Google Maps won’t help you – if you want to trace the road from Nazareth through the West Bank hill country down to Bethlehem, the likely route which Joseph and Mary took. Google Maps does offer you a choice of lengthy detours on Israeli highways – swinging widely westwards on route 6, the Yitzhak Rabin Highway, or eastwards on route 90, hugging the border with Jordan, but both routes only take you as far as Jerusalem; a few miles further south, Palestinian Bethlehem seems out of bounds. The obvious route down the middle is Highway 60, but this is offline, outside Google’s remit, for south of the Arabic Israeli city of Nazareth it crosses into Palestinian territory, and clearly it’s a problematic road, a contested route. …
But, why dwell on the present troubles in occupied Palestine in a night which is meant to be about tidings of comfort and joy? Only because those very tidings of comfort and joy were born in a Palestine which was every bit as conflicted as today; only because the journey which Joseph and Mary took from Nazareth to Bethlehem was shaped as fully by the demands of the occupation forces as the journeys which Palestinian couples take on that route today. The tidings of comfort and joy of which we sing are not a fantasy delivered in a dream-like state of consciousness; the gospel of Jesus was forged in the harshest of environments; the good news of the kingdom of God which Jesus promoted addresses – with generosity and hope – the most extreme situations with its eyes wide open to the realities of our world today. …
– from my Christmas Eve midnight talk, Mapping out the Saviour's territory.
