As someone who is studying to be a minister and an academic, Christmas brings with it the opportunity to explore the many dimensions of the birth of Jesus Christ. Rest assured, there is a plethora of ways in which one could view and appreciate the birth of Jesus. However, I believe that these various dimensions may not be the best way for us to understand the birth of Jesus this Christmas. So, today, I posit a different way to appreciate the baby Jesus – as a baby of Bethlehem.
Around 4-6 BCE, Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem in Judea. Then occupied by the Roman Empire, Judea was a land marked by high tension, heavy taxation, and mass poverty. The Jewish people, of whom Jesus was a part, were being oppressed in their own land. Their existence and livelihood were subject to the whims of their imperial occupiers. These imperial forces called for a census, and because of this census, Joseph and Mary, the parents of Jesus, were forced to travel to Bethlehem – the ancestral homeplace of Joseph's family. However, there was no room in the inns of Bethlehem, and Mary was forced to give birth to Jesus in a dirty stable at the back of an inn. Jesus was born an impoverished child in an occupied Bethlehem.
Today, babies are also born in an occupied Bethlehem. Though two thousand years have passed and the occupying forces now claim a different name, the reality remains that Bethlehem is an occupied city. Within its borders, countless babies are born in similar environments to that of Jesus. They are born to parents in uncertain circumstances, parents who are viewed lowly by the occupying forces. They are born in poverty, poverty caused by the occupying forces. They are born in danger, danger which exists because of the ever-enduring conflict over the city. Still, despite these circumstances, these babies are ever-born with deep and undeniable promise – promise similar to that which was born in Jesus.
Jesus was born as a promise to the people of Bethlehem and, by extension, all the occupied peoples of Judea. Jesus was born as an incarnation of the Divine. His purpose, the substance of his promise, was to realize the Reign of God amidst the world of his people's occupation. This wonderful promise was given to the occupied people by this little baby of Bethlehem – a lowly child in a occupied land, born in circumstances some can only imagine.
This Christmas, I wonder if a similar prophetic promise is contained in today's babies of Bethlehem. Perhaps, amidst the burnt-out cars and injustices that plague the city of Bethlehem, a little baby has in them a renewed promise of the Reign of God. Maybe, just maybe, the promise of God's Reign is wrapped up in a Bethlehemite mother's swaddle, soon to be announced in the tradition of the baby of Bethlehem we worship from two-thousand years ago.
God rest ye merry, gentlepeople, let you not dismay,
In Bethlehem, the Son of God was born to us this day,
To save us all from Evil's power and bring about God's Reign,
O' tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy,
O' tidings of comfort and joy.