Sermons for the Month

The Bethlehem Disconnect
DATE: December 24, 2000
SERVICE: Advent IV
TEXT: Micah 5:2-5a

“To all of you Saints here this morning, grace and peace to you from God our Father, from His Son, Jesus Christ and His Holy Spirit. AMEN

Five years ago this very day, Bethlehem was in an uproar. Tens of thousands of people had poured into the city from all over the West Bank, Israel and the world. Manger Square was ablaze with the tricolored flag of the Palestinian National Authority. Wall-sized banners of Yasser Arafat were draped over the walls. Armed Palestinian guards patrolled the parapets above the shoulder-to-shoulder jostling crowd.

Only the day before, Israel had formally turned over the city to the PNA as part of the peace process. Orthodox Jews had mounted a strenuous protest. Israeli soldiers met them outside of town to control the mob. But Palestinians, many of them Christians, were rejoicing. Some estimate that Palestinian Christians account for almost 40 percent of the population in Bethlehem. That Christmas Eve, they crammed into the ancient city's churches to worship.

At Redeemer Lutheran in nearby Jerusalem beneath its cone-shaped tower, the crowds came early. Candles were lit and people sat in expectant silence. Dignitaries were seated. The Lutheran Palestinian bishop from Jordan brought greetings. Suha Arafat, Yasser's wife, and her entourage arrived. Gifts were exchanged, and the service began in English, German and Arabic.

For Palestinians, it was a most poignant moment. For the first time in the city's history, it was a self-governing political entity. Gone were the Israelis, the Jordanians before them, the British, the Ottoman Turks and the Romans. Not since the birth of Jesus had this village been free.

All of this was on everyone's mind when the pastor's wife stood up to sing. She had obviously had no formal training in voice. The tone was mellow but wavering. The notes were hesitant, but the spirit firm. Tears coursed down the faces of all present who heard these words as though they had never heard them before:

O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!

Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by. Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light; The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight. The hopes and fears - of all the years!

Go back now 2,000 years and imagine a young couple arriving in this sleepy village - she about to give birth to a child and he worried about where they're going to spend the night.

Bethlehem is not a holiday destination for Joseph and Mary. The city suffers under the burden of Roman occupation. They're there because they have to be there to fill out the "long form" of the Roman census.

We might dream of going to such a quaint out-of-the-way place because we want to get away from it all.

Not so for Mary and Joseph. They're forced to stay in Bethlehem at the behest of a powerful empire, and when they arrive they find what we might be looking for, which is just the opposite of what they need: a time of total disconnect.

You know the story. The village is way too crowded and every inn in town is overflowing. They'll have to camp.

What they need is a drink of the milk of human kindness; what they get is the vinegar of rejection - a door in their face, and an invitation to join the farm animals out back.

Today, for many, such a place is not only not a problem but it is a vacationing goal. It's still. It's quiet. It's sleepy. No telephones ringing, no TVs playing, no Santas singing, no palm pilots plotting, no Christmas rush shopping, no e-mail answering, no partridge in a pear tree. Get-away-from-it all vacationers these days are increasingly willing and anxious to rough it. Busy executives are escaping to spots such as the Aloha Mana Garden in Anahola, Hawaii, where they can stay in one of a small collection of cottages scattered across seven acres of Hawaiian jungle. Such disconnect vacation packages are available all around the globe.

We're all desperate to disconnect - at least for a small period of time - to recover our emotional and spiritual balance.

Today, if you're wanting to disconnect you can forget Bethlehem. It's closed this year. Too dangerous. Too violent. Caught in the crossfire of opposing forces. However, for those who dare it is fully wired, and virtual. The Bethlehem Hotel on Manger Square is completely connected. Online tours of the Church of the Nativity or the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem are now available. So this year you will have to go elsewhere to get disconnected, to a place where you can't compulsively check voice mail, call the office on a cell phone, or answer e-mails on a laptop.

Back to Mary and Joseph. The irony is that it is precisely in this Bethlehem disconnect - in this place of discomfort and loneliness, far from the madding crowd, far from the mainstream of Judean life, where they know no one, have no help, and can only pull themselves up by their own sandal straps - it is in this disconnected place that God and humanity are finally reconnected.

"And the Word became flesh and lived among us ..." (John 1:14).

Bethlehem reminds us that just to get away and disconnect is not enough. The point is that while detachment is important, it is insofar as it leads to reattachment.

That Bethlehem birth is a reattachment between God and humanity that reminds us of the fundamental disconnect that had existed between God and humanity. In Bethlehem God boldly stepped front and center into the human experience.

God and us - we hadn't always been disconnected. But when sin entered the world for the first time, the connection was broken.

There is no event in human history that carries with it so much promise as the Bethlehem reattachment of God with His creation.

But as we peer into the manger, we, too, face the same need. I think we all understand what happened that night 2000 years ago. But on a deep spiritual and emotional level, we find ourselves still searching for an experience that will disconnect us from the busyness of our lives. We will go through tomorrow thankful for the day off, for the free time from the busyness if not the routine of living that comes after the decorations are all packed away for another year.

There is no lasting value in our having this time to ourselves unless it enables us to "attach" more effectively when we return.

Bethlehem, in other words, is a nice place to visit, but we tell ourselves we wouldn't want to live there. Now it may be that not all of us want a vacation in an unplugged remote location like ancient Bethlehem, or a rustic corner of Maui or St. John's. It may be that we don't need the kind of vacation where we don't have to answer the phone, can't make a deal, don't have to hurry the kids to hockey, can't possibly click on a hundred thousand e-mails an hour.

Maybe not.

Yet because we live so quickly, occasionally we need to disconnect in order to reconnect - reconnect with what truly matters.

Of course, Christmas Eve may not be the time to talk about disconnecting from life so we might reconnect with living. It's too hectic. There's too much work, too many deadlines, too much shopping, too many parties and family and social and church obligations.

And yet, maybe right here in this advent moment, God is giving us an opportunity to both disconnect in a sense from ourselves - and attach in a new and meaningful way to God.

Perhaps, you are feeling that, like Bethlehem for so many centuries, you too have suffered under the burden of occupying powers - powers like sin, guilt, selfishness, career ambition, and cultural noise.

Now is the time to reattach. If, in the major disconnect of this hectic season, you find attachment to God through Jesus the Christ, the babe of Bethlehem, you have found - the meaning of Christmas. I invite you to welcome Jesus into your life. Let him grow in you this year from infancy to adulthood to resurrection. Reconnected to him and now the peace that really passes all human understanding.

AMEN

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