Some years ago I was in Bethlehem to produce the commentary for three television programs on the New Testament. I was sitting in the crypt of the Church of the Nativity waiting for the public to leave so we could begin filming.
I had found a seat on a stone ledge in the shadow cast by the lighted candles. How ridiculous these so-called shrines were! How squalid the commercialism which exploited them. Who but a credulous fool could suppose that the place marked with a silver star was the precise spot where Jesus had been born? The Holy Land, it seemed, had been turned into a sort of Jesus World.
Everything in the crypt -- the garish hangings which covered the stone walls, the tawdry crucifixes and pictures and hanging lamps -- was conducive to such a mood. How inappropriate to deck out a bare manger to look like a junk shop crammed with ecclesiastical bric-a-brac! After all, the point about Jesus's birth was its obscurity. The shrine should accentuate the bareness, the lowliness of the occasion it celebrated, so that the poorest visitor might know that Christ was born into the world in even humbler circumstances than his.
As these thoughts passed through my mind, I began to notice the demeanour of the visitors. Some crossed themselves; a few knelt; but to most the Church of the Nativity was just an item in a sightseeing tour -- as might be the Taj Mahal or Madame Tussaud's Waxworks.
Nonetheless, each face as it came into view was transfigured by the experience of being in what purported to be the place of Jesus's birth. The boredom, the idle curiosity, disappeared. This, they all seemed to be saying, was where it happened. Here He came into the world. Here we shall find Him! Once more in that place glory shone around, and angel voices proclaimed: For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord, transforming it from a tourist attraction into an authentic shrine.
The Holy Land is full of history, written in stones. Yet it was not history that I, the skeptic, found in the Church of the Nativity. It was something deeper and more exhilarating: The truth of the story of Jesus must be looked for in the hearts of believers rather than in archaeological dust. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, Jesus promised, there am I in the midst of them. Two thousand years later the promise still holds. It has been kept even in the unlikeliest of places -- this garish crypt in Bethlehem.
Joseph and Mary had come from Nazareth because, we are told, their presence was required for a census taken by Caesar Augustus, still at the height of his fame. Of all the millions of souls numbered in the Emperor's census, the one born that night in Bethlehem must have been, in temporal terms, about the most insignificant. It was a confrontation of sorts between a ruler of the earth, by then proclaimed a god, and the lowliest of his subjects. Yet their roles were to be reversed; for centuries Jesus would reign over men's minds and hearts, when Augustus's kingdom existed only in history books and ruins.
It was precisely to replenish the world's stock of faith that the Bethlehem birth took place. Faith is the key which enables us to decipher God's otherwise inscrutable communications. Seen with the eye of faith, the shepherds rejoice, the Wise Men prostrate themselves and offer their gifts, the very stars are rearranged. And Mary bears in her arms the new light that has come into the world to lighten all mankind.
The story of how Jesus came to earth, what He said and did here, and how He left the world while still remaining in it, has been more told, mulled over, analyzed and illustrated than any other in human history. So many hands! So many versions and interpretations! We have the historical Jesus, the freedom-fighting Jesus, the erotic Jesus, the proletarian Jesus. Today's revisions of Jesus's essential message claim that His kingdom is of this world, that man can live by bread alone and must lay up treasure on earth in an ever-increasing gross national product. Future historians are likely to conclude that the more we knew about Jesus, the less we knew Him or heeded His words.
But throughout history, the words of the Gospel have inspired many of the noblest accomplishments of our civilization. It is on behalf of these words that majestic buildings like Chartres Cathedral have been constructed, and that great saints like Francis of Assisi have so joyously dedicated their lives to God and men. To the greater glory of these words Bach composed, El Greco painted, Saint Augustine laboured at his City of God and Pascal at his Pensees. To what these words bring us, there is truly no end; if they have survived their commentators -- especially their latter-day ones -- then surely they must be considered immortal. And so, either Jesus never was or He still is. As a typical product of these confused times, with a skeptical mind and a sensual disposition, diffidently and unworthily, but with the utmost certainty, I assert that He still is.
To those who, like myself, fear that "Western civilization" may be over, and that another Dark Age is upon us, the seeming collapse of faith is desolating. Yet suddenly, in the most unlikely theatre of all, a Solzhenitsyn raises his voice, while in the dismal slums of Calcutta, a Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity go about Jesus's work of love. For I was ahungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me -- the words come alive in the fulfillment of Jesus's behest to see in the suffering face of humanity His suffering face.
Jesus asked more of His followers than any other teacher ever has -- to do good to those who harm us, and pray for those who persecute us; when we are struck on the right cheek, to turn the other cheek also, and when someone has taken our coat, to hand over our cloak; to give to whomever asks; and when someone presses us to go with him one mile, to go with him two. Not just to refrain from adultery, but to refrain from desiring; and not just to refrain from killing, but from being angry or calling someone a fool.
Jesus was not, in our contemporary sense, an idealist, and gives no intimation of believing that the world could be made better on its own terms. I cannot see that Jesus ever advocated a reform of any kind, or supported any human cause, however enlightened. His teaching ranged between the sublimest mysticism and the bluntest realism, leaving out the middle ground, the lush pastures of liberalism and goodwill, where editorialists and media pundits graze, and a stifling hot wind of rhetoric endlessly blows. He gave us not a plan of action and certainly not a program of reforms, but rather those wonderfully illuminating contradictions -- the first to be the last, the poorest the richest, the weakest the strongest, the most obscure the most celebrated.
Plenty of great teachers, mystics, martyrs and saints have spoken words full of grace and truth. In the case of Jesus alone, however, the belief has persisted that when He came into the world, God deigned to take on the likeness of a man in order that men might reach out from their mortality to His immortality. I am the resurrection, and the life, He taught, and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.
As I approach my end, I find Jesus's outrageous claim ever more captivating and meaningful. Quite often, waking up in the night as the old do, I feel myself to be half out of my body, hovering between life and death, with eternity rising in the distance.
I see my ancient carcass, prone between the sheets, stained and worn like a scrap of paper dropped in the gutter and, hovering over it, myself, like a butterfly released from its chrysalis stage and ready to fly away. Are caterpillars told of their impending resurrection? How in dying they will be transformed from poor earth crawlers into creatures of the air, with exquisitely painted wings? If told, do they believe it? I imagine the wise old caterpillars shaking their heads -- no, it can't be; it's a fantasy.
Yet in the limbo between living and dying, as the night clocks tick remorselessly on, and the black sky implacably shows not one single streak or scratch of grey, I hear those words: I am the resurrection, and the life, and feel myself carried along on a great tide of joy and peace.
Everything in the crypt -- the garish hangings which covered the stone walls, the tawdry crucifixes and pictures and hanging lamps -- was conducive to such a mood. How inappropriate to deck out a bare manger to look like a junk shop crammed with ecclesiastical bric-a-brac! After all, the point about Jesus's birth was its obscurity. The shrine should accentuate the bareness, the lowliness of the occasion it celebrated, so that the poorest visitor might know that Christ was born into the world in even humbler circumstances than his.
As these thoughts passed through my mind, I began to notice the demeanour of the visitors. Some crossed themselves; a few knelt; but to most the Church of the Nativity was just an item in a sightseeing tour -- as might be the Taj Mahal or Madame Tussaud's Waxworks.
Nonetheless, each face as it came into view was transfigured by the experience of being in what purported to be the place of Jesus's birth. The boredom, the idle curiosity, disappeared. This, they all seemed to be saying, was where it happened. Here He came into the world. Here we shall find Him! Once more in that place glory shone around, and angel voices proclaimed: For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord, transforming it from a tourist attraction into an authentic shrine.
The Holy Land is full of history, written in stones. Yet it was not history that I, the skeptic, found in the Church of the Nativity. It was something deeper and more exhilarating: The truth of the story of Jesus must be looked for in the hearts of believers rather than in archaeological dust. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, Jesus promised, there am I in the midst of them. Two thousand years later the promise still holds. It has been kept even in the unlikeliest of places -- this garish crypt in Bethlehem.
Joseph and Mary had come from Nazareth because, we are told, their presence was required for a census taken by Caesar Augustus, still at the height of his fame. Of all the millions of souls numbered in the Emperor's census, the one born that night in Bethlehem must have been, in temporal terms, about the most insignificant. It was a confrontation of sorts between a ruler of the earth, by then proclaimed a god, and the lowliest of his subjects. Yet their roles were to be reversed; for centuries Jesus would reign over men's minds and hearts, when Augustus's kingdom existed only in history books and ruins.
It was precisely to replenish the world's stock of faith that the Bethlehem birth took place. Faith is the key which enables us to decipher God's otherwise inscrutable communications. Seen with the eye of faith, the shepherds rejoice, the Wise Men prostrate themselves and offer their gifts, the very stars are rearranged. And Mary bears in her arms the new light that has come into the world to lighten all mankind.
The story of how Jesus came to earth, what He said and did here, and how He left the world while still remaining in it, has been more told, mulled over, analyzed and illustrated than any other in human history. So many hands! So many versions and interpretations! We have the historical Jesus, the freedom-fighting Jesus, the erotic Jesus, the proletarian Jesus. Today's revisions of Jesus's essential message claim that His kingdom is of this world, that man can live by bread alone and must lay up treasure on earth in an ever-increasing gross national product. Future historians are likely to conclude that the more we knew about Jesus, the less we knew Him or heeded His words.
But throughout history, the words of the Gospel have inspired many of the noblest accomplishments of our civilization. It is on behalf of these words that majestic buildings like Chartres Cathedral have been constructed, and that great saints like Francis of Assisi have so joyously dedicated their lives to God and men. To the greater glory of these words Bach composed, El Greco painted, Saint Augustine laboured at his City of God and Pascal at his Pensees. To what these words bring us, there is truly no end; if they have survived their commentators -- especially their latter-day ones -- then surely they must be considered immortal. And so, either Jesus never was or He still is. As a typical product of these confused times, with a skeptical mind and a sensual disposition, diffidently and unworthily, but with the utmost certainty, I assert that He still is.
To those who, like myself, fear that "Western civilization" may be over, and that another Dark Age is upon us, the seeming collapse of faith is desolating. Yet suddenly, in the most unlikely theatre of all, a Solzhenitsyn raises his voice, while in the dismal slums of Calcutta, a Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity go about Jesus's work of love. For I was ahungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me -- the words come alive in the fulfillment of Jesus's behest to see in the suffering face of humanity His suffering face.
Jesus asked more of His followers than any other teacher ever has -- to do good to those who harm us, and pray for those who persecute us; when we are struck on the right cheek, to turn the other cheek also, and when someone has taken our coat, to hand over our cloak; to give to whomever asks; and when someone presses us to go with him one mile, to go with him two. Not just to refrain from adultery, but to refrain from desiring; and not just to refrain from killing, but from being angry or calling someone a fool.
Jesus was not, in our contemporary sense, an idealist, and gives no intimation of believing that the world could be made better on its own terms. I cannot see that Jesus ever advocated a reform of any kind, or supported any human cause, however enlightened. His teaching ranged between the sublimest mysticism and the bluntest realism, leaving out the middle ground, the lush pastures of liberalism and goodwill, where editorialists and media pundits graze, and a stifling hot wind of rhetoric endlessly blows. He gave us not a plan of action and certainly not a program of reforms, but rather those wonderfully illuminating contradictions -- the first to be the last, the poorest the richest, the weakest the strongest, the most obscure the most celebrated.
Plenty of great teachers, mystics, martyrs and saints have spoken words full of grace and truth. In the case of Jesus alone, however, the belief has persisted that when He came into the world, God deigned to take on the likeness of a man in order that men might reach out from their mortality to His immortality. I am the resurrection, and the life, He taught, and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.
As I approach my end, I find Jesus's outrageous claim ever more captivating and meaningful. Quite often, waking up in the night as the old do, I feel myself to be half out of my body, hovering between life and death, with eternity rising in the distance.
I see my ancient carcass, prone between the sheets, stained and worn like a scrap of paper dropped in the gutter and, hovering over it, myself, like a butterfly released from its chrysalis stage and ready to fly away. Are caterpillars told of their impending resurrection? How in dying they will be transformed from poor earth crawlers into creatures of the air, with exquisitely painted wings? If told, do they believe it? I imagine the wise old caterpillars shaking their heads -- no, it can't be; it's a fantasy.
Yet in the limbo between living and dying, as the night clocks tick remorselessly on, and the black sky implacably shows not one single streak or scratch of grey, I hear those words: I am the resurrection, and the life, and feel myself carried along on a great tide of joy and peace.
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