Happy Chaos in Bethlehem

We spend a good part of each day on the bus.

That leads me to answer a question someone asked. Is tourism down right now? I can only give an anecdotal answer. This is our fifth trip to the Holy Land since 1986, and things seem as busy as ever. We’ve seen tour buses constantly since we arrived last Monday night. We’ve seen them at Caesarea, Megiddo, Nazareth, lots of them at Capernaum, and there are tour buses all over Jerusalem. I don’t know whether the total numbers are up or down, but there are plenty of buses on the road. As we drove past the Old City this morning and looked back at Gethsemane, we saw tour buses lined up bumper to bumper coming down the Mount of Olives. 

Yesterday we treated our group to a lunch of St. Peter’s Fish at a restaurant near the Sea of Galilee.

Earlier today, at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, I heard someone say, “Pastor Ray!” Looking up I saw the familiar face of Bart Corley. He and Carol are here on a tour with Dr. Michael Rydelnik from Moody Bible Institute. A few minutes later we saw Rosa Cervantes who is on the same tour. We’ve known Rosa for twenty years. That was a divine serendipity. 

Irene Danson found this coin (an Israeli shekel) inside the mouth of her fish.

Someone else asked about safety. Again, purely anecdotal, but things have seemed very peaceful on this trip. Because of the nature of a tour, you tend to focus on your group and not think about the outside world very much. But we’ve felt very safe at all times and things have seemed calm everywhere we’ve been.

A view of Jerusalem from the chapel at Dominus Flevit Church on the Mount of Olives.

Back to Bethlehem for a moment. The town seems to be growing. Certainly the tourists have arrived in droves. After Malcolm left our bus, we met Iman, the woman who would serve as our guide in Bethlehem. She greeted us warmly, said she had worked in the States for a while, and now serves as a tour guide. As we approached the Church of the Nativity, things were even more chaotic than usual, with buses ahead and behind, horns blowing, a muzzein calling faithful Muslims to prayer, vendors hawking their wares, and a policeman who made us park in a garage, forcing us to walk up a very steep street to get to the church.

Malcolm explains the layout of ancient Jerusalem to our group.

If you’ve ever seen Christmas Eve services from Manger Square, you know that a vast plaza extends from the ancient church. The church is one of the oldest Christian churches in the world, going back to the 2nd century. Christian pilgrims from all over the world (and from every denomination) come to Bethlehem to visit the birthplace of Jesus. Today it seemed as if the whole world had indeed descended on the City of David. Every time we’ve visited, the church has been packed but nothing like today. 

We met Rosa Cervantes this afternoon in a divine serendipity in Jerusalem.

We entered the vast sanctuary administered by the Orthodox Church to find ourselves in the midst of a crowd of thousands of people milling around, talking, laughing, pointing, and constantly taking pictures. At one end the priests seemed to be attempting to hold a service but very few were paying attention. The crowd was pressing in to enter the room leading to the grotto marking the spot where Jesus was born. A number of police officers tried (with little success) to get the crowd to behave. It looked exactly like a crowd trying to enter the Super Bowl, with a wide throng of people lining one side of the sanctuary, curling around to the other side where we were. Everything was in a state of happy, weary, exasperated disarray. No one knew what was going on.

Where else would you see this?

At one point a church group (from Italy, maybe) ahead of us in line began to sing “O Come All Ye Faithful” in a language that might have been Italian but I can’t be sure because it was noisy inside the church. Still, I thought it was a beautiful thing to sing a Christmas carol in Bethlehem. There are no pews or chairs in the vast, ancient sanctuary. Just a large open space with two rows of massive stone pillars on either side. When the priest heard the singing, he clapped his hands, left the front of the church, and came back to the offenders and told them to keep their joy to themselves. Or something like that. 

Our intrepid guide Iman figured out how to beat the crowds and the chaos.

Meanwhile Iman said, “I’ve got a plan.” Then she disappeared. When a police officer asked where our guide was, we didn’t know what to say. Moments later we saw Iman gesticulating to the officer in question, both of them standing on the wooden covering of the 3rd-century mosaic from the first church building. Then Iman said, “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to cheat the police (is it okay to cheat the police in Bethlehem?) by walking out of the crowd, going to the Catholic church next door, and then send people in six at a time.” With our scheme in hand, we adjourned to the Catholic Church that is itself part of the larger Church of the Nativity, there to plan our next move. We decided to send our six people in through the exit. That way they would get in the way but wouldn’t be noticed. After a long time, the first six returned, having triumphantly navigated the suffocating crowds to catch a glimpse of the grotto. Later we sent another group, and then another. Our final group was held up because, on this extremely crowded day, the Discovery Channel showed up in Bethlehem to do some filming. None of our people made the filming, but we didn’t get arrested either.

A partial view of the crowd inside the Church of the Nativity.

Iman (who lives in Bethlehem) said she had never seen the church so crowded. Evidently some cruise ships docked at Ashdod and hordes of people descended on Bethlehem, all wanting entrance to the church at the same time. Thus the happy, exasperating chaos. 

We managed to survive it all. And as I sat there, listening to people chatter in dozens of different languages, from countries on every continent, I was struck by the sheer power of faith to draw people from all points of the compass to one church in Bethlehem on a Friday afternoon in October.

The song says, “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” and as best we could, that’s what we were all trying to do. Our thanks to Iman for finagling a way to get us in through the exit so we could join the millions of pilgrims who gladly say, “O come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.”