Christ in the Rubble

Christmas mourning in a time of war

What does Christmas mean this year when a horrific war is taking place near the birthplace of Jesus? Bethlehem Lutheran pastor Munther Isaac is joining with other Christians in Palestine to cancel Christmas celebrations—because this Christmas is a time for grieving the violence of war. “If Christ were to be born today, he would be born under the rubble and Israeli shelling,” Munther said.

We’re witnessing a devastating confluence of ancient and modern realities, in which the cruel catastrophe unfolding in Gaza mirrors the imperial context of Jesus’ birth. Evil King Herod, the Roman client king in Matthew’s gospel (chapter 2), heard tell of a rival baby king being born. Deploying his surveillance state apparatus, Herod tries to manipulate the visiting Magi into giving up the baby’s birth location. The Magi make it to greet baby Jesus but return to their country on back roads to avoid any further encounters with Herod. The petulant king is enraged at the Magi’s escape, threatened by the political implications of a potential Messiah (even in his infancy), and undertakes a massacre campaign to kill all children in Bethlehem under the age of two. It’s known in Christian tradition as the Massacre of the Innocents. Today, during the time Christians read this story across the world at Christmas, Israel’s relentless bombing campaigns in the recent Israel-Hamas war have resulted in over 8,000 child deaths, making Gaza “the most dangerous place to be a child in the world.” The Massacre of the Innocents is happening right now.

In the consumeristic festivities of the American Christmas, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that Jesus is born in an imperial-occupied territory. Luke’s Gospel tells of the census decree that Emperor Augustus issues (Luke 2:1), which sends pregnant Mary and almost-husband Joseph to Bethlehem to be counted. But the census is no simple administrative annoyance like sitting for an hour at the RMV. It serves a larger Roman imperial project, as the poet Drew Jackson captures: “More than counting heads / they are counting dollars and cents. / Calculating how much they can extract from us again. /… They’re taking food out of our babies’ mouths to feed their war machine” (God Speaks Through Wombs).

The census is also Luke’s subtle way of setting up the inevitable confrontation between the emperor and Jesus. The angel announces to the shepherds that “good news of great joy” is on its way, and the heavenly host cries “on earth peace among those whom God favors! (Luke 2:14). Caesar Augustus, too, is heralded for bringing “peace on earth”—except Caesar’s peace is wielded as a weapon of power through Roman subjugation, an imperial reality known as the pax Romana. The peace that Jesus brings is in direct contrast: it is experienced first by the unassuming shepherds, not the power-brokers of religion and state; it finds its expression through a vulnerable baby, not an egotistical emperor; and when that baby grows up, he leads a people’s movement of inclusive love and nonviolence, even suffering the loss of his own life rather than opting for revenge or violent retaliation. If there were ever a message of Christmas, it’s that Christmas means peace and the end to the cycle of violence.

Photo credit: Kelly Latimore, “Christ in the Rubble,” shared by Red Letter Christians.

In one of the lectionary passages for Christmas, Christians read from a prophet biblical scholars call Second Isaiah—“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news” (Isaiah 52:7). The peace that the prophet announces, several hundred years before Jesus, also arrives amid imperial subjugation. The history of ancient Israel mirrors the history of the rise and fall of empires: first the Assyrians, who conquered northern Israel (733 BCE), then the Babylonians, who defeated the south (597 BCE), and then the Persians, under which the Israelites returned to Judah (538 BCE), and so on. When Second Isaiah—whom scholars generally agree wrote chapters 40-55 during the end of the Babylonian exile and captivity—proclaims peace, he anticipates an end to Babylonian rule and a return home.

“Depart, depart, go out from there!” the prophet commands, “for you shall not go out in haste, and you shall not go out in flight, for the Lord will go before you” (Isaiah 52:11–12). With the ancient Israelites’ liberation story of Exodus firmly in mind, the prophet reverses the tale. Instead of fleeing Egyptian soldiers, these newly freed Israelites are celebrating a homebound pilgrimage out of empire. No more will the Israelites wander in wilderness or suffer the humiliation of second-tier citizenship. Peace, which also means freedom, has come. Isaiah prophecies to the ancient Israelites (which would have included Palestinian Jews, by the way), but today it is the modern Palestinians who deserve their own Exodus liberation story to a safe home.

The great challenge of reading the biblical stories in their respective imperial contexts is that it compels us to acknowledge contemporary imperialisms, too. I believe the tragic irony and hard truth when we honestly read our political contexts today is that, despite the atrocities and injustices that Jewish people have faced for millennia and recently, the state of Israel now, with the U.S.’s military backing, is the empire. The Palestinian people today mirror the plight of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and the ancient Israelites. This is not to discount the Hebrew Scriptures as belonging uniquely to Judaism; it’s simply to acknowledge that the biblical narrative contains a critique of dominating power and leads us to solidarity with those who suffer under it, regardless of ethnicity or nationality.

The Palestinian Christian theologian Mitri Raheb points out several characteristics of empires ancient and contemporary, applying them to the state of Israel: control of movement, control of resources, settlements, state terror, and exile. Mary and Joseph would have to cross multiple checkpoints were they to make their journey from Nazareth to occupied Bethlehem today; there are nearly 7 million Palestinian refugees today, with up to 700,000 displaced in 1948 following the creation of the state of Israel, and 1.7 million displaced from the recent war. According to Raheb, Israel controls much of the water (80%!) in the West Bank occupied territory, “leaving only 20 percent to the Native Palestinians.” And the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories continue to make a two-state solution unlikely, with Palestinian villages resembling “holes in the Swiss cheese” of ever more settlements (for information on all of the above, see Faith in the Face of Empire, chapter 5).

To point out the systemic suffering of the Palestinians is not to support the violence of Hamas, discredit the need for a Jewish state, or fail to take seriously antisemitism and the historical suffering of the Jewish people. Suffering is suffering and the Christmas gospel of peace on earth always breaks into all our forms of violence and calls us forward to a path of healing and justice. I’ve hesitated writing about the war because it’s hard to find the right words, I have so much to learn, what difference do my thoughts make on this torturous topic?, the discourse is very much either/or and angry, and antisemitism is real and on the rise, even in my rural area. In fact, I’m sure I’ve said something in this newsletter that, once I’ve dialogued with you, dear readers, I’ll change my mind about.

The wise Valarie Kaur says that “the hierarchy of pain is the old way. The moment we allow our hearts to go numb is the moment we shut down our humanity.” We’re witnessing, through our social media feeds and news channels, generations of trauma being created through the violence in Gaza. At the same time, Jewish families are undergoing trauma and grief due to the horrific Hamas attacks. Both must be condemned for us to nurture our empathy, grow our humanity, and for a third way of peace to ever have a chance. The fearless reporter Nicholas Kristof puts our moral necessity this way: “War crimes have been committed by both Hamas and Israel, yet too many Americans decry some deaths but not others.” The cycle of violence causes suffering all around and requires grief and solidarity all around.

If we read the Bible’s traditional Christmas stories through the lens of solidarity with those suffering under empire—from Mary and Joseph registering for the census, to Herod unleashing brutality against children, to the ancient Israelites returning from exile, I believe we will indeed find Christ under the rubble in Gaza.