Letter from the Holy Land

‘The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.’ John 1:5

ALREADY last year our approach in Bethlehem and Jerusalem to the season of Advent had changed.

We needed to acknowledge the darkness – the death and trauma of terror and war – before we could give thanks for the coming of light. The deaths of hundreds of Israelis on October 7 and of thousands of Gazans in the weeks that followed weighed heavily. ‘Christmas would be observed, but without festivities,’ came the word from our Christian partners. Bethlehem’s streets would not see the parades, hear the pipes, or receive the pilgrims that usually heralded the birth of the Christ child. It would be Christmas by night, Christmas noir.

Words failing, strong images took their place. The birth of baby Jesus in the rubble, an installation built by Pastor Munther Isaac and the congregation of Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, focussed our sense of anguish and hope, as did the image of the holy family in the rubble of Gaza, their halos shaping as helmets, made by Kelly Latimore.

At St Andrew’s Jerusalem we hosted an interfaith event in mid-December, ‘Shining a Brighter Light Together,’ with Church of Scotland partners Rabbis for Human Rights, Sabeel, and Praying Together in Jerusalem, which brings together monthly participants from the three Abrahamic faiths. We lit the sixth candle in Hannukah, the second candle in Advent, and heard the testimony for peace of the musician Muhammed Zatra. Bishop Emeritus Munib Younan of the Lutheran Church and Omar Haramy, Director of Sabeel, lit the peace candle with these words:

Leader: Prepare the way of the Lord!

All: Clear a path through the wastelands and war-lands of our hearts and world.

Leader: For the Lord is coming!

All: The Prince of Peace.

Leader: The Christ child whose gift is

Shalom. Salaam. Peace.

All: Not a peace announced in word only, but the peace of God come among us in the living word, Jesus Christ.

Leader: In whom justice and peace join hands, That we might restore right relations with God, our neighbours, and all creation.

All: We light the second candle in Advent, the candle of peace.

That said, it was too soon for many, we learned, for whom even the notion of crossing lines to come together in as much as prayer was too painful an action, one attended moreover with suspicion. The war has been hard on visible commitments to building bridges.

What then of Advent this year, the war having passed the one-year mark, with no end in sight, claiming the lives of tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza, of which some 6,000 have been women and 11,000 children, making hundreds of thousands homeless, with the numbers still rising daily? Spread now to Lebanon? What of light shining on in such darkness?

We must attend to the darkness of this time, within us and between us, that would put out the light. The fear, hatred, racism, vengefulness and dispossessive force of it. And we must continue to find ways to be present to each other even at a distance. We must kindle the light of prayer, service and support, piercing the darkness together. That our light not gutter. That we be prepared to receive the Christ who comes to make all things new.

May the Christ light that shines in darkness be with you and within you this Advent season.