Thoughts on Israel #4...

It’s Tragic!!!

So, I want to be clear with this blog post. I am not church bashing or bringing up all the holes in organized religion. No matter what you believe about life here and after we die, you have that organized into a construct.  So you have an organized religion whether you serve a god or you are the god of your religion makes no difference to me.  I have no interest in any of that for this particular blog post.

But what I saw today troubles me deeply.  And make no mistake; I fully realize that I am making some assumptions.  I think they are safe ones, but assumptions without the full picture nonetheless.

Today we went to Bethlehem. This is the city in which Jesus was born. As the story goes, Jesus was born in a stable, which was essentially a cave for animals. The wonder of the advent is that the Son of God incarnated Himself as a baby and was born in a cave in the dirt – next to sheep manure and cow pies.  He came to the lowest of the low places to reveal to us a God who meets us in our deepest brokenness.  And healing is found in meeting Him there – in our brokenness. 

Just up the road 5 miles is the Herodian.  It is a palace that Herod built literally by moving a mountain (see Mark 11 – Jesus would have been looking at this structure when He makes that statement). But Jesus, the Son of God, didn’t enter the world there. He came in a stable so that no one was too low to have access to the Savior of the world.

In 329, Constantine’s mother built a giant cathedral over the supposed cave in which Jesus was born. It was wrecked, but then rebuilt during the Byzantine period in the 520’s.  And it still stands today, making it the oldest standing church in the world.  Sections of the original floor from 329 are still there.  I have the pictures. But something grabbed me there that shows the juxtaposition of humanity.

I took a photo of a “poor box” or a collection box for the poor and without moving my feet took a picture of a chandelier that would easily sell for $250,000 or more. The cathedral was this elaborate building with real gold mosaic tiles on the wall, and I wondered in it all if this may be missing the whole point entirely.  Did Jesus want us to remember His birthplace at all?  And what’s more, did He want us to remember it this way?

As we entered into the area where the cave was, people were literally kissing the rocks.  They have had to put tapestries up in order to keep people from scraping pieces of the rock off to take with them so that they will be blessed.

It all felt very oppressed. I was troubled in my spirit as we left.  Trying to put an emotion label on what I felt was hard. I vacillated from anger to sadness to shame. But I think where I landed was confusion. I felt very confused by what I saw. Why would anyone weep and kiss a rock? Why would a church worth literally millions and millions of dollars ask others to give to the poor? Why do people flock to this place that isn’t even for sure the right spot to run into a cave that looks more like a room with really bad wall paper?  What is all of this?

This is where I have landed…

All of this stuff is the by-product of worshipping God in space, not time. Doesn’t that sound profound???

Here is what I mean. When we attach God to places, we are worshipping Him in space.  This is how the ancients worshipped their pagan gods. And our God too for that matter. When we do this, if we are not careful, the rocks, the bricks, the mortar becomes sacred. Instead of being a vehicle to point us to God, they become the objects of worship themselves. So we weep at a rock, but not at the poverty of this world that breaks God’s heart. We exchange the heart of God in all areas for places and things. And quite frankly, it all feels a bit contrived.

This is why Sabbath is still such a valuable practice. Sabbath forces us to worship God in time, not space. It forces us to stop our clamoring for provision and learn to rest in the grace of a God who has it all under control. We are forced to say with our whole being even in how we spend our minutes that we trust that God will close the gaps in our lives that we cannot.

Now, I am not saying that rest is the answer to the Church of the Nativity. What I am saying is that I think we can learn to worship God more wholly when we learn to worship God in our minutes, not in our buildings.  Then, whatever we do in our buildings (and churches are always going to have buildings) will be full of time well spent – meaningful.