Holy Land Pilgrimage 2015, from Michael B. Chesson, the Epiphany in Winchester

The Church of the Holy Make Believe

After our visit to Bethlehem and the Church of the Nativity, I felt that the morning's experience had cost me a good deal of my faith.  I silently said a pious little prayer for the grace to recover at least part of it.

Thanks to our priests and two wonderful guides, we arrived quite early.  Manger square was cold, slippery, and wet.  Deep in an encounter with the other, one of my favorite quotations did not intrude on my scant consciousness: "An haughty spirit goeth before a fall." For that spirit was mine.  Bouyed by kind souls and the grace that I prayed for, I have begun to realize the depth of my fall.

After some introductory remarks, we were given our liberty to roam about, but sternly instructed to meet by 9:00, or perhaps it was changed to 9:30, at the rear of one of the several churches that cling to the complex "like barnicles," a figure of speech used by two different writers I have encountered since our Holy Land pilgrimage arrived in Jerusalem.  I wondered idly which writer was the plagiarist, or whether both had lifted the language from yet another author?  The change in time was only a mild irritant for one who likes certainty, but bridles when urged to be flexible, a near constant admonition.

Some places we were told not to enter lest we cause a theological or possibly a diplomatic crisis leading to another holy war, a term that I group with those used by military historians, like "friendly fire." Both can kill you, but always for the best of reasons.

I realized then that I was in the supposed birthplace of the Prince of Peace, the Nazarene whose nativity was moved in a wonderful slight of hand by leaders like Jerome, reeking with incense, as Helena reeked with the gold and power of empire that enabled her to find the true cross, an Indiana Jones in the garb of an empress.  It is contested ground, but I had known that even before our bus ride from Ben Gurion airport to the St. George's guesthouse, through a landscape marked by walls, razor wire, and restricted access highways, a nightmarish blend of the Jim Crow South and Orwell's 1984.

The spiel given to pilgrims by A-list guides now tells one that my Lord and Savior was born not in a wooden stable but a cave; that the inn that was full was not a franchise brand, but a cave full of cousins; and that Mary gave birth in a recess of the cave that offered some privacy, but was also used by animals.  There may have been a manger, but it was carved out of stone, but yes, it would have had the benefit of animal warmth, like any stable.  It's one of my fondest childhood memories, that babe and the animals.

I had become increasingly uncomfortable before our group gathered.  Seeking a quiet place, not to pray but to think, and try to control my nerves, I found that I was back home, with the sexton, lectors, and ushers all rushing busily and importantly around the church.

When our group did finally gather in respectful silence, one of our number being designated as pool photographer, the church and the Latin Mass was soon awash in a flood of stereotypical Asian tourists, each with at least one camera, and some with a battery of electronic gadgets.

We soon left the guitar strumming Mass, a ceremony that could have been found in almost any American Catholic church, for a Greek Orthodox service, or perhaps it was Armenian.  What I do recall was the metal scaffolding, and one little cherub swinging on his own personal liturgical jungle gym.

And oh the wiring!  Haitian wiring simply cannot compare with the Palestinian variety.  It's all exposed, whether inside or outside. 

Our worship had become a movable feast for, led by our faithful guides, like Virgil leading Dante, they found a service deep underground where we became, if only for a moment, participants and not mere spectators.  The ancient officiant wore a stocking cap of a design I've never seen in the Bean catalog, and he looked a bit like the misshapen character in The Lord of the Rings movies who keeps whining about "my precious," the difference being that this ordained and vested gnome really did dispense the precious.  Seldom have I tasted better.

Still, I was overcome by the profusion of trappings and decorations in worship spaces that looked as if they had not been dusted in a century, if ever.  The walls, or in some cases canvas tarps, were covered by carefully framed black and white photographs of dignitaries, all male, whose highest earthly honor was to rate their likeness being hung somewhere in the God complex.  Few living now remember them, and even fewer knew them.

Emerging, finally, from the welter of competing Christian services, we were told that the wild cacophony of unintelligible liturgies was produced by only three denominations that "controlled" the space, unlike the six that compete at the NFL level in the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem.

Bethlehem is a sad, tawdry little tourist town that one could find in a thousand American burgs.  There was nothing that made me feel spiritual, much less holy, depressed as I was by the ever present wall.  The excellent food and attractive gift shop, both run by "cousins" of our chief guide, could not disguise the sour taste I felt when I discovered that the "authentic" shawl pressed on me by a street vendor had been made in India.  It does make me look a bit like Omar Sharif, but in wire rim glasses and without the bedroom eyes.

After my Bethlehem visit I felt, not like a rude beast lumbering somewhere to be born, but a sullen sinner who wanted to rant but lacked an audience.  I wanted to escape, to get away even from my fellow pilgrims.  But I could not.  As our guide Iyad reminds us, "you have no choice."

I reached bottom on the bus ride through the checkpoint back to St. George's when I read one of the many handouts we've been given.  In "Bethlehem," Annie Dillard says everything I felt and have tried to say and achieved an epiphany, while telling me I've not even reached the level of an agnostic much less a heretic or atheist.  Who better to teach that lesson than the Pilgrim from Tinker Creek.

Tomorrow we head into the desert.

Michael Chesson