Terrorists Abroad

Harry T. Cook

12/24/08

A Sermon for Christmas

Where they came from, they would have been called “Yusef and Muhdium.” Today they might have trouble negotiating airport security in the United States, not only because of their names but because of their complexion and facial features. The tradition of this season is that Yusef and Muhdium traversed 90 miles more or less of rugged Palestinian territory from a village near the Sea of Galilee — which merits no mention in Hebrew scripture and, in fact, may not have existed until the 2nd Century C.E. — to a Judean town called Bethlehem. Muhdium made the trip upon a swaybacked ass thoughtfully provided by various artists over the centuries, who figured she couldn’t have walked all that way nine months pregnant. Yusef, supposedly on foot, led the beast to Bethlehem because, according to the Gospel of Luke, a census had been ordered by Augustus Caesar requiring every man to go to his ancestral village to be registered.

No independent attestation of such a census exists, although it may be that the Syrian legate, Quirinius, conducted one of Judea around 6 or 7 C.E. Of this story the author and/or editors of the Lucan gospel may have been aware. Even knowing that much of the story is fanciful, let us stipulate that Yusef and Muhdium made that trek from Galilee to Judea, and that they were strangers in Bethlehem. They would also have been considered terrorists because Mudhium would have been carrying beneath her outer garments and within her body a not-so- improvised explosive device — a device that when detonated in the ethical teachings of her son would provide a force sufficient to put down the mighty from their seats that the humbled and meek might be exalted.

Yusef and Mudhium made it through the badlands of Palestine, past any security personnel that may have intended to waylay them. Their IED wasn’t detonated, according to Luke, until many years later when Jesus wandered into an assembly of Galilean Jews in Nazareth, demanded that a scroll containing words from Isaiah be given him, read aloud the following passage and made a simple, nine-word midrash upon it.

Isaiah’s words: “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners, to comfort all who mourn.” Jesus’ commentary: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Meaning what? Meaning that he had taken upon himself the keeping of the promises Isaiah had made. That was the ear-crushing sound of the explosive device, which echoes yet across the world.

Though Yusef and Mudhium were Galilean Palestinians, they would be called terrorists today because the force they brought into the world would eventually shake its social and economic foundations. When and where the ethical principles credited by history to the sage of Nazareth are put into practice, oppression is overcome, the brokenhearted are restored, captives are freed, justice is done.

Of that little town called Bethlehem, Phillips Brooks wrote: “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight” — the hopes, that is, of those who deserve justice; the fears of those who have failed to do it and must now be required to do it.

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© Copyright 2008, Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.