Christmas, nativity and dividing walls of hostility

This is one of the most unsentimental nativity scenes I’ve ever seen. The dividing wall, the spy-holes too high to see through, the key people excluded from the manger – wish I knew where to buy one. The concrete wall, which some call a necessity and others an obscenity separates Jew from Palestinian, and is a scandal – in the technical sense of a stumbling block, the place where hope and humanity are tripped up, the obstacle that halts progress.

And the angels sang, ‘Peace on earth and goodwill to all peoples…but we still strain to hear that angel song. And every time we give ourselves to peace-making, and every-time we slowly dismantle those walls which have been built, in our family, where we work, in that place where we live, and in the wider world, – brick by brick, hurt by hurt, wound by wound, we work away at those far too numerous walls of enmity and hostility, those ancient hatreds and daily resentments, those scandals, which in the end have to be removed by the scandal of God come amongst us as the crucified God – in whom God was reconciling the world to himself….breaking down dividing walls of hostility….