Selling Holy Land by the Pound

Last night the streets smelled of Vegas. There was a distinct presence of vanilla.. not the real vanilla, or even the vanilla from scented candles, but the vanilla from whatever it is that casinos use to keep their floors and elevators from smelling like whiskey and sex.

Strangely, Vegas is one of the few cities that has ever truly captivated me, to the point of calling me to return after I departed. Incongruous as that might sound for a faux-socialist seminarian to say about a city built on the illicit, underhanded and amoral, but you have to admire a city that truly knows itself. So many cities and towns try to be something they're not; the farming town that wants to be an industrial giant, the burgeoning city that believes that building bigger arts centers will magically make them an arts capital. Vegas... has none of these pretensions. It seems to enjoy being precisely what it is, and finds new avenues only in advancing and refining its set course.

Bethlehem, despite thousands of years of history, seems to have less of a grasp on itself...which makes sense for city living through as much turmoil and uncertainty as this town sees daily. A tourist town, for about three blocks. Then a rural village. Then a few blocks of growth and modernization. A block of random tourist attractions..the kinds that, you can tell, are only visited when the owner's cousin brings their tour bus to that certain olive wood shop and conveniently placed falafel stand. (Easy way to spot these: their doors are closed and locked, any time of day or week, unless a tinted-window bus is parked outside.) Be sure to stock up on all your once-in-a-lifetime opportunities of glass, wood, and even samples of the dirt off the sidewalks: today, lucky shoppers, they're selling Holy Land by the pound, and just for you, just today, at a very special price.

The tragedy is that they have to sell the ground in plastic bags...everything else worth having has been taken from them.

Bethlehem..birthplace of Christ, and now barely 30% of its people are Christian, in a town that was once a bastion of Christians in the Holy Land. Continued war, oppression and occupation, with the resulting and mirroring growth in Islamic fundamentalism, have forced many former occupants, Christian and Muslim alike, to leave. The town, the country, the region. The percentages have not been even. If the occupation continues as it is, we stand the very real chance of having the monks at the Church of the Nativity remain as the only Christians in town.

Explain that to your die-hard "Defending Israel is a Christian's Duty!" friends. The ones who don't care that the ancestors of the Apostles still live in this land: the ones who, when you read the itineraries of their "Holy Land" tour groups do not even list Bethlehem...so scared, or prejudiced -- or both -- are they that they cannot step foot behind the wall long enough to ride a plush-seated bus through the streets where tired shepherds once ran to catch a glimpse of their Messiah.

There, the strange and tragic disparity between The City of Sin and the Town of David. Las Vegas is selling itself willingly; Bethlehem has been unwillingly sold out.