In solidarity with all victims of the conflict between Israel and Hamas, churches in the West Bank city of Bethlehem have cancelled festivities for Christmas in favor of prayers for peace. This nativity, created by the Evanglical Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, relocates Jesus' birthplace in the rubble of a bombed out home, like so many in the region.

In 1983, Sojourners Magazine published a story about the Bethlehem Peace Pilgrimage, which started out on Good Friday 1982 from the West Coast of the United States. Pilgrims walked more than 6,500 miles across the United States and Europe before reaching Bethlehem on Christmas Eve 1983, more than a year and a half later. Led by a Jesuit priest, Father Jack Morris, the group prayed for peace and nuclear disarmament.

Bethlehem, the pilgrims stated, is the breach where divine power breaks into human history to provide us with the way to peace. When asked why they left homes, jobs, and even families to make the 6,500+ mile trek, those same pilgrims said it was because they wanted to show the world that we can "go to peace with the same fervor with which we've gone to war." 

Forty years later, what does a pilgrimage like this one say about Jesus' birth, life, and death? What about the nativity amidst the rubble? How does Jesus challenge our assumptions about God? Power? Human community? What assumptions do we have to shed about Bethlehem (or the Holy Land) to understand better the story of Jesus' birth? To understand better the conflict in the region? How might we go to peace with fervor this Advent?

Contact Rachel Wright, Director of Communications, with questions or concerns about these daily Advent devotionals.