Day 3 - Bethlehem and beyond.
DAY 3
Today is another long day, so we are on the coach by 7.30 a.m. This is no holiday -it is a once in a life-time experience so we have to pack a lot in to our days! We are leaving Jerusalem behind and heading south, stopping first in Bethlehem. It is good to get here early, before the crowds build.
We arrive in Manger Square and get down from the coach and walk a few yards to the Basilica of the Nativity. Some people get carried away with questioning exact locations in terms of authenticity. After all, how can we know exactly where Jesus was born? Of course we can’t, but eventually this spot – as with many other “holy sites” came to embody the story, and in coming here one joins the millions of pilgrims – English, Spanish, Nigerian, Russian, American etc who have come here and meditated the mystery of the incarnation. All these sites bring home to us that God is no longer to be thought of as inaccessible but has come near: here in this place – Bethlehem – God is with us as the tiny baby born in a stable.
And so we come into the Basilica. There is a very low door to pass through – one has to stoop – to humble oneself as we enter. As we walk through the church we pause to see the glass in the floor to reveal the original Byzantine mosaic floor. For the original church dates from the 4th century. We descend into a grotto where there is a star with the inscription “Here of the Virgin Mary, was born Jesus Christ”. It has a sense of unreality about it and there is not long to pause as the queue of pilgrims is ever increasing. But, yet, it is a place to give thanks for the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ.
God our Father
Whose Word has come among us
In the Holy Child of Bethlehem:
May the light of faith illumine our hearts
And shine in our words and deeds;
Through him who is Christ the Lord.
And then quickly move back up into the Basilica and have a look at the Orthodox icons before leaving through a narrow door which takes us into the church of St Catherine bang next door. For here beneath the floor is a complex of caves which link to the nativity grotto – it is one complex of caves. And what is so important is that down here St Jerome lived for 36 years in the company of St Paul and her daughter Eustochium while he translated the Hebrew scriptures into Latin – the version we call the Vulgate. It is a fascinating place to be and one can be close to the place of birth (?) but not be rushed on by the hundreds of pilgrims. Here we can pause to reflect – and some groups will celebrate Holy Communion – but we shall be doing that later so we move on.
We have 20 minutes to pop across Manger Square to the Orient hotel to have a coffee and use the facilities before we move on to Beit Sahour – the Shepherds Fields.
Here in the Shepherds fields the Francisans maintain a church with the most beautiful paintings around the place - set into apses,
Outside one can look across the fields and imagine the shepherds looking after their flocks. Occasionally the Franciscans will allow us to celebrate communion – there are a number of outside altars for visiting groups. I remember one time there we had a time slot booked and the friar in charge looked at me quizzically and said in broken English “You are Catholic?” “Of course,” I maintained, adding under my breath “Anglican Catholic”. He shrugged and left us to it. Afterwards when we left he stopped me and looked at me contemptuously “Ha. You are Anglican!”
We stopped at one of the stores that specialised in Olive Wood products to buy mementoes. We still use our olive wood crib set every year.
We have a few miles to go now, and so the hotel have provided a packed lunch so that we can eat as we south journey to Beersheba. The twisty road takes us down through Hebron and about 40 miles later we arrive. Beersheba is an ancient town – dating back 3,500 years and is associated with Abraham who dug wells there to feed the flocks.
Genesis 26:18-33
18 Isaac reopened the wells that had been dug in the time of his father Abraham, which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham died, and he gave them the same names his father had given them.
19 Isaac’s servants dug in the valley and discovered a well of fresh water there.20 But the herders of Gerar quarreled with those of Isaac and said, “The water is ours!” So he named the well Esek,[a] because they disputed with him. 21 Then they dug another well, but they quarreled over that one also; so he named it Sitnah.[b]22 He moved on from there and dug another well, and no one quarreled over it. He named it Rehoboth,[c] saying, “Now the Lord has given us room and we will flourish in the land.”
23 From there he went up to Beersheba. 24 That night the Lord appeared to him and said, “I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not be afraid, for I am with you; I will bless you and will increase the number of your descendants for the sake of my servant Abraham.”
25 Isaac built an altar there and called on the name of the Lord. There he pitched his tent, and there his servants dug a well.
26 Meanwhile, Abimelek had come to him from Gerar, with Ahuzzath his personal adviser and Phicol the commander of his forces. 27 Isaac asked them, “Why have you come to me, since you were hostile to me and sent me away?”
28 They answered, “We saw clearly that the Lord was with you; so we said, ‘There ought to be a sworn agreement between us’—between us and you. Let us make a treaty with you 29 that you will do us no harm, just as we did not harm you but always treated you well and sent you away peacefully. And now you are blessed by the Lord.”
30 Isaac then made a feast for them, and they ate and drank. 31 Early the next morning the men swore an oath to each other. Then Isaac sent them on their way, and they went away peacefully.
32 That day Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well they had dug. They said, “We’ve found water!” 33 He called it Shibah,[d] and to this day the name of the town has been Beersheba.[e]
But we have not come to see wells: we have come for a very specific reason which is generally not on the itinerary of a Holy Land pilgrimage: one of our party, Barbara, had mentioned that she had an uncle who had been buried there. He was a New Zealander who had been wounded in the first world war battle of Gallipoli. The wounded were transferred to Gaza. Sadly, there he died and was buried in the war cemetery on the outskirts of Beersheba.
Before we had left the UK I had phoned the War Graves Commission and within a few moments had been told the exact location. So now were able to go straight to his grave – and there it was! He had
died in 1916 and Barbara was the very first family member ever to visit his grave – so it was an emotional time for her. Indeed, for the whole group it was an eye opener – we are used to seeing the war cemeteries of Europe, but down here in the heat of the Negev Desert it came as something of a surprise. As with all of these cemeteries it was beautifully kept, the lawns lovingly watered and tended by Arab gardeners, with roses and other planting. Probably the only difference was that it was surrounded by palm trees!
I am currently reading a novel about the war poet, Siegfried Sassoon, so perhaps one of his War Poems might be relevant.
Golgotha
By Siegfried Sassoon
THROUGH darkness curves a spume of falling flaresThat flood the field with shallow, blanching light.
The huddled sentry stares
On gloom at war with white,
And white receding slow, submerged in gloom.
Guns into mimic thunder burst and boom,
And mirthless laughter rakes the whistling night.
The sentry keeps his watch where no one stirs
But the brown rats, the nimble scavengers.
We lingered here for some time, and then on to the coach for the drive back to Jerusalem and the Golden Walls hotel.
An afterword: This wall is now around Bethlehem - it fact it runs like a great scar across the shepherds fields (the photo I took above was taken some years before the wall was built. Pilgrims are waved through in their air-conditioned coaches. Residents of Bethlehem are stopped and harassed as they try to travel to work. Pray for an end to these tensions, for Arabs and Jews to treat each other as Brothers and Sisters.
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