This Is The Place

As you stand in the crowd, with the voice of the guide droning in the background about how this church was built in the fourth century and then had to be rebuilt in the sixth, but because the images of the Magi in Persian dress were painted on the wall, the Persian invaders who had destroyed every other church, spared this one. Then the crowd shuffles forward as the Palestinian guard tells the people to be quiet because there is a service being conducted. Between the pillars, covered with the congealed smoke of incense burners; past the mosaics that adorn the ceiling, floor and walls; around behind the altar where the Greek Orthodox priests are conducting a service; and finally down the ancient stone steps to the grotto that lies beneath the altar; the crowd slowly moves. If you listen closely, you will hear a dozen different languages. If you stood here all day, you would probably hear a hundred. Camera flashes illuminate the faces in strobe clarity for an instant, time after time. Finally, you make your slow way to the spot on the floor. There is a niche in the wall, and embedded in the floor is a silver star surrounded by white marble, stained by rust, and hung all about with gold and silver lamps. Here is the place, they say, where a young girl, perhaps as young as fourteen, gave birth to a baby boy that caused angels to sing and shepherds to abandon their sheep and wise men to journey with gifts and kings to tremble on their throne. This is the place, they say, but this is not really the place.

Don’t misunderstand. It might have been here where Joseph bar Yacov, the Nazarene, brought his young wife, Miriam, and where she gave birth to the boy, Jesus. After all, this is the town. Bethlehem. It’s only a few miles from Jerusalem, even in those ancient days. Today, the edges of the modern cites are so close that they touch. Or they would touch except for the twenty foot wall that cuts Bethlehem off from the rest of Israel. It’s politics, they say, and Israel has a right to it’s security, after all. It’s too bad that the people of Bethlehem have to line up for passage through the wall to get to jobs and family, but that’s the price of security, they say.

There is a stable, too, just off to the left. Not a wooden shack. Not in this barren land. This is a land of rocks and hills and scrub and a little fuzz of grass where sheep and shepherds can eke out a bare living and not a land of rolling pasture and tall trees. This stable is created from the things that are close at hand. It is made of rock. A cave, in fact. Probably a natural one to start with and then hollowed out by the hand of man to make a little more room for the animals, the tools, the forage and feed and the hundred bits and pieces that a man needs to look after his animals properly. The curved roof is supported, now, with steel and wood. Hanging everywhere are censors and the walls are lined with tapestries, and the floor is crowded with tourists shuffling through, past that place on the floor and the manger. But there is a stable so this COULD be the place. But it isn’t really the place.

Then we make our slow way up the stairs on the other side of the grotto and emerge on the north side of the altar and wind our way through renovation and repair scaffolding to the outer courtyard and finally to the street. You can stand here and see the hills where shepherds watched o’er flocks by night. Or you can turn the other way and see the plaza crowded with men of every age selling pins, hats, necklaces, prayer beads, nativity sets, olive wood flutes and anything else you could possibly want to remember your visit to the place. And you can see the line up of people making their way in the other door to join the throng inside who will slowly make their way past the pillars, behind the altar, down the ancient steps, to the place. If it were the place, you could almost understand it. But it’s not really the place.

The place is not in that church. It’s not in Bethlehem. It’s not even in Israel. It is right here. Right here in this place. Right here. In THIS place. Joseph and Mary are making their slow journey, not from Nazareth to Bethlehem, but from the first century before Christ to the twenty-first century after Christ. They are not coming by donkey, but on the wings of the Holy Spirit. They are not coming because an emperor decreed that, for the census, each man should return to the place he was born, but because the God who decreed that the sun, moon and stars should shine and that the wind should blow and that babies should be born, loves you.

They are coming because Christ needs to be born in your heart. The heart is not a safe, secure, warm and cozy place. Sometimes it is stormy, and sometimes it is cold, and sometimes it is broken, and sometimes it is old. The heart is buried under all of the things that we have sacrificed on the altar of our lives. It is below all of the trappings of religion, status, wealth, comfort, and security. It is not a place where everyone is allowed to go, tramping through and flashing pictures to email to their relatives back home. It is a place we keep secret and sheltered and where, most of the time, we are even afraid to go ourselves. That is the place.

That is the place where Christ will be born, if he is to be born at all. That is the place where Christ is needed, if he is needed anywhere. That is the place where Christ can rule if he is truly a king. That is the place where God seeks to shelter his only son because God understands that it is only in the hearts of human beings where the kind of shelter that everyone needs can be found. If there is any Christ in Christmas whatsoever, it is found in the hearts of those who love him. That is the place.

You can travel this world from pole to pole and see all manner of wonders. There are things in nature that will take your breath away with their beauty, majesty and serenity. There are things that are made by human hands that dwarf the imagination of anyone who sees them, and leaves them believing that anything is possible. There are things that are sub-microscopic and things that dwarf the milky way. You can meet people of every skin colour, of every language, of every belief and be amazed at the variety and complexity of the human animal. But no matter where you go, what you see, who you meet, what you study, or what you learn, there is ultimately only one place where you have to be, and only one place where you can experience the love of God as shown in the gift of Jesus Christ. The only place you ever have to go to find God is within yourself, for Christ was born within you, and Christ lives within you now, and Christ will carry you beyond this world just when you feel that your days are at an end. Look into yourself, see the Christ emerging there, and bow your self in humble adoration, for this….is…..the place.