narrow avenues into which men were driven as they crossed the checkpoint from the West Bank into Israel. Five a.m. was definitely not the time to cross; the morning rush of men going to work caused an uproar when the border failed to open on time. The restless shuffling of several thousand men replaced the silence of the predawn streets of Bethlehem and the holy peace experienced in the Church of the Nativity.

The darkness covered individual features; each man was just a darker shadow till one by one we stepped through the fluorescent lights of the security block. Beneath the bright lights and searching hands we were all proved as human; the uniformed guards, the turbaned men and the unlucky tourists. In our individual and collective existence there resembled something of the image of God, a God who became man for the shouting guard, the angry Palestinian, the crying child and the frightened mother.

At the close of the bloodiest century ever suffered by man, humanity is faced with the reality that the walls which separate us are often necessary because of the relentless hate harbored in the darkness of our hearts. They are necessary because the One born 2,000 years ago has not yet come again to set all things to right. And so we wait, secretly longing that the evils which touch us would have ended yesterday, and that the disclocatedness which is a reality would have already been redeemed.

I am a witness, and to not attempt to portray what I saw and felt would only add to the injustice experienced on both sides of the wall. Wiesel says, “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. “

This Advent, teach us what it means to live expectantly for your return.
We are a people grown weary of waiting.
“Our time would be a good time for your kingdom to come,
because we have had enough of violence and travail.
Give us the grace and the impatience
to wait for your coming to the bottom of our toes,
to the edges of our fingertips.” (Brueggemann)
Come soon, Come here,
to our shut down places,
to those without homes,
to those without families,
and to us who have all these and still choose to live in our several worlds,
Come soon, Come here.