Let's go, go to Bethlehem! - But how?
The images of horror and bloody brutality were burned into the souls of billions of people as a contrast to the "bright" Christmas market in Magdeburg on Friday night. Six dead, 200 wounded - the mournful end of a single 400-metre-long act of car terrorism. The invisible black shroud, like a thunderbolt on souls, with the inscription: 'Never before! What's next? How can you celebrate Christmas like this?
In front of the cathedral in Magdeburg, it is no longer the decorated pine tree that stands, but the light of a thousand and a thousand flowers, mourning candles, a kind of eternal memento in the night. On Saturday, the day after the assassination, there was a service of mourning in the cathedral, a prayer for the families of the victims to bear the hellish psychological burden of horror, loss, and woundedness - while they were preparing for another family Christmas!
The first thing that comes to mind is what the German playwright Brecht once wrote: "Life is indeed perilous". Or, to take a biblical influence (our treasure is in earthenware vessels - 2 Cor 4,7), our Hungarian poets have written in many variations: life is fragile, vulnerable. For me, the color of God is the first thing that comes to mind, which I have already written about in Advent, but I have not yet got to black and white.
What is this? Black and White? - Black and white? The tragic and real color change of death and life? Or Black in White? - black in white? Sudden, unexpected death in the illusion of Christmas lights? Or From Black to White? In spite of everything, shall we move away from black and dramatic reality towards white and pure light?
However difficult it is! From Magdeburg to Bethlehem? More like. There is no other way.
But this pilgrimage can only be spiritual, mental, spiritual. After all, Bethlehem hardly exists anymore. In Gaza, ruins, destruction, and death.
So where do we go from here?
On the inner paths of faith. Through the silent chants of compassionate prayers. On pilgrimages of individual and congregational prayer. Individually and communally.
Selfishly not forgetting the two festive days of Christmas Eve at home, neither with the un-whisky and stunning moments of black and white, but with the reflection on the bereaved who are experiencing spiritual trauma. Without any theatrics or spectacle, with an inner sigh, a prayer, Our Father or an individual plea: Lord, have mercy on them, on us! Let us move from the shocking images to the path of real compassion. In the spirit, we can come alongside the losers, virtually laying down our flowers of compassion in the crowd in front of the cathedral.
Let us have a prayer for Magdeburg, for a stop to senseless death and murder.
Go away, let's go away! - Christmas holiday culture, with loss of illusion
This phrase is repeatedly used in connection with the Christmas story. The birth story of Christmas, often painted as a negative, is not an illusion, not a fairy tale, not a fairy tale, but the most real story. It is realistic and revealing about man, about sin, and revealing about God, about saving love. He did not want to lose humanity in illusion. There are many ways to get to Bethlehem, even if they are by the ways of the soul. One can get there the way the shepherds did. With a holy curiosity, setting out from the night to see what had happened there, of which the angel of the Lord had given them news (Luke 2:8-15). One can set out as the wise men of the sunrise, the astronomers, did, who set out thousands of miles away, at the silent signal of the observatories of Babylon and other places, at the launching of the multiple starlight (the great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn) to Bethlehem. After months of persistent camel-riding, they reached Herod to find out the truth. The ruler, who later became a child murderer, had no idea of the miracle that was about to take place near his throne in Jerusalem. Once he knew, he secretly listened to the strangers and issued the order: Go and inquire about the child (Matthew 2:7-9).
What a difference between the voluntary and miraculous march of the shepherds, the wise men, and the good command of the king, who fears for his power! Simple men, scholars, and dread power behold the axis of life moved, the bringer of eternal life, the savior, the pure light of the black night!
The holiday culture of Christmas has it all. As a theatrical background, as a realistic scene. Today it is also the black night Magdeburg and Bethlehem in danger, and the most realistic Christmas pilgrimage: the illusion-robbing inner journey of the Word, the Revelation, the Bible, where we can really reach the manger and the One who lies in it. To the Saviour of the world, who shines through all things, who controls even the positions of the stars, to God in human form, to infinite, eternal Love, who takes up residence in a tiny body. It is as if it were disappearing from our world, and the light is returning to its source because it does not feel at home in the "black holes" of our history, our days, and our hearts.
Yet Bethlehem is present in Magdeburg! Paradoxical, but true
Advent and Christmas, but it would be nice to celebrate without the similar bloody reality of Magdeburg, formerly Berlin and Cologne! What happened, however, underlines the earthly reality even more:
We need the Saviour like a loaf of bread in this sinful world.
We need Jesus, the Saviour because with Him, the wounded existence of Cain is a gaping chasm. Without the Child of Bethlehem, the delusion of the unlivability of life, the subversive ideology of Diabolus, would paralyze life on earth.
Jesus, the eternal Word, the divine Spirit, became flesh despite the fact that he knew that he had come among his own, but they would not receive him. But those who received him, he gave them the power to become children of God (John 1,12). Even today, it is only and alone, solus/sola eksusía, potestas, divine counter-power, that can move Bethlehem into Magdeburg, to display in the hellish human evil the eternal gentle power that heals, saves, and helps through all the temptations of the wilderness. Only if we are willing to do something. To believe in His name (John 1:12).
To believe in the Lord of Bethlehem Magdeburg, before whom we must lay down all our illusions. The illusion of a welcoming culture, the illusion of "Wir schaffen es" - "We can do it". And the illusion of religious ignorance. Because other religions have other ideas, but they do have cherished tendencies towards world power, we cannot naively expose ourselves to their realism of power. Sociologist of religion Peter Berger has been warning about this for years. The author from Sansalalgéria, who said in an interview about his book 2084 - The End of the World, is right: Islam's aim is to intimidate Europe. It worked. As the Protestant theologian Philip Jenkins wrote in the 1980s in his book "Is God's Continent Still Europe?", the time will soon come when the Eiffel Tower will shine with a crescent moon. It has not yet come.
Only sobriety, realism without illusions, a proportionate defense policy, and a conscious education that defends our cultural values, can be a protective wall that even the gates of hell cannot breach. Let us, too, go to the Child of Bethlehem, who can teach us all these things. Faith armed with spiritual weapons is the only thing that can withstand the flood of delusions, false beliefs, blind faiths, and self-deception. Only then will Bethlehem be present in Magdeburg, in Budapest, in Europe...
(Dr. Lajos Békefy, Ph.D. is a public writer, spiritual publicist, and founding editor-in-chief of Theo-Digest.)
