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Just after I graduated from seminary and started my ministry, I was fortunate to be given the chance to go and study at St. George’s College in Jerusalem. I took one of their flagship courses, the Palestine of Jesus, which is designed to take you through the life of Jesus by visiting the areas of His life and ministry.
In journeying through Jesus’ life, the program made the logical choice of starting at Bethlehem, the place of Jesus’ birth. Before we made it to the City of David, we made a pit-stop at Herodium, the ancient palace of King Herod the Great, ruler of Israel at Jesus’ birth under the authority of the Roman Empire.
Back in Herod’s day, Herodium was a site to behold. It was basically a vacation palace for Herod, if you will. Plus it was strategically located. Set all the way on a hill on the way to Bethlehem, you could see for miles and miles, an advantage if you ever needed to worry about people rising up against you. There was everything you could want: a building carved from the finest stones, a massive pool, and even an outdoor theatre.
Not only was Herodium a luxurious palace to live in, Herod also planed for his body to remain there always. In the middle of the palace was a staircase leading to his tomb where Herod would be laid to rest after a lavish funeral to match his lavish lifestyle. Basically Herodium was built as a shrine to all things Herod.
After our time at Herodium, we went to Shepherds' Field in Bethlehem. This is a site, we were told, where Christmas gatherings are held by the church. Our visit there was intended to give us a sense of what Jesus’ birthplace might have originally looked like. Shepherd's Field is just a simple cave, and not a big one at that, next to a field.
At this point, let me take some time to explain what we know of customs in Jesus’ day and how it all ties in and fits with the story of Jesus’ birth in the Gospel according to Luke. As we know from the Biblical account, Jesus’ parents had nowhere to go or stay in Bethlehem. What we learned at St. George’s is that in their day and age when you couldn’t find a place to stay, you went to a cave. Greg, the dean of St. George’s at the time, explained to us at Shepherds' Field, there likely would have been other people with Mary and Joseph in that cave. Some of these people in turn would have had livestock with them. When it was time for Mary to give birth to Jesus, as Greg once again explained, she probably went to the only place she could get privacy, over where the animals were. Thus the place she laid Jesus was the only place she could have placed him, in a manger as we learn in Luke’s Gospel account, which literally means the place where the animals would have eaten out of.
Jesus was born in a meager setting, the only place his impoverished parents with no connections in the area could go. Unlike Herodium, this place was not a palace for a king.
Now in our time Herodium is not the lavish palace it was in Herod’s day. In fact, my guess is very few of you have heard of it. Herod himself is not the ‘great’ figure of history his title would suggest. Most of us are only familiar with him in the Biblical Narrative.
Just as Herod has fallen by the wayside of history, so has his palace. It is now nothing more than a ruin. While there are still some stones that stand there, the path up to it is mainly dirt and gravel. The luxury of Herod’s rule is lost to the sands of time.
The place where Jesus was born, on the other hand, is much different. While Shepherds’ Field gives a sense of what the spot would have looked like in Jesus’ day, the actual location has a much different air to it. It no longer looks like a cave. Instead, it is a magnificent church with iconography everywhere and a great portion of the place encrusted with precious metals, including a beautiful engraving around a hole reaching down to the bedrock of this place.
Even the treatment of the two places is different. While we were there, Herodium served as a dig for archeologists, the very thing one does with ruins no longer in use. The Church of the Nativity, on the other hand, was undergoing renovation courtesy of the care our Orthodox Siblings in Christ have shown the place over the centuries. It is still revered for what it once was and continues to be used in that spirit of awe and wonder.
At one point on this journey, Greg told us something that has stayed with me ever sense. He said, “The power of Messiah is found in a village, not in the palace.”
Saint Paul gives us another way to phrase this in 2 Corinthians 12:9 when he tells us that for God, “power is made perfect in weakness.”
God’s power isn’t showcased in the ways we might expect. The Lord doesn’t ride in on a horse with an army, the great warrior many thought the Messiah would be. God doesn’t live into power as those like Herod see it. God doesn’t employ power as any human might anticipate.
The Lord doesn’t even send another in God’s place. God in the fullness of the Lord’s Being enters this world not with thunder or fanfare, but in the form of a human baby. God doesn’t shy away from any aspect of human life, including the weakness and helplessness of birth or even the humbleness of being placed in a feeding-trough in a cave in a small village, the backwaters of the backwaters of the Roman Empire.
God’s power being made perfect in weakness doesn’t end there. 33 years later, Jesus’ victorious entrance into Jerusalem is not on a steed, but a donkey. He rides in not to take Jerusalem back from the Romans, but to be put to death by them. God’s triumphant moment is to die in the most humiliating and painful way possible, especially for that day and age. God does all this in order to free us from death so that like Jesus we might rise into new life eternal with our Lord.
If you remember nothing else from Christmas, this Season of the Nativity of our Lord, remember this: where we find God is not where we would expect. God isn’t found in the palace. This is where wealth decays and stone turns to dust. Instead, God is found in a village, born in humble circumstances, and placed in a manger, a feeding-trough for animals.
God’s power is made perfect in weakness, all the way from Jesus’ birth to His death in this world. The amazing thing is that weakness, unlike the strength of Herod, is remembered and celebrated today, even in the place of Jesus’ birth, the place of God’s Incarnation into this world. It is that weakness we gather here every week to recognize. It is through this weakness that death was turned backwards in the Resurrection of our Lord. Through Jesus’ Death and Resurrection, God has come closer to us so that we might know our Maker all the more. This is the meaning of Christmas, as it is at the very heart and soul of our Faith. If you take away nothing else from here, at least remember that. Follow not the powers of this world, but that of God made perfect in weakness. Strive in your lives to truly understand God’s power, and do all you can to share and emulate that in this world.