The Rev. Fred G. Garry - May 5, 2002
Texts: John 14 and 1 Peter 3
The Church of the Nativity sits off the old town square of Bethlehem. You
have to duck your head to get in, as the door, for some reason, is only about
three feet high. Like most of the holy sites in Israel, the Church of the
Nativity has an austere exterior contrasted by a surreal and heavily perfumed
interior. Outside you wonder if you are really at the site of pilgrimage
sought by the faithful for two millennia; inside you wonder if you have fallen
into a large potpourri bag. Incense, it would appear, is the leitmotif of
holy sites.
I should preface this remark by saying I am not much of
a pilgrim. And as for Princeton who put the trip together the Church of the
Nativity was one of the few holy sites we had on our itinerary; most of the
sites we visited were archeological digs. But there were a few holy sites
we along the way. At each of them I found much of the same thing. Each had
a strange kind of hushed awe; each one was tended to by robed monks; and,
at each you could light a candle for what amounted to a quarter. And this
was good as the boyhood fascination with fire still persists, and a quarter
is still a bargain in my book. Yet what truly binds all these low-lit holy
sites was a strange gravity.
From the moment you got close- and by close I mean a hundred
yards- from the moment you got close there was a strange pull, force, attraction.
Part car accident stare, part grandiose belief that your visit to the shrine
is somehow significant, and part need to reach the end, the shrines would
pull you close. Beneath the Church of the Nativity, down a winding staircase
obviously not "OSHA-safe" or "up to code," in the cool of the underground
there are a series of small caves or grottoes. These are the places believed
to have been the nativity. Now before you protest by holding your nativity
set aloft, the wooden structure we think of as the barn would have been built
around such a cave in ancient Palestine.
I didn't really linger at the site, in the small candle
lit grottoes. The caves were just that to me. Maybe I'm too Protestant. Back
outside I had sometime to wait for all my companions, longer for those who
enjoy incense. In the courtyard of the church there is statue of Jerome.
Jerome was the early church father who translated the Bible into Latin. His
translation, the Vulgate, would guide the church for over 1000 years. As
I stood in the courtyard I imagined Jerome working in the cool of the mornings,
in a time of relative peace. When Jerome lived in Bethlehem there were no
Romans or Greeks, no Babylonians or Egyptians beating down the doors, laying
waste to the land. The once formidable empire was now Christian; the Roman
Empire was becoming holy. This was a golden time for the Church of the Nativity.
Today though is not so golden. The church in recent weeks
has been the place of a bloody standoff between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
Just a few days ago fire broke out in part of the church; both sides are
pointing fingers. Each day Israeli snipers take another life; the monks carry
the dead into the courtyard to be taken away. I was surprised by my emotions
when I read that retreating Palestinians had entered the Church of the Nativity.
At first I thought well they would be safe there. This is a church. Well,
that didn't prove true. Second, I had thoughts of Waco, Texas and the fiery
end to a standoff with tanks punching through walls. The historian in me
panicked a bit. I panicked because no matter if you believe this is the real
place of Christ's birth or not, the Church of the Nativity is an ancient
site of history and tradition. You don't replace, rebuild, or conjure up
such a place; they are simply a treasure.
Yet after naivete and a penchant for antiques I returned
to a more persistent and I would argue profound place: the place of wonder
about the presence of the holy. The first time I really came to this place
was in the Tel Aviv airport. When you fly out of Tel Aviv you are interviewed
by an attendant. The questions seem route and standard and each traveler
is warned to answer them briefly and succinctly, both are near impossibilities
for me. I was doing well in the interrogation/interview until the attendant
asked, "what holy sites did you visit?" I blew it with this question because
I paused.
I paused as the first answer that came to my mind I knew
would insure a much longer stay in Israel and it would no longer be at nice
hotels. The first answer that came to mind was I didn't visit any holy sites.
And herein lied the pause. To me the sites here historic not holy. Holy sites
as I understood them are not a physical places, but a relationship. In the
pause my mind was flooded with theological argument and centuries of debate,
mostly fought around this table right here. Questions like what is the real
presence of Christ? How is someone righteous? How are we made right before
God? How do we receive grace? All of these queries came like flood. In that
moment I felt like a small server on a now too popular Internet site.
What kept me from crashing was the look of concern in
the attendant's eyes that I was not answering the question simply and briefly.
So I backpedaled, "I did visit holy sites. The Church of the Nativity [long
pause] the Church of the Holy Sepulchre [another long pause wondering if
I should include the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock, either/or, or
neither]. And then I said, "we spent most of our time at archeological sites."
The attendant liked this last piece enough to simply have me interrogated
again by what I would assume is the next level of suspicion in the attempt
to have the plane go up and down without explosives.
I believe I was right not to give her the answer that
came to me. Had I offered her the notion that holy sites are not physical
but the powerful, transforming relationship that is created by the Holy Spirit,
this is the "holy site" that emerges in life, then we would have had a whole
different shootin' match. I believe we are the holy sites as it were as we
live out the will of God, to love one another. I believe though if I had
offered this answer, the chances are good my stay in Israel may still be
going on even today.
Holy Sites are a curious thought to Protestants, and indeed
to all Christians. The Jewish faith really has only one "holy" site and that
is the area known as the "holy of holies" or what Jerome would call the "sanctum
sanctorum." That is the inner, inner place of the temple. All other sites
can be defined with varying degrees of importance, yet this one alone would
be known as holy. Islam has three: Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem. These are
"holy" sites the faithful of Islam must visit. Yet in the Christian faith
we are hard pressed to call any place holy.
Many historic sites can be thought of as the desired end
of a pilgrimage. Rome is a good example, Jerusalem of course. But the pilgrim
tradition of the Christian faith is not so much about holy sites per se,
but of relics and the residue of grace left by saints and visions. Lourdes
is a good example of this and Fatima. These sites though keep happening,
as the faithful believe the presence of the Holy Spirit has come to reside
in a place or person. This is an ancient part of the Christian faith that
came to the fore in the Middle Ages. Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is an ironic
depiction of this church chasing the residue of grace left behind by saints.
As Christians we have this as part of our tradition.
Yet as Protestants we are hard pressed to advocate the
pursuit of "holy sites." Our tradition was based upon a radical claim that
the holy site was not a physical place, the holy site was not a church or
a building, the holy site was the loving exchange between men and women as
they live their life before God. A holy site according to our tradition is
not a building, a cave, or a mount: a holy site is how, when, and where we
love God and each other. This exchange is the holy site we live in; it is
the reality of the Holy Spirit. This is how we have come to understand the
words John records, "You know the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit abides
in you and he will be in you." As we love Christ and one another we abide,
come to dwell, reside in this holy place, the holy site as it were.
This was the claim of John Calvin almost five hundred
years ago about this table. In the sixteenth century Calvin was part of the
struggle over the table. The official doctrine of the day was that the bread
and wine became the flesh and blood of Christ with the words of institution.
The Lutherans protested this and argued the spirit of the bread and wine
became Christ, not the physical matter of the elements. The Baptist tradition
emerged here as well that this is all nonsense; these are symbols nothing
more. Our tradition took yet another tack. We argued there was a real presence;
these are much more than mere symbols. But we claimed that the attempt to
put Jesus into the bread and into the cup was false; our claim was that Christ
is present in the exchange. As one person offers the bread to another, in
the exchange Christ is present, embodied, enfleshed once again. Calvin said
in effect, it is not the table, the priest, the words, or the place that
makes the bread and wine holy, it is you. As you offer it in love to another,
as you offer the bread and the cup to another, as you live out the life of
Christ the table, the person, the words, the bread and the cup become holy,
a holy site as it were.
This was what Søren Kierkegaard was trying to remind his
readers. In the gift of the Holy Spirit we come to live before God; we are
ever before God; all of life is then a holy site. This is the gift of the
Holy Spirit, what I like to think of as the radical nature of our faith.
To embody this Calvin went to extremes. He removed the altar from the church
in Geneva and locked the doors after worship was over. On Sundays when communion
was served deacons would have to go to the local café and wheel a
table down the street and into the church so to make the point, this is a
table, not a sacrificial altar. During the week people were implored to pray
in their homes, to make their own home a house of prayer. Each of these steps
and more were taken to make the point: the real presence of God is found
in life, in loving one another, and becoming as it were the body of Christ.
And perhaps the most radical, don't look for Christ in the cup; look for
Christ in one another.
In the cave where we believe Jesus was born Palestinian
fighters are sleeping according to reports. They are boiling lemon leaves
and burning candles as heat, electricity, food, and water have all been cut
off. To the Israelis the church is not holy, to most of the Palestinians
it is not holy either. We can call it a holy site in Christendom, as it is
a well-worn destination of pilgrims and a place of great significance in
the story of our faith. And I would imagine even Protestants could call it
holy today. We can call it holy on account of the monks and nuns who are
there.
In essence they shouldn't be there. This is not their
fight. The presence of Christianity in Israel/Palestine today is seen as
an historical intrusion and tolerated for the tourist dollars only. In the
bizarre world that is Bethlehem today, the monks and nuns of Christian faith
must be a strange ally, a strange opponent. They are in the way. They are
standing in between those who would do each other violence and they are maintaining
a tenuous moment of peace. And in this the Church of the Nativity is a holy
site; it is the presence of Christ, the gift of the Holy Spirit. In essence
the monks are saying, because I live you also will live. To the world they
must appear as fools and needless martyrs: neither the Palestinians nor the
Israelis want these monks and nuns in their cities if the truth be told.
"This is the spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive."
For some reason my mind keeps going back to the question
of the attendant at the Tel Aviv Airport. "What holy sites did you visit?"
On the one hand I know Kathy would have been less than pleased had I been
detained for a length of time for belaboring a simple question with theological
banter. Yet on the other hand, the answers that came to mind were much more
than banter. They were the stuff of our faith, our life, our gift of the
Holy Spirit. Maybe it was the wrong time to give witness, maybe it was better
to be pragmatic, since the person's question was not about my faith, but
whether or not I was hoping to blow up the airplane.
Today though we are faced with a similar question with
the table. What is this bread and what is this cup? What is it we are giving
and receiving? Today we are reminded of what it means by the monks and nuns
of the Church of the Nativity, by their sacrifice and faith. It is the presence
of Christ as we live our life ever before God. It is offering your life for
others, even those that despise you. For thus was the life and death of Christ;
thus is the life and death that has come to dwell in us. This is our tradition,
our faith, our way. We become here and now a holy site as we love one another.
Amen.
|