Desmond Tutu’s Christmas Eve message
Taken from God Is Not a Christian this extract describes a sermon given by Archbishop Desmond Tutu during a Christmas visit to Jerusalem in 1989:
On Christmas Eve, Tutu preached at a carol service at Shepherds’ Field, outside the village of Beit Sahour near Bethlehem, where residents were conducting a tax strike against the Israeli authorities as part of the first intifada, the Palestinian campaign of civil disobedience against Israeli occupation which had begun in 1987. The service drew thousands of Palestinians who, despite the presence of Israeli troops, turned the event into a demonstration in support of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
“Something stupendous, earth-shattering, happened in Bethlehem that first Christmas night: God’s promised Messiah, God’s own Son, was born in Bethlehem, and who were the first to be told the good news? It was not the high priest, not the king or his courtiers; it was shepherds watching their flock by night. Our people in South Africa love that story because it says shepherds are actually more important than the world thinks. Certainly, shepherds are important for God. Or even more wonderfully, the story says that God has a special caring for those whom the world thinks are not important. That God sides with those whom the world despises. That God sides with those whom the world brutalizes. That God is with those whom the world oppresses.”
