For the first time in 13 years, I am not serving a church this Christmas. It is a new and not quite welcome experience. I miss Thankful. I miss my people. In truth, I miss my pulpit, too.

But that’s not the only thing that’s different about this year’s Christmas. With bombs still dropping on Gaza, with IDF snipers purposefully killing women in a Catholic convent, with Israel’s insanely disproportionate and bloody thirst for vengeance continuing on unabated and unquenched, it is hard to celebrate the birth of our Messiah in a land that, today at least, seems very very far from holy.

No, this Christmas is like none other I’ve experienced in my ordained life. But if I still had a pulpit from which to speak the words the Spirit has laid on my heart these days, this is what I would preach:

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In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

There is a picture making the rounds on social media right now.

Drawn by British street artist Banksy, the picture depicts a heavily pregnant Mary, in ancient-dress of robes and starred blue headscarf, lying with her upper body propped up on a stack of crates and boxes, her eyes closed in an expression of exhaustion and the beginning pangs of labor. Barefooted Joseph – also in the robes of ancient times – sits nearby on a cart pulled there by the donkey whose head you can just see peeking out from behind Joseph’s right arm. Behind them is the bombed-out landscape of Gaza. In the foreground, at their feet, is the detritus of trauma and tragedy – plastic bags and empty cartons, discarded rope and bits of unidentifiable metal. Also in the foreground, beside Mary and beside Joseph, are two wreaths, decorated with red baubles and softly glowing electric lights.

Honestly, it’s not the kind of picture I’m drawn to. I find the intentional anachronism off-putting. I much prefer the “nativity scene” that was popular a few years back of teenaged, jean-clad Mary and Joseph as migrants making a stop at a gas station somewhere near the US southern border. The signs in the station’s windows are like a seek-and-find of references to the Christmas story.

But I get why a lot of my Christian friends have been profoundly moved by the Joseph-and-Mary-in-Gaza image. And, despite the fact that it’s not my kind of taste in art, I love it for all the same reasons as my friends, I suspect.

But not everyone loves that picture – as I recently discovered when I inadvertently blew up the comments thread on a friend’s Facebook page. It started because my friend, an Episcopal priest, shared the picture, and another friend of hers – a stranger to me – made a comment that implied that there was something intrinsically offensive to Jews about the image. The main point of contention for this man was the geographical location of Bethlehem. He bemoaned the fact that so many Christians were sharing the picture, my friend included, without seeming to be aware of the fact that Bethlehem is not in Gaza. (Though, just for the record, my priest-friend knows her Holy Land geography very well, thank you.) According to this Facebook friend of a friend, by placing the Holy Family in Gaza, when Bethlehem is not actually located on that small strip of land, the artist created a picture that was “tone deaf” and “insulting” to Jews.

Folks, I wish I could tell you that I just scrolled past that nonsense and kept going. Unfortunately, that’s not quite what happened.

But regardless of my late-night poor decision-making, the ensuing “conversation” (if it can be called that) did get me thinking about the geography of our theology, which is rarely factually accurate. Because in the end, images like Banksy’s or like the one of the Holy Couple at the US gas station aren’t aiming to be historically correct in their depiction. Of course the “actual” Mary and Joseph wouldn’t have been dressed in jeans, or lying down in front of a bombed-out car. But that’s not the point. The point is not to be geographically or historically accurate but theologically accurate. The picture tells us – and evokes from us – something true about our faith.

And this is the truth of our faith that we hear every year in the Christmas story: “Do not be afraid; for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people” (Lk. 2:10).

“Do not be afraid,” the angel tells the shepherds in the fields. But it’s easier said than done for those poor shepherds – poor in every sense of the word, which is why they had so much to be afraid of. In addition to the unexpected epiphany with all its accompanying brightness that the shepherds experience in this moment, they have a whole host of anxieties that must have defined their daily existence with a basic level of fear. Members of an oppressed people underneath the boot of the Roman empire, very near the lowest end of the economic hierarchy, living hand-to-mouth, rarely included in the few forms of community and the social fabric that was available to them, the shepherds must have had so much to fear, so much to worry about, so much to suffer. But the angel comes into all of that anyways with her message: “Do not be afraid.”

And it’s not just the angel, of course. Because the angel’s message is, right now, being made incarnate in the Word of God made flesh, in the baby lying in the manger. This baby, this Jesus, this Messiah comes right in the middle of the muck and the mess that results when human beings fail to treat each other with dignity, respect and love. This baby, this Jesus, this Messiah arrives, in all his vulnerability and all his power, among the suffering and the sorrowful ones, those who know intimately the trauma of being put down and persecuted, forgotten and forsaken, always living in fear. That’s the context for this baby’s birth. And all of that context is summed up, for Christians, in one word: Bethlehem.

Bethlehem, you see, is not just the town in which the historical Jesus was born. It is also the name we give to all of the places of suffering and grief and despair and trauma and tragedy into which the incarnate Christ brings the eternal love and hope only He can provide.

So on the one hand, yes, of course, my friend’s misguided Facebook friend is absolutely right. The city of Bethlehem is not located in the Gaza strip. But on the other hand, seen with the eyes of a Christian faith, right now, Bethlehem is very much in Gaza. Bethlehem is there where the innocent ones cry out in pain and loneliness and grief. Bethlehem is there where hostages are still held in fear. Bethlehem is there where medics keep trying to heal people who can never be made whole. Bethlehem is there where aid workers and journalists and Catholic worshipers are murdered by snipers and airstrikes.

But Bethlehem is not just in Gaza. Bethlehem is also, still, like that other image of Mary and Joseph imagined it, at the US southern border where so many suffer as they seek refuge. And Bethlehem is in the Sudan where tribal warfare continues to shed innocent blood. And Bethlehem is in the Czech Republic where society – not so used to gun violence as we are – has been rocked by a recent mass shooting at a university. And Bethlehem is, of course, in Ukraine where Christmas will once again be celebrated quietly in the context of war.

And Bethlehem is, too, right here, right now, in the places of our minds where fear grips us, in the emptiness of our souls where we grieve those we have lost, in the longings of our hearts where hope has disappeared.

But before we get bogged down on this Christmas night in this litany of the brokenness of our world, let us remember that Bethlehem is the name we give to all these dark places of fear and suffering precisely because Bethlehem is also the place where Christ’s light will not fail to come. With the roar of the infant’s first breath, the Messiah breaks into the night’s darkness in Bethlehem – in the ancient one of long ago and in all the Bethlehems here before us now.

Tonight, Christ Jesus is born in Bethlehem. Tonight, God is made flesh to meet us right here where we are. Tonight, God is with us, Emmanuel, in whatever mess we find ourselves in, whether victims of our own sinfulness or the evil in others’ hearts. Tonight, Christ Jesus is born in Bethlehem. So hold on to hope. And do not be afraid. Amen.