Friday 18th December 2020: Advent Reflection: Liz Waumsley

It was the night before Christmas. The people in this Brabant village brought to life by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1566 are busy. All village life is there if you are able to look closely into the painting. There are people carrying and loading sacks of grain, a cart with firewood, skaters, a man who is probably a leper with an alms bowl, chickens, pigs, people jostling to get into what looks like an inn, children playing...The children are particularly captivating. Some are having a snowball fight - the standing figure has the mark of a snowball on his shoulder! One small child is scaring away birds.

But the title of this work is”The Census in Bethlehem”, and then we notice two figures in the foreground, a man with a carpenter’s saw and a woman wrapped up in a coat, seated on a donkey, hurrying to join the queue at the inn.

This village does not look like Bethlehem, but we can certainly recognise Mary and Joseph.

There is a plaque on the outside of the building which looks like an inn, and close inspection shows that it is the coat of arms of the Hapsburg Empire. Philip ll of Spain ruled the Netherlands, and this Brabant village,in the sixteenth century. The reason for Mary and Joseph having undertaken that long, arduous journey to Bethlehem was, as we are told in Luke 2:1-5, to register in the census conducted for Caesar Augustus, the Roman Emperor who ruled Galilee and Judea and all parts surrounding them, to assess people for taxes. It was the oppressive rule of the Romans that brought Mary all this way in her advanced state of pregnancy, with Joseph. The result was that Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the city of Joseph’s ancestor David.

The reason for all those people in the bottom right hand corner of the picture to be queuing was to pay their taxes to the Hapsburgs. The Inhabitants of the Netherlands were, totally unjustly, taxed about 4 times as heavily as the citizens of Spain.

So here comes Jesus, born into this maelstrom of humanity, where there is huge underlying injustice because those in power exploit those who are vulnerable.
As we wait this Advent for Jesus to be born again, among us, may we use the insights we have gained from this covid-19 world into the best and the worst of how we live in this country and this world, to bring closer the kingdom of God.