Christmas songs, revisited

In light of my recent trip to Palestine/Israel, I've found that Christmas songs have all new meaning for me. This past weekend was the "Lessons and Carols" service at Trinity Anglican Mission. The choir has been practicing since October; however, due to a severe sinus infection and resulting fever and stomach upset, I was unable to perform. Needless to say, I was disappointed, but it was a gift to be able to listen to the songs we had practiced for so long...and to hear them in a new way, given all that I learned and witnessed in the Holy Land.

One song in particular was very impactful: "O Sing a Song of Bethlehem."

O sing a song of Bethlehem, of shepherds watching there,

And of the news that came to them from angels in the air.

The light that shone on Bethlehem fills all the world today;

Of Jesus’ birth and peace on earth the angels sing alway. 

So many of us hold an idyllic image of Bethlehem. We see it in our minds as a small, peaceful town known only as the place of Jesus' birth. I used to hold this image, but I now know better. The Bethlehem of today is a densely populated city, with three refugee camps and multiple illegal settlements, surrounded by the 27 foot separation wall. It is a place of great injustice and not the cartoon-like Biblical town that we sing of. 

The injustice evident in Bethlehem today is, I believe, the very injustice that Jesus came to defeat.  He came to set the captives free, to liberate us from evil, and to show us an alternate way to live- to reject evil, revenge, and oppression, and to act with justice and mercy. How terrible and ironic that the very place He was born is today a flashpoint for one of the greatest injustices in the world. He would not have us build walls to separate people from their neighbors and families and to confiscate their land. He would not have us banish our fellow humans to densely-populated, poverty-stricken refugee camps. He would not have us value one people group over all others. Yet this is exactly what we see in Bethlehem today. 

I no longer sing of Bethlehem with a naive smile on my face; rather, I sing with tears in my eyes and an ache in my heart, knowing it as a place of great suffering and oppression. And I ask Jesus, who was born there over 2000 years ago, to keep me from despair and to be a witness for truth and justice.