Dear Friends, One year ago, our Christmas Lutheran Church was filled with visitors from all over the world, who came to light the first Advent candle here in the birthplace of Jesus. The joy of celebrating the first Advent with sisters and brothers from around the globe was missing last Sunday as we lit the first Advent candle. After the service we saw a group of tourists walking through the narrow streets of the old city of Bethlehem. One of our volunteers started clapping his hands and shouting, "Look! Endangered species." We laughed, but we all knew that his words were true of the present situation. While last year thousands of pilgrims crowded Bethlehem, this year any pilgrim here is a rare and welcomed sight for the inhabitants of this city. We still can remember how, one year ago, the streets of Bethlehem were all lit up with the colorful Christmas lights. Choirs sang the good tidings of the angels and street performers performed their magical shows to children, whose eyes were wide open with wonder. This year these same eyes are filled with anxiety and fear, for the only lights they see this Advent season are the blaze of exploding missiles and beams of helicopters hovering low above their homes. The only sound they hear is that of bullets and shells, raining on their schools and playgrounds. Their little hearts echo the hymn of Majida al-Rumi, which says: Child of the manger, expand your manger To conquer the fear and to take back our streets, which have been targeted almost nightly for shelling, the local Churches in the Bethlehem area, upon the initiative of the ICB, organized a silent candle-march through the old city of Bethlehem on the evening of the Second Advent Sunday. The first family March since the beginning of the Intifada, over two thousand five hundred Palestinian Christian men, women and children, as well as internationals participated, giving testimony to the fact that people want to be proactive and take control over their own lives. The Marchers, who were received by church bells as they reached the different churches along the way, carried banners that said The Light of Right, Not the Fire of Might and Justice for the Land of Peace. An ecumenical North American Church Delegation made of 26 Heads of Churches, who are on a solidarity visit to Palestine to be with the Palestinian people at this time of their lives, participated in the march along with Heads of Churches in Jerusalem. The March, which was the largest Christian gathering in Bethlehem since the visit of the Pope in March 2000, ended with the reading of a press release in several languages. The success of this March gives us, as the ICB, the determination to continue with our efforts to mobilize the Christian community and churches to take a proactive role in determining its future in this land. The following is a copy of the Press Release. Press Release We are marching tonight Palestinian Christians and Muslims, children and adults, men and women, locals as well as internationals, to break the silence by the world towards an injustice that is committed against our civilians held hostage to Israeli might and aggression. We are marching tonight to take back our streets, which have been haunted with fear and death in the past few months. We are marching tonight to tell the world of our continuing 50-year struggle to realize our self-determination and freedom We are marching tonight for the families who have lost their homes to missiles and are now refugees, sleeping in a different place each night. They have joined the millions of Palestinian refugees waiting to return home. We are marching tonight for our children, who are traumatized by the Israeli helicopters invading our skies and armed Jewish settlers, roaming our streets. We are marching tonight to protest the military closure imposed on us, causing poverty, misery and hunger. We are marching tonight to give a message of hope and light to people around the world seeking justice and freedom. We are marching tonight to overcome fear and to light a candle for hope. We are marching in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ, to call upon all of you to break your silence and play an active role for the cause of peace and justice, so that the light of the resurrection would shine again upon Jerusalem. Since Advent is the season to prepare for Christmas, many of you wrote us asking us to share some thoughts and materials that express our situation and can be used in the Christmas season in your churches and among your congregations. Therefore, we would like to share with you some of our thoughts as well as those of our friends, which express Christmas this year in Bethlehem. From the many materials that we have we decided to share with you a hymn, a reflection and some thoughts. On Christmas night Christians from all over the world turn their eyes and hearts to Bethlehem as they sing "O, little town of Bethlehem". Our friend Rev. Don Hinchey rewrote the words of this hymn after receiving our last newsletter. His words call upon Christians around the world to see the real Bethlehem today and invite them to work on bringing peace to the town from which peace was proclaimed to the world 2000 years ago. A peace that is real and that gives hope to the people. Also we would like to share with you and your congregations the following thoughts by our colleague Dr. Dorothy Jean Weaver, who has spent the last three months with us here in Bethlehem teaching at our guiding course. It was not an especially pretty world, the world into which Jesus was born. The Palestine of Jesus' day was a world of grinding poverty for the masses, hard labor for a daily pittance, wealthy tax collectors, who made their fortunes by extorting money from the impoverished, and brutal military occupiers, whose preferred method of crowd control was crucifixion for all those who dared to rise up and resist the occupation. Nor was the town of Jesus' birth an especially peaceful place, and hardly the idyllic Bethlehem of our beloved Christmas carol, lying "still" under the "silent stars" in "deep and dreamless sleep." The Bethlehem into which Jesus was born was one which was soon to know the terrifying clank of military steel, the blood-curdling shrieks of terrified children ruthlessly slashed to death by Roman soldiers "just doing their job," and the heart-rending cries of anguished mothers inconsolable over the brutal massacre of their innocent infants. Two thousand years later the picture looks strangely similar. The Palestine of Christmas 2000 is a world of massive unemployment and growing poverty. And the Bethlehem of Christmas 2000, with its sister cities Beit Jala and Beit Sahour, knows only too well the terrifying sounds and scenes of war: the menacing drone of helicopter gun ships, operated by soldiers "just doing their duty" and raining down death and destruction from the skies; the rapid-fire report of machine guns aiming live ammunition at live human beings in deadly confrontations on the ground; the heavy and horrifying boom of tanks which send shells smashing through the stone walls of ordinary houses, fill children's beds with glass shards, and turn defenseless civilians into refugees without a home; the screaming of Palestinian children, too frightened to go to bed; and the voiced and unvoiced anguish of Palestinian parents, incapable of protecting their little ones from the ongoing terror and the ever-growing destruction all around them.
Two thousand years ago the angels proclaimed to the shepherds of this region "Do not be afraid….". Today we are all called upon to echo this message to the frightened people of Bethlehem and to remind them that these words are not empty words or "cheap grace" but rather a concrete action towards a just tomorrow. In this spirit our Center is reaching out to all those who are suffering, reminding them of their membership in God's family and giving them the necessary support to keep their joy alive. We invite you to join us and support our work in incarnating God's peace in Bethlehem today. We invite you to help us, especially during these hard times when the Center is challenged with so many needs and where our ministry is needed as never before. From Bethlehem we wish you a blessed Christmas and New Year. The General Director and Staff of the International Center of Bethlehem. |