Easter Greetings from Bethlehem

Bright Stars of Bethlehem
Lenten Reflections 2009
Easter Sunday, April 12

Dear Sisters and Brothers, Dear Friends,

Salaam from Bethlehem during this Passion Week.

The passion story could have ended with 3 men hanging on the cross: the first a criminal who was taking advantage of the instability under the Roman occupation, the second a fighter resisting the foreign dominance, and the third an “innocent” proclaiming the reign of God. And Palestine could have proved to be yet again only a battlefield on which empires can demonstrate their powers, or a cemetery full of tombs of martyrs. And the disciples could have just indulged like so many others in singing litanies of death, cursing the Romans, taking an oath to retaliate or going around trying to win sympathy for their just struggle. This would be a normal scenario in Palestine.

But what happened on Easter Sunday had nothing to do with normality. It was something extraordinary, an occurrence never heard of, and an event truly revolutionary. It wasn't a continuation of the human tragedy in Palestine, but it was a divine intervention. Through this intervention, the land known formerly as a battle field became a Holy Land, and where once cemeteries stood turned into a garden where angels appeared; and those mourning their hero became agents of transformation. The disciples could have spent their entire lives weeping over their lost cause, their killed victim and their shattered hopes. Instead and because of the divine intervention, they caught an incredible vision, they acquired tremendous courage, and they went around proclaiming the crucified as living. They were not anymore mere victims asking for help, but they were transformed to become people with a message that the world is eager to hear. What they have experienced firsthand was an answer to a global longing for life abundant that grows in the context of death, for true hope that shines through helpless situations and for lives that bloom in windy seasons. What God achieved in Palestine on that Easter Sunday through the resurrection of Christ from the dead is still felt today. This is the reason for our being here, and this transforming power is what our ministry is all about.

Thank you for being to us a resurrecting power and support. He is risen! He is risen indeed!

Rev. Dr. Mitri RahebSenior Pastor, Christmas Lutheran ChurchPresident, Diyar Consortium

Bethlehem, Easter 2009

Learn more about the work of the Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem: http://www.brightstarsbethlehem.org/ and http://www.annadwa.org/

No King But the Emperor

Friday in Holy Week
April 10, 2009
John 18.1-19.42

“We have no king but the emperor.” (John 18.15)

There is a contest going on here, between those who uphold the status quo and those who want something different—the people of Israel, living under the occupation of the Roman army want new life. The temple authorities were an integral part of the power structure that ruled Palestine in the first century. This is how it worked: the Roman governor left much of the governance to the king, Herod, and the temple authorities. So long as they could keep the peace and the taxes coming in, the Romans were happy, their army well provided for. Because he wanted to keep the Romans happy, Caiaphas had said earlier that it was better to have one person die for the people (John 11.50). Someone had to preserve order and Jesus, with all his parading through Jerusalem on the donkey, was riling the people up as they shouted “Hosanna” and cried out for freedom.

The present-day occupants of Jerusalem and its surrounding towns also cry out for new life. The Jews long for peace and an end to the threats of suicide bombers; they long for a state where they can feel safe, a state of their own, where they are protected from persecution and hate crimes. The Palestinians long for restoration of their lands—a country without walls and checkpoints and travel permits, a country where they can live in their homes without fear of eviction and bulldozers.

For the residents of Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem, the threat of eviction is a daily reality. Their story is reported this week in ei, the Electronic Intifada news. "’We are like the roots of a tree. The Israelis may cut us in places, but we will never die. We will not be transplanted from Jerusalem. I will not leave this house,’ Maher Hanun tells a crowded room of Palestinian community members supported by Israeli and international solidarity activists. Hanun is one of 51 residents of the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied East Jerusalem living in two housing units that are facing imminent eviction by Israeli authorities….

The people living in these housing units, belonging to the al-Ghawe and Hanun families, are due to be forcibly removed from their homes this week….The courts have justified these evictions by saying that the land that the houses are built on is disputed. Yet, the houses were built under a joint construction project by the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) and the Jordanian government in 1956, 11 years before Israel occupied East Jerusalem. The houses were given to the families, both made refugees in 1948 after Palestinians living in what became the state of Israel were expelled and dispossessed during what Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe.Now these families are threatened with another Nakba. Israeli settlers that have moved into Sheikh Jarrah have falsified documents claiming ownership of the land. The Hanun and al-Ghawe families have presented their legitimate documents and an Israeli judge has not yet ruled on the legality of these papers. Yet the eviction orders are still proceeding, even though no official decision has been reached as to whom the Israeli courts recognize as the true owners.Both the Hanun and al-Ghawe families were forcibly evicted once before in 2002….” Read more….

A member of the al-Ghawe family stands beside a poster inside his threatened house in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

O God, your cross reminds us that your suffering is the way of the world. As we look upon your cross today, help us to be bearers of the suffering of others—in our own neighborhoods and on the other side of the world. Amen.

Footwashing Love

Holy Week
Maundy Thursday, April 9, 2009
John 13.1-17, 31b-35

“Just at I have loved you, you also should love one another.”

Today we commemorate Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. April 9 is also the commemoration of the death of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the commemoration of the massacre at Deir Yassin in 1948, just before the end of the British Mandate. Deir Yassin was an Arab town west of Jerusalem, which happened to be in the way of the Israeli militias as they removed Arabs to make way for the state of Israel.

If you have 33 minutes, watch the video—with pictures of Deir Yassin today, written accounts from 1948, and survivors, historians and researchers telling the story: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=341600202419569830

The Deir Yassin web site also tells the story:

“Early in the morning of April 9, 1948, commandos of the Irgun (headed by Menachem Begin) and the Stern Gang attacked Deir Yassin, a village with about 750 Palestinian residents. The village lay outside of the area to be assigned by the United Nations to the Jewish State; it had a peaceful reputation. But it was located on high ground in the corridor between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Deir Yassin was slated for occupation under Plan Dalet and the mainstream Jewish defense force, the Haganah, authorized the irregular terrorist forces of the Irgun and the Stern Gang to perform the takeover.

In all over 100 men, women, and children were systematically murdered. Fifty-three orphaned children were literally dumped along the wall of the Old City, where they were found by Miss Hind Husseini and brought behind the American Colony Hotel to her home, which was to become the Dar El-Tifl El-Arabi orphanage.

Part of the struggle for self-determination by Palestinians has been to tell the truth about Palestinians as victims of Zionism. For too long their history has been denied, and this denial has only served to further oppress and deliberately dehumanize Palestinians in Israel, inside the occupied territories, and outside in their diaspora.

Some progress has been made. Westerners now realize that Palestinians, as a people, do exist. And they have come to acknowledge that during the creation of the state of Israel, thousands of Palestinians were killed and over 700,000 were driven or frightened from their homes and lands on which they had lived for centuries.”

Deir Yassin is regarded as the turning point—the beginning of the Nakba, the “catastrophe”—the massacre created a panic and terrified Palestinians fled from villages all over the land that was to become Israel. Between 1947 and 1951, more than 400 Arab villages were vacated and/or demolished. The Nakba continues today, as Palestinians are still losing their homes and lands.

To read a more detailed account of what happened at Deir Yassin, see: http://www.deiryassin.org/shimontzabar.html, an account of what happened at Deir Yassin from Dr. Me'ir Pa'ill who was a member of the Knesset in the 1970s, representing the Meretz party. In April 1948, he was known as Colonel Me'ir Pilavski, a liaison officer representing the Palmach in the headquarters of the Haganah Israeli forces in Jerusalem.

A year later, the Jewish town of Givat Shaul Beth was built partially over the ruins of Deir Yassin. Today the site of Deir Yassin lies in suburban Jerusalem, 1500 meters north of Yad Vashem, the Israeli holocaust museum.

Read an article by Anis Hamadeh about the Deir Yassin massacre, comparing it to the attack on Gaza in December. About the author: http://www.anis-online.de/1/cv.htm

O Lord God, your Christ tied an apron around his waist and washed the feet of his followers, showing them his way of love and peace for the world. Help us, who profess to be Christ’s followers, to show your way of love to the world with acts of servanthood. Amen.

Blindfolded

Holy Week
Week of April 5, 2009

“Some began to spit on him, to blindfold him, and to strike him, saying to him, ‘Prophesy!’” (Mk 14.65)

painting is by Nabil Anan

It is hard for most of us to imagine being in this situation. We, who are privileged—white, middle class, straight—are unlikely to be falsely arrested, accused of crimes we did not commit or tortured into confessing. It does sometimes happen even in this country where we pride ourselves on the rule of law—but not often, and most assuredly not to us. Even if we are arrested, we do not expect to be spit upon, tortured, or mocked by the police. Our privilege protects us from such dangers.

Most of the people of the world do not enjoy such privilege. On yesterday’s news I heard an audio tape of a 17-year-old young woman in Pakistan being publicly flogged by members of the Taliban, who rule the town of Swat without restraints. She was flogged because she had rejected a marriage proposal from a Taliban fighter, who later saw her walking with another man. French police have been accused of unlawful killings, beatings, racial abuse and excessive use of force, mostly against ethnic minorities and foreign nationals. In Myanmar pro-democracy activists and prisoners of conscience, Hla Myo Naung and Min Ko Naing are suffering without proper medical treatment; one is in danger of completely losing his eyesight, having already gone blind in one eye whilst in detention after being denied specialist medical treatment. And even our own soldiers guarding prisoners at Guantanamo have been accused of beating the prisoners in their charge.

That's why so many people, even non-Christians, identify with the torture and humiliation Jesus received from the temple authorities and the Roman guards. It is why even Muslim artists painted Jesus on the cross for an art competition, "Christ in a Palestinian Context," in Bethlehem in 2002. The crucifixion was what spoke most convincingly to them about Jesus' ministry. Christ's experience was theirs.

April 28, 2004 - A detainee at an ad-hoc roadblock outside the village of Huwarra. His handcuffs were very tight and were only loosened at the request of B'Tselem staff.
Photo credit: Eliezer Moav, B'Tselem


March 31, 2002 - Arrested Palestinians being guarded by IDF soldiers during Operation Defensive Shield. Photo credit: Osama Silwadi, © Reuters

Both images are from B'Tselem, the Israeli Center for Human Rights

O God, your cross speaks to those who suffer humiliation and death at the hands of the powerful. Help us, your followers, to carry your message of the cross to the people in pain in our world today. Amen.

She Has Done What She Could

Holy Week
Week of April 5, 2009
Mark 14.1-15.47

“She has done what she could” (Mark 14.8)

The Jesus portrayed in the gospel of Mark is concerned that his disciples take up the cross and follow in his way. This is what he takes great pains to explain to them. While they are bickering about who will be first and who will sit next to Jesus and how much money is being wasted on expensive ointments, Jesus keeps calling them back to what is needed, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant…” (Mark 10.39).

The disciples are to follow in the way Jesus has shown them—to do what Jesus has done…heal the sick, comfort the afflicted, cast out demons. To do what they can to bring about the reign of God, to be signs of God’s intentions for the world—to bring God’s mercy and justice to the world.

This is what the unnamed woman with the alabaster jar of nard does for Jesus. She does what she is able to do with what she has been given. And this is the good news. It is what all of us can do—what we are able to do. With respect to the injustices being suffered by Israelis and Palestinians, we cannot all do the same things. Rachel Corrie traveled to Gaza and stood in front of a bulldozer, trying to prevent a home from being demolished. Jeff Halper travels all over the world telling about the expansions of settlements while Palestinian homes are demolished in the same Palestinian neighborhoods. Dennis Healy has been the captain of the Dignity on several recent voyages to break the blockade of Gaza and bring medical supplies, humanitarian aid and international visitors to witness and report what they have seen in Gaza.

The farmers of Jayyous, a village I visited in the West Bank last June, are doing what they can—this week they are planting trees as a way of demonstrating against the Israeli security wall which has been built between their village and their farmlands, and against the permits needed to travel between the village and the farmlands: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article10448.shtml

The photo shows two farmers from Jayyous planting a tree.

We cannot all do what Rachel and Jeff, Dennis and the farmers if Jayyous are doing, but we can do whatever it is that we have been given to do—read the news about what is going on in occupied Palestine, write letters and send emails and visit our elected officials, telling them what we have learned. We can talk to our friends and neighbors about what we have learned. In the U.S., there is a gaping black hole of accurate information about the lives of Palestinians; we are not paying attention. We often hear a great deal about the suffering of Israelis, but we do not hear about the suffering of the Palestinians. This is where each of us can make a difference, where we can anoint the suffering with costly ointment—for the healing of the world.

O God, in your suffering and death on the cross you showed us what it means to follow in your life-giving way. Give us the strength and good courage to go out, bearing your name and your holy cross to the world you loved, even to death. Amen.

Palm Sunday in Jerusalem

Holy Week
Week of April 5, 2009

"Many people spread their cloaks on the road and other spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, 'Hosanna!'" (Mark 11.8-9)

Yesterday as we lifted our palms and shouted "Hosanna!" pilgrims from all over the world gathered in Jerusalem to walk the route that Jesus walked, to remember the events of Holy Week in the place sacred to three religions, in the place where Jesus brought hope of a new way of life, a way of life intended by God. Here is the story of the day for Lutherans of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, led by Bishop Mounib Younan:

Palm Sunday begins for Lutherans at Palm Sunday services at the Arabic, English-speaking and German-speaking congregations in the morning. Today, there was procession that began at Lazarus' Tomb in Bethany, where Jesus' Holy Week journey began with the death and resurrection of Lazarus.

Now, the Separation Wall cuts off the traditional Jericho to Jerusalem road that Jesus would have used. So Christians in Bethany and just on the other side of the Mt. of Olives can't celebrate the traditional Palm Sunday procession with the rest of the Christian community in Jerusalem. The journey begins at the Bethphage Church, with a portrait of Jesus on the donkey and the stepping stone, and continues up and over the Mt. of Olives, past Dominus Flevit church, where Jesus wept over Jerusalem, past Gethsemane, where he prayed on that Thursday evening, and up into the Old City.Thousands come from all over the world to celebrate, sing and process in this historic tradition.

This photo shows the Israeli separation barrier in Abu Dis, where it blocks the Jerusalem-Jericho road where Jesus rode the donkey from Bethany to the temple in Jerusalem. Many Lutherans in Bethlehem and the rest of the West Bank are denied permits to make the traditional Palm Sunday pilgrimage.

"I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness,
I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
I have given you as a covenant to the people,
a light to the nations,
to open the eyes that are blind,
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness." (Isaiah 42.6-7)

Watch the Palm Sunday procession in Jerusalem in 2008: http://www.elcjhl.org/galleries/Videos/08marpalmsunday/myvideoplayer.html

Christ in a Palestinian Context, 2

Sunday of the Passion/Palm Sunday
Week of March 29, 2009
Mark 14.1-15.47

Continue today with the reading of the passion narrative. This painting is from "Christ in a Palestinian Context," an exhibit by Palestinian artists during the months-long curfew in Bethlehem in 2002-2003 (see story below). It is described in "Bethlehem Besieged," by Mitri Raheb, pastor of the Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. (see April 2 post below for more) This painting is by Nabil Anani.


O God, your cross shows us your way of love and mercy. Help us, your children, to be your cross-bearers, bringing your message of reconciliation to those who suffer. Give us courage and patience for our work as we wait for your promised reign. Amen.

Christ in a Palestinian Context

Sunday of the Passion/Palm Sunday
Week of March 29, 2009
Mark 14.1-15.47

Today’s text speaks for itself. It is the heart of the message of the good news, understood best by those who suffer.

During the many months of curfew in 2002-2003, Palestinian artists, Christian and Muslim, were invited to submit paintings for an exhibit, “Christ in a Palestinian context,” set to open at the International Center in Bethlehem in February of 2003. Two of the paintings would be selected to send to Sweden for an exhibit there. When all the entries were in, 60 per cent of the artists were Muslim—and all but one of them painted the crucifixion.

This is all the more remarkable because Islam teaches that Christ was not crucified; for them crucifixion means losing and God cannot be on the losing side. But for these artists, the message of the cross was so strong that they risked betraying their religion to paint the crucifixion because for them the crucifixion is the most vivid image of Christ in the Palestinian context. The passion story we read this week takes place in the context of the land where these artists live—where even today Israeli soldiers can ride in on their tanks, terrorize the citizens and impose a curfew at any time.

Take the next two or three days to read the passion story according to Mark and reflect on the text through this image, one of the paintings submitted for “Christ in a Palestinian Context.” It was painted by Adibe Abu-Said.

View the rest of the paintings. (Click on the images to enlarge them.)

O God, your cross is powerful comfort for those who are suffering. Show us, your followers, how we can be bearers of your cross for those who suffer in your world today. Amen.

Peacemaking: a Work of Community

Sunday of the Passion/Palm Sunday
Week of March 29, 2009
Philippians 2.5-11

These words of Paul are addressed to the people of Philippi, part of his instruction on becoming an authentic Christian community. He encourages them by telling them that they have been given all that they need to follow the example of Christ in their care for one another. It is this supportive community that Christ’s followers also needed as they witnessed Jesus’ trial and crucifixion. It is also the community we need as we follow this path.

As we hear the story of the events of the coming week, we see that Jesus refused to use his power over others, his strength and his might, to avoid being crucified. He maintains, at great personal cost, his humility and his servanthood, the source of his true power. The exaltation of God comes because of Jesus’ obedience, not from his mighty arm or his miracles. As Paul tells the Philippians, we cannot follow in this path of obedience on our own; we need the community of faith.

Peacemaking is not easy work. Contrary to what they say, few people really love a peacemaker. Peacemaking calls us to a different way of life; it asks us to change our priorities, to give up our domination of others and our control over our lives. Peacemaking asks us to open our minds and hearts, to change our opinions, to risk getting to know the other and to listen. Peacemaking makes us and the people around us uncomfortable.

The people working for peace in Israel ask us to give up our ideas of who is right and who is wrong—to listen to the stories of people on the other side and to change our hearts and minds. This is what happened for Dalia the day she opened her door to Bashir. Her family had lived in the house in Ramle since 1948, after they arrived as refugees from Bulgaria. They were told the house had been abandoned, and they were thrilled to live in such a beautiful place with the lemon tree in the backyard. As she got to know Bashir, she learned that his family had been forced to leave this house with the lemon tree by the soldiers expelled all the Arabs as they cleared the way for the state of Israel, earlier in 1948.

Dalia was curious about this Palestinian family and met with them on several occasions. As she listened to their story, she realized that her happy childhood came at great cost for Bashir’s family. She tells her story in the book, The Lemon Tree, by Sandy Tolin. Since hearing their story, she converted the house, which she inherited from her parents, into a community center in Ramla—a place for building peace between Palestinians and Jews, and a place where international visitors can come and hear the stories.

Changing our viewpoints is not easy—it takes community. This book challenges the stories we have all heard about the creation of the state of Israel; the joyful creation of a Jewish homeland also has a dark side. Read the book and discuss it with a group on Tuesday, May 5, pm at our house, 1965 Hudson St., Denver. (RSVP: janlmiller@qwest.net)

Denver Rabbi Adam Morris traveled to Israel with a group of youth from Denver. Although he had many connections to Israel and had been there many times, he had never heard the stories of the Palestinians until last summer. In the community of students he accompanied, his eyes and ears were opened and he was changed. Last fall he preached a sermon on Yom Kippur, telling of his transformation. You can read the sermon that tells his story.

O God, you came among us to show us your way of peace and reconciliation, the life you intend for us. As we journey through the holy week ahead, open our minds and our ears. Make us mindful of your ways of peace so that we can find communities of peacemakers to support us in our work. Amen.

Servants Healing the World

Sunday of the Passion/Palm Sunday
Week of March 29, 2009
Isaiah 50.4-9a

The text comes from a section of Isaiah that describes the nature of the “Suffering Servant.” If we compare this section to verses 1-3, we see a contrast—two very different ways of wielding power. Verses 1-3 speak of a God using forceful action—to dry up the sea, turning rivers into desert. Beginning with verse 4, a different kind of power is explored—the power of the tongue, the power of teaching, and the power of listening, a power that submits to the mistreatment of others as a way of overcoming them. This power comes, not from the servant’s own skills, strength and endurance, but as a gift from God.

Gandhi used this kind of power as he led thousands of Indian peasants in passive resistance which eventually brought down the powerful armies of the British Empire and liberated India. The writer of the Suffering Servant song is thinking of this kind of power—the power of a skilled tongue, open ears, perseverance, standing together. Isaiah says that this kind of power has been promised to us by God.

Many people in Israel today are using this gentle power that quietly resists injustice. They see that Israel’s armies, its tanks and helicopters, its missiles and bulldozers are not making Israel safer. This is the power of a group like the Families of the Bereaved, which brings together families of people killed on both sides of the conflict—Palestinian families whose sons have been killed by Israeli soldiers and Israeli families whose daughters have been killed by suicide bombers. They come together to listen to one another, to hear the story of the other, to find their common humanity and to endure their suffering together.

This is also the kind of power a small synagogue in Denver is using to bring people together—Palestinians and Israelis—for a concert for peace and reconciliation. They are doing it to raise money for Open House, a community center founded to bring reconciliation between Palestinians and Jews in the town of Ramle or al-Ramla, now in Israel.

In 1948, the Palestinians living in al-Ramla had been forced to leave their homes; Bashir’s family fled to Ramallah. Later that year, Dalia’s family, refugees from Bulgaria, moved into Bashir’s family home, with the lemon tree in the backyard; they were told it had been abandoned. In 1967 Bashir and Dalia met and through the years they listened to one another’s stories and got to know one another. With the support of both families, as well as a Palestinian Christian family, the house with the lemon tree was transformed into a community center named Open House, to support healing and peacebuilding for Jews and Palestinians and for visitors from around the world.

Open Minds, Open Hearts, Open House - On April 25, in Denver, Temple Micah is hosting a concert to raise funds for Open House, a place of healing and hope for their rabbi, Adam Morris, who visited Open House last summer. Musicians David Ross and Hal Aqua will lead the concert band in an evening of music of peace, hope and justice. The concert is at 7:30. You can be part of this work of reconciliation: Purchase a ticket online for $18, or $20 at the door. Read more about Open House: www.friendsofopenhouse.org Read The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolin.

Reading for Peace -The Lemon Tree is the book for the next Reading for Peace book discussion in Denver, Tuesday, May 5, 7pm, at my home, 1965 Hudson St. You are welcome! Learn more about Israelis and Palestinians through their stories and join us for lively discussion, even if you don’t finish the book.

Oh God, your suffering servant shows us a new way of power, your gift to your people. Help us to be your servants—in large or small ways, in the ways you show us, among the people you give us. Open our ears and our minds; open our hearts to your leading. Help us to be healers of your broken world. Amen.

From Bethany to Jerusalem Today

Sunday of the Passion/Palm Sunday
Week of March 29, 2009
Processional Gospel, Mark 11.1-11

Standing at the top of the Mount of Olives, we can see the whole geography of Holy Week. Looking west, we see the way down and across the Kidron valley and up the other side to Jerusalem, its picture postcard gold dome shining on the temple mount. Looking east, we see the Arab villages of East Jerusalem and beyond—Silwan, Abu Dis, and Al-Eizariya, Arabic for “the place of Lazarus,” Bethany, home to Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary and Martha. From as early as the fourth century, writings tell of large crowds of pilgrims visiting the church there, which was built to commemorate Jesus’ raising of Lazarus. One such pilgrim, a woman named Egeria, wrote, “so many people have collected that they fill not only the Lazarium [the church] itself, but all the fields around.” As the Muslims conquered the Holy Land, they, too, venerated Jesus’ miracle of raising Lazarus and Christian pilgrims continued to come and were welcomed here.

From the top of the Mount of Olives, as we look out toward Al-Eizariya (fr. Gk., Lazarion) the countryside looks a lot like Colorado—dry, rocky hills, no visible vegetation, except for a few junipers here and there, especially in the gulches where water flows from Spring rains. This is land where only a goat or a Bedouin could find sustenance, but Arab villages dot the landscape, houses clustered around a spring or a well. The land we see is part of the West Bank, designated for Palestinians in the partition of the Holy Land in 1948. Israel took the West Bank in the 1967 war, however—a pre-emptive strike. Since then Israel has occupied the West Bank and for the past forty years has placed its own settlements on this occupied land, in between the Arab villages, carving out space for Jews among the Arab towns, bolstering its claim to the land.

Just to the east of Al-Eizariya, we can see a gigantic Israeli settlement, Maale Adummim, sprawling over the hills, construction cranes visible above the new apartment buildings. When I visited there in June, we saw the new recreation center and playground built for the Israeli settlers, as well as the new police station, built to protect Maale Adummim, from the Palestinians who lost their land to the settlement. Beautiful landscaping welcomed us to Maale Adummim. A large, hundreds-of-years-old olive tree and a fountain stand at the entrance, an olive tree uprooted from some Arab farmer’s olive grove, perhaps removed for the construction of Israel’s security wall, winding up and down the hills, separating the Arab villages like Al-Eizariya from the Jewish settlements, walling the Arabs out and making Palestine a Swiss cheese country.

This is the picture of the land today, where Jesus came to begin his procession into Jerusalem. Like the Palestinians, who battle their occupation every day—petitioning the courts to keep their land, or to get permits to travel from one Palestinian village to another through the checkpoints. Jesus sets out from Bethany as a protest against the occupation of his day—the Roman occupation of the Holy Land and Jerusalem, its holy city. As Jesus rides from Al-Eizariya, down the Mount of Olives, the crowds shout, “Blessed is the coming dominion of our ancestor David!” They cheer Jesus because they see hope for a new way of life, free from the excessive taxes of Rome and the domination of the Roman army. In Jesus’ ministry of healing and raising the dead, the people have gotten a glimpse of a world as God intended it—a world where justice reigns and people are liberated from the yoke of oppression.

This is the world that the people of Bethany await today, as they watch Israeli settlements being built on the hills surrounding them. In 2004, the U.N. issued a report: “The construction of the Barrier in Al 'Eizariya east towards Mount of Olives near Beit Fagi monastery is moving rapidly. The Barrier is in the form of 8m concrete slabs, which will close the remaining section of the passage from Al 'Eizariyah to the Mount of Olives.” Today the wall is finished and Jesus would not be able to make his journey. The photo shows grafitti on the wall between the Arab towns of east of Jerusalem--like Abu Dis and Al-Eizariya--and the city.

The workers for the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and B’Tselem Israeli Center for Human Rights monitor this land—what is walled out, what is built up and what is bulldozed. This is work that will bring justice to these rocky hills and a glimpse of God’s intention for us.

O God, you sent your son to remind us of your way of justice and mercy. Give us courage to shout our Hosannas when we see signs of your reign in our broken world. Amen.

Resisting the Rulers of the World

Lent 5, Week of March 22

"...now the ruler of this world will be driven out." (John 12.31)

Resisting the powers of the world is what Jesus was doing; his resistance was seen as a danger by the Roman rulers and by the temple authorities, ruling at Rome's behest. His resistance is what led to his crucifixion.

In Israel today young people are resisting the rulers of their world--the powers that enforce and finance the occupation, arrest Palestinians and imprison them without charges. We can support them by leaning about their nonviolent resistance and telling others, by contacting our Senators and Representatives and by donating money to the campaign to encourage more young people to refuse to serve in the army in occupied territories (see details below). Read one woman's story....
Dispatch from Israel:

I am Sahar Vardi. I am 18 years old, a senior in high school in Israel. As you probably know, all Israelis must serve in the Israeli Defense Forces, starting right after our last year of high school. I and dozens of other students, on examining our values, International Law, and what we believe is best for Israel, refused to serve in the Occupied Territories and be a part of a mechanism that suppresses millions of Palestinians.

For our refusal, we were sentenced to jail. Some of us were held in solitary confinement. Sometimes we were not allowed even to brush our teeth or change our clothes.
Some of us contacted Jewish Voice for Peace for help, and they rallied so many people! People like you, who are pressuring the Israeli Military to let us out and to cooperate with international law. As a result, several of us were freed from jail, and conditions have greatly improved for all of us.

I am writing to you in this e-mail for three reasons:

1) Please know that if we could, we would write to each of you separately and thank you personally for all you did to help us. Your support produced tangible results, but also gave us the courage and commitment to continue our struggle, even to this day.

2) Please continue your support for our struggle. If you are American, your tax dollars finance our occupation. The United States provides Israel with more military aid than any other country. Given the economic turmoil in the USA, we believe that this money ought to be used for health and well-being.Israel needs to build a more democratic society, and not use the military to solve deep-rooted problems.

3) And, please support Jewish Voice for Peace. They need your financial help, in addition to your activist help, to continue their work. Take a moment right now to become a MEMBER of JVP if you aren't one already. You can do this easily online - just click this link.

Jewish Voice for Peace is such an important part of our struggle here. We are told that by serving in the Israeli Defense Force we are protecting the security of Israel, but lasting security will only come through peace and negotiations, not weapons. Inside Israel, people like us do all we can to work for peace, and we do so with hands stretched across the water, joined with you.
Become a member of JVP today Thousands of members have a stronger voice than just being on a e-mail list. Lift up your voice - we hear you and we are so thankful!

---Sahar Vardi

A Different View from Holon

Interesting to compare the AP story with the one in the New York Times (from Thursday's post).

Judging the World

Lent 5, Week of March 22
John 12.20-33

“Now is the judgment of this world;
Now the ruler of this world will be driven out.”

Jesus is speaking here of his crucifixion, trying once again to explain what is about to happen, the purpose of his ministry. Now, he tells them, the world will be judged by his crucifixion—the world and its rulers, the powers in charge, the systems that control us.

Because we know the end of the story, his passion and crucifixion, we know that Jesus acts to repudiate violence, refusing to participate in the system, exposing the system for what it is—the oppressor of people, the way of death. Once we see the system for what it is, we no longer want to cooperate with its death-dealing ways. Through Jesus’ death, we have seen another way…a way of nonviolence and peace and healing.

Like the grain of wheat, Jesus dies to the way of the world; he dies to the system of control by violence and power and he rises to new life. The question is: What are we, the followers of this Jesus, to do? What is the work of the church that claims Jesus as Lord?

It’s a little like what happened in Gaza in January. The soldiers and tanks and helicopters descended on the towns and villages and marched right into the city itself, leaving a swath of destruction and death. It was a moment of awakening for many people, who saw the flames and explosions on their television screens. They saw death and destruction—and they saw the system of oppression of the Palestinians for what it really is. The attacks on Gaza shined a spotlight on Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. What had been going on in the shadows, out of our view, for years, was now exposed: the brutality of life under occupation. It brought the elusive conflict out into the open where everyone could see it, and people all over the world, including some in Israel, were outraged. Once we have seen the system exposed, we no longer want to cooperate in its death-dealing ways. There were mass rallies and peace vigils in Tel Aviv and angry articles in Israeli newspapers, condemning the attacks, the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, and the brutality of the Israeli military. The old systems of oppression are beginning to crumble.

Like the grain of wheat, a resurrection sign was reported in yesterday’s New York Times. An orchestra of young Palestinian musicians played a concert for elderly Jewish holocaust survivors in Holon, a suburb of Tel Aviv. The young musicians were from the Jenin refugee camp, one of the places where Palestinians fled when the soldiers routed them from their homes and villages in 1948, to make way for the state of Israel. That was the year Zehava Zelevski, one of the elderly holocaust survivors, fled Poland and came to Israel, after her three brothers were killed. In 2006 a young Palestinian from Jenin blew himself up in Holon, one of the last suicide bombers. The Strings of Freedom orchestra performed and the elderly audience learned that not everyone from Jenin is a terrorist suicide bomber. The students were delighted to be traveling outside the West Bank, to escape the prison of the security wall for a day. See a picture and read the article….

Jesus chose to stand in solidarity with those who were suffering under the systems of oppression—the Roman government and the high priestly rulers of Jerusalem. What is the church who follows Jesus to do?

O God, by your death on a cross, you exposed the systems that destroy life. By your death and resurrection you freed us all from the bonds that imprison us. As we strive to follow you, help us use your liberating power in our world today, in all the places where people are suffering and dying. Amen.

Through Suffering

Lent 5, Week of March 22
Hebrews 5.5-10

“he learned obedience through what he suffered…”

Most of us who live in North America have all that we need—food, clothing, shelter and the freedom to get an education and make what we want of our lives. It’s the American dream, after all. When we have much we think that we can do it all for ourselves and that, in fact, we have already done it all ourselves—that our wealth, success and power is simply what we are entitled to because of our extraordinary cleverness, shrewdness or talent. We deserve what we have.

When we suffer we learn that we cannot. We cannot do it all on our own; we need strength and support from our friends and family and sometimes from our government. Those of us in a faith community also count on our faith in God to get us through the dark times. These are the lessons Jesus learned in his suffering, the lessons the writer of Hebrews is talking about.

For most Palestinians these lessons are the daily reality—of life lived behind the security wall, life lived at the whim of a soldier pointing a machine gun at the checkpoint, life lived waiting for the sound of heavy boots on the street and a knock on the door. In suffering there is no control—we are not in charge; that is part of the suffering, the lesson Jesus learned on the cross.

This has been the life of the people of Gaza, not just in December and January as they were attacked by IDF soldiers in Operation Cast Lead, but long before the columns of tanks and the helicopters fired on Gaza City. That’s what most Americans do not know about Gaza—that the suffering started long before the war. Gideon Levy wrote about their suffering in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz this week, as news came out about the atrocities committed in Gaza, civilians targeted by soldiers with no regard for Palestinian life.

Levy writes what we in America, resting comfortably in our homes, rarely hear about—
“The soldiers' transgressions are an inevitable result of the orders given during this brutal operation, and they are the natural continuation of the last nine years, when soldiers killed nearly 5,000 Palestinians, at least half of them innocent civilians, nearly 1,000 of them children and teenagers.

Everything the soldiers described from Gaza, everything, occurred during these blood-soaked years as if they were routine events. It was the context, not the principle, that was different. An army whose armored corps has yet to encounter an enemy tank and whose pilots have yet to face an enemy combat jet in 36 years has been trained to think that the only function of a tank is to crush civilian cars and that a pilot's job is to bomb residential neighborhoods.

To do this without any unnecessary moral qualms we have trained our soldiers to think that the lives and property of Palestinians have no value whatsoever. It is part of a process of dehumanization that has endured for dozens of years, the fruits of the occupation.

‘That's what is so nice, as it were, about Gaza: You see a person on a road ... and you can just shoot him.’ This ‘nice’ thing has been around for 40 years. Another soldier talked about a thirst for blood. This thirst has been with us for years.

Ask the family of Yasser Tamaizi, a 35-year-old laborer from Idna who was killed by soldiers while bound, and Mahdi Abu Ayash, a 16-year-old boy from Beit Umar who was found in a vegetative state, another victim of recent days, far from the war in Gaza.”

This is probably too much suffering to contemplate, but if you want to read the article: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1072821.html

O God, you know suffering and you hear the cries of those who suffer. As we prepare for the holiest week of the year, keep us mindful of those who suffer as you did on the cross, that we may find ways to bring healing and hope to our world. Amen.

Training for War

Lent 5, Week of March 22
Psalm 119.9-16

On Friday I read an article in Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper—about some debriefings of Israeli soldiers by their superiors in February, shortly after the Gaza war, Operation Cast Lead. They were reviewing what had happened in the war so that they could plan for future operations. Their comments were startling—but then, again, their comments were the product of war, any war. The soldiers themselves are the product of war, a horrible proving ground, a terrible field for the formation of young women and men, 18-19 years old.

"Toward the end of the operation there was a plan to go into a very densely populated area inside Gaza City itself. In the briefings they started to talk to us about orders for opening fire inside the city, because as you know they used a huge amount of firepower and killed a huge number of people along the way, so that we wouldn't get hurt and they wouldn't fire on us. "At first the specified action was to go into a house. We were supposed to go in with an armored personnel carrier called an Achzarit [literally, Cruel] to burst through the lower door, to start shooting inside and then ... I call this murder ... in effect, we were supposed to go up floor by floor, and any person we identified - we were supposed to shoot. I initially asked myself: Where is the logic in this? Read more….

This week’s psalm, 119.9-16, by far the longest psalm in the bible, is about the formation of young people, about the training of the young to walk in the way of God:

“How can a young man keep his way pure?—by holding to Your word,”

The entire psalm is in praise of Torah—God’s goodness expressed through God’s teaching of the Torah, the way we are to live in harmony with one another and with all of creation.

“My soul is consumed with longing for Your rules at all times….I cling to Your decrees.”

My thoughts keep returning to the young people of the Holy Land today—to the way they are being trained up to be the people of God in a land dedicated to their faith. And I remember the posting I made Saturday—one Israeli aunt’s concern for her nephew, serving in the Israeli Defense Force. If you missed this post, talk a look at the story now: http://apilgrimstales.blogspot.com/2009/03/soldiers-aunt-struggles-living-her-own.html

O God, in your holy word, you teach us your ways of peace and reconciliation. The ways of the world fail us; help us be faithful teachers of the young, to train them in your ways of harmony and peace. Amen.

Broken Covenants

Lent 5, Week of March 22
Jeremiah 31.31-34

ANOTHER new covenant (a very loud sigh!)? How can this be?

So far, in our Lenten texts, we have witnessed three—with Noah, Abraham and with Moses and the people of Israel—covenants that were broken, repeatedly. Although God has remained faithful, we, God’s people, have not. So God, relentless in pursuit of us, offers yet another chance today through the prophet Jeremiah, to a people exiled by their faithlessness. This time the covenant will not depend on our actions—doing God’s will or keeping God’s rules. This time there is no flood, no fire, no verbal contract. This time God will write the covenant on our hearts. It will not need to be taught; it will not depend on us. This time the covenant will simply be part of our DNA.

It’s a bit like the peace process in the Middle East. Agreements that were made over the years—1979, 1994, 2007—have been broken.........on both sides. If a peace process depends on the people who are fighting, it will never succeed. After all, we are human. Humans get angry; we are easily misled to think we are more important that we are; we are impatient to get our way, and stubborn in our demands.

Camp David, Oslo, Madrid, Wye River—the names are seemingly endless. But because we are human, the agreements are always broken—new settlements are constructed on Palestinian lands; more rockets are fired on Israeli towns; more Palestinians are harassed at checkpoints; a suicide bomber explodes on a bus; the construction of the wall keeps going on, right on Palestinian land, even though the international community has called for stopping the building. It’s a lot like God’s repeated attempts to get Israel to be faithful.

But our story tells us that God is eternally hopeful; God does not tire of trying again; God will not abandon this stubborn and fickle people, no matter how obstinate or rebellious they are. It is simply not God’s nature to abandon us, even when all logic would say, Give up!

And this is the story that lives in the hearts of the people who work for peace—people like Hannah and Angela and Mitri and the teachers at Dar Al-Kalima, the school in Bethlehem, teaching nonviolence as a way of life in a community where violence has traumatized everyone—killings, beatings, imprisonments and the daily humiliation of lifting your shirt to show the soldiers at the checkpoint that you don’t have any weapons. This story of a God who does not give up on us is also the story of those working for peace.

And we, who follow this God in North America? What are we to do? Give in to our hopelessness that this conflict is not resolvable? Give in to our boredom with the same old-same old ways of the world? Some people are not giving up, but stubbornly continuing their work for peace. And we need not give up. Sign up for email alerts, subscribe to email lists and learn about action you can take to change things, here in the U.S.:

End the Occupation: http://www.endtheoccupation.org/
JStreet: http://www.jstreet.org/
Jewish Voice for Peace: http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/
ePalestine: http://epalestine.blogspot.com/
Churches for Middle East Peace: http://www.cmep.org/
And listen to David Wilcox's song while you do it: "Three Brothers": http://davidwilcox.com/

O God, you do not get bored waiting for us to behave. You do not give up; your love keeps on pursuing us, reminding us of your way of peace and justice. You have written your hope for us on our hearts; show us where we can begin. Amen.

Dead Palestinian Babies and Bombed Mosques

from Haaretz, Israeli newspaper, March 21, 2009, Adar 25, 5769

Dead Palestinian babies and bombed mosques - IDF fashion 2009
By Uri Blau

The office at the Adiv fabric-printing shop in south Tel Aviv handles a constant stream of customers, many of them soldiers in uniform, who come to order custom clothing featuring their unit's insignia, usually accompanied by a slogan and drawing of their choosing. Elsewhere on the premises, the sketches are turned into plates used for imprinting the ordered items, mainly T-shirts and baseball caps, but also hoodies, fleece jackets and pants. A young Arab man from Jaffa supervises the workers who imprint the words and pictures, and afterward hands over the finished product.

Photo is A T-shirt printed at the request of an IDF soldier in the sniper unit reading 'I shot two kills.'

Dead babies, mothers weeping on their children's graves, a gun aimed at a child and bombed-out mosques - these are a few examples of the images Israel Defense Forces soldiers design these days to print on shirts they order to mark the end of training, or of field duty. The slogans accompanying the drawings are not exactly anemic either: A T-shirt for infantry snipers bears the inscription "Better use Durex," next to a picture of a dead Palestinian baby, with his weeping mother and a teddy bear beside him. A sharpshooter's T-shirt from the Givati Brigade's Shaked battalion shows a pregnant Palestinian woman with a bull's-eye superimposed on her belly, with the slogan, in English, "1 shot, 2 kills." A "graduation" shirt for those who have completed another snipers course depicts a Palestinian baby, who grows into a combative boy and then an armed adult, with the inscription, "No matter how it begins, we'll put an end to it."

There are also plenty of shirts with blatant sexual messages. For example, the Lavi battalion produced a shirt featuring a drawing of a soldier next to a young woman with bruises, and the slogan, "Bet you got raped!" A few of the images underscore actions whose existence the army officially denies - such as "confirming the kill" (shooting a bullet into an enemy victim's head from close range, to ensure he is dead), or harming religious sites, or female or child non-combatants.

In many cases, the content is submitted for approval to one of the unit's commanders. The latter, however, do not always have control over what gets printed, because the artwork is a private initiative of soldiers that they never hear about. Drawings or slogans previously banned in certain units have been approved for distribution elsewhere. For example, shirts declaring, "We won't chill 'til we confirm the kill" were banned in the past (the IDF claims that the practice doesn't exist), yet the Haruv battalion printed some last year.

The slogan "Let every Arab mother know that her son's fate is in my hands!" had previously been banned for use on another infantry unit's shirt. A Givati soldier said this week, however, that at the end of last year, his platoon printed up dozens of shirts, fleece jackets and pants bearing this slogan. Read more...

Read about the concerns of an Israeli aunt, whose nephew is in the IDF, conscripted for service. She worries about how his military service is changing him (and her country), and what her role might be: http://www.apilgrimstales.blogspot.com/

Three Brothers, David Wilcox

Today, I invite you to listen to some music by David Wilcox that Pastor Garrett Struessel shared with me. Click here http://www.davidwilcox.com/, scroll down the right side and click on the "play" arrow next to Three Brothers. Close your eyes and listen or come back to this page as you listen and follow the lyrics:

All three brothers love their father,
And he’s brought them here today,
To see these papers and these lawyers,
And divide the old estate.
All three feel that they’re the favorite.
He loves each of them the best.
And these documents he gave them
Will now put them to the test.
So they opened all the writings
That will prove the rightful heir
To this home that they remember
And the right to settle there.

Their own sister is a prisoner;
They don’t see her face to face.
They’ve not heard her song of beauty,
Felt the movement of her grace.

She lives behind those bars of steel
And waits for her release.
Will she die, or will we see Jerusalem in peace?


Each one looks at what he’s given,
And he studies what he’s shown.
They hold their maps that show possession
To this place they call their home.
First they sigth with satisfaction
When they see what’s on their maps.
Each one’s given all he wanted
But the boundaries overlap.
So do you wish us to be brothers?
Father help us understand.
Will we each kill off the others
To claim this same piece of land?
Do you mean there to be hatred
In this place you built to last?
And will faith just die a prisoner
In the dungeon of the past?

She lives behind those bars of steel
And waits for her release.
Will she die, or will we see Jerusalem in peace?

She lives behind these bars of steel
And waits for her release.
Will she die, or will we see Jerusalem in peace?

Jerusalem is sending her voice
From inside the prison of disbelief.
Stand up you people of the one God
To bring about her release.

O Lord our God, you are God alone, God of three peoples. We come before you today, humbled by the generosity of your gifts to us, especially the gift of your holy city, Jerusalem. Help us find the places where your people are sharing this precious gift so that we can join in. Amen.

The photo is of Dominus Flevit, "Jesus Wept," the church at the top of the Mount of Olives, commemorating Jesus' weeping over Jerusalem, Luke 19.41.

Make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem - travel October 17-31, 2009.

Art Resists the Occupation

Lent 4, Week of March 22, 2009

If you’ve read Pastor Mitri Raheb’s book, Bethlehem Besieged, you have heard about the art competition that was organized in 2002, during the Bethlehem curfew. The idea began when the Church of Sweden asked them for two paintings to be included in an exhibition, Christ of the World, at the Cathedral of Uppsala, which would then tour other churches and galleries in Sweden. The Swedish exhibition was to encourage the people in Sweden to look at their images of Christ and to start to think about them in a new way.

Pastor Mitri and the art coordinator Faten came up with the idea to hold a competition for the paintings to be sent to Sweden, but because of the curfew, it seemed a difficult undertaking—but one that had the potential to help Palestinian artists overcome their depression and imprisonment, a sort of creative resistance to the curfew, which kept the people of Bethlehem prisoners in their homes for five weeks. Thereafter, the curfew was reinstated periodically and between the announcement of the contest and the deadline for submissions, November 2002-February 2003, the town was under curfew continuously.

They used telephone and email contact to announce the competition and by February they had received paintings from all over the West Bank—Nablus, Ramallah, Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Hebron. Some were well-known artists, some beginners. 60% of the artists were Muslim and all but one chose the crucified Christ as their subject, to represent the context they were living in.

Pastor Mitri writes: “It is the suffering and crucified Christ who can best speak to our occupied nation in our suffering. And it is he who can best tell our story to the world.” (Bethlehem Besieged, 109). Take a look at the paintings, Christ in a Palestinian Context exhibit: http://www.bethlehemmedia.net/photos_ed12.htm

And come hear Palestinian artist Samia Halaby talk about her work, Sunday, April 5, 3 pm – “Palestinian Resistance Art” at Montview Presbyterian Church, 1980 Dahlia, Denver (corner of Montview Blvd. and Dahlia) Free and Open to the Public—Light Refreshments served. Sponsored by Friends of Sabeel-Colorado.

O God, when you chose to be born in Bethlehem, you entered into our world and into our suffering. Give us courage to be witnesses to the suffering of all your people and let us become agents of healing and hope where we live and work. Amen.

The Way of the Cross

Lent 4, Week of March 22, 2009
John 3.14-21

Just as the Israelites were given new life as they gazed on the bronze snake after they had been bitten by the deadly snakes, so those who witness Christ’s elevation on the cross will receive new life. Now, we usually like to associate new life with Christ’s resurrection, not his death. But this well-loved passage from John, about the profound love of God, is not about resurrection, but about death, about surrendering a beloved child to the ways of the world. This is the sign of the depth of God’s love for us—the death of a beloved son on a cross.

No wonder we love darkness rather than light. This light is strange and painful to behold. It is not pretty or successful. It is simply obedient. No wonder we love the darkness.

Just as the Israelites beheld God’s love as they gazed on the bronze serpent, so those who witness Christ’s crucifixion behold God’s love, there on the cross. These words don’t seem so joyful to those of us who are living high—plenty of food, freedom to travel and spend time with our loved ones, living in security in the heartland of America. But to those who are suffering, the cross is a comfort—God, too, knows suffering. God knows pain and abandonment; God knows persecution; God knows powerlessness in the face of military might.

So this image of Jesus lifted up on the cross, distasteful to us, is a comfort to the people of Beit Jala, near Bethlehem—to Sousan, who has a dress shop, but cannot go to Tel Aviv to the merchandise shows to purchase the clothes for her shop. She has to buy them without seeing what she is getting, which makes the quality difficult to control. Sousan knows what it is like to be at the mercy of the authorities, who control where she can travel and what she can ship to her store and what she can ship out.

Perhaps this is why Holy Week is such a big deal to the people of Bethlehem. While we in America would prefer to skip from the triumphant procession of Palm Sunday to the glorious musical production of Easter Sunday, the people of Bethlehem spend the entire week celebrating Jesus’ life and death and resurrection. For them, there is no skipping over Holy Week to get to Easter. For them, there is no skipping over the painful part to get to the victory, in Holy Week or in everyday life.

Because the story of Holy Week is a story of geography—Jesus travels to Jerusalem for the Passover and processes outside the city carrying the cross—the people of this area have, for hundreds of years, spent much of their week going to Jerusalem to re-enact the holy travels, the Way of the Cross.

So it is especially disappointing when they are denied travel permits to go to Jerusalem—as they have for the past few years. In particular, the students at the Catholic Bethlehem University were denied permits, even though the visit was part of their studies. Because Easter and Passover often occur during the same time, Israel is especially sensitive to their security and tightens the restrictions on Palestinians’ travel.

Another sad reality is that many of the tours arranged for Western pilgrims do not even go to Bethlehem when they visit for the holy days. They are told that it will be too dangerous. While these pilgrims walk the holy streets of Jerusalem, the Christians five miles away in Bethlehem are denied the travel permits to walk with them.

O God, you loved your people so much that you gave even your most precious son so that we might have new life. Help us, who live in comfort and security, to make time during your Holy Week to walk in solidarity with those who suffer in your world today. Amen.

Rachel Corrie, 1979-2003

Lent 4, Week of March 22, 2009
Ephesians 2.1-10

“For you were dead….following the course of this world….”

Harsh words, you say—taken out of context, you protest. I imagine that the people of the early church heard these words in much the same way we hear them today—indictments of the way of the world, our own way of life.

“But God,….out of the great love with which he loved us…..raised us up.” Now that is more like it—we are not left for dead. Life and death—we are caught up somewhere in between these two, between the lives we live and the life God has created us to live.

We find ourselves suspended between birth and death, death and new life. But what if the life God has created for us is death? It was certainly so for Jesus. And for many who stand up, like Jesus, in protest against the “course of this world.”

This is how it was for Rachel Corrie, whose death was commemorated yesterday, March 16. Yesterday was the sixth anniversary of her death by bulldozer as she stood in front of it, trying to prevent yet another house from being demolished in Gaza in 2003.

Some excerpts from Rachel’s emails—two years ago, but still today the way of the world in Gaza and the West Bank.

February 2003--
…Now the Israeli army has actually dug up the road to Gaza, and both of the major checkpoints are closed. This means that Palestinians who want to go and register for their next quarter at university can't. People can't get to their jobs and those who are trapped on the other side can't get home; and internationals, who have a meeting tomorrow in the West Bank, won't make it. We could probably make it through if we made serious use of our international white person privilege, but that would also mean some risk of arrest and deportation, even though none of us has done anything illegal….

…I have been in Palestine for two weeks and one hour now, and I still have very few words to describe what I see. It is most difficult for me to think about what's going on here when I sit down to write back to the United States. Something about the virtual portal into luxury. I don't know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them constantly from the near horizons. I think, although I'm not entirely sure, that even the smallest of these children understand that life is not like this everywhere. An eight-year-old was shot and killed by an Israeli tank two days before I got here, and many of the children murmur his name to me - Ali - or point at the posters of him on the walls….

… When that explosive detonated yesterday it broke all the windows in the family's house. I was in the process of being served tea and playing with the two small babies. I'm having a hard time right now. Just feel sick to my stomach a lot from being doted on all the time, very sweetly, by people who are facing doom. I know that from the United States, it all sounds like hyperbole. Honestly, a lot of the time the sheer kindness of the people here, coupled with the overwhelming evidence of the wilful destruction of their lives, makes it seem unreal to me. I really can't believe that something like this can happen in the world without a bigger outcry about it. It really hurts me, again, like it has hurt me in the past, to witness how awful we can allow the world to be…. Read more: http://www.rachelcorrie.org/

“For we are what God has made us, created in Christ Jesus for Good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” (Eph. 2.10).

O God of birth, death and resurrection, as we journey through these days of Lent, make us mindful of those whose daily lives are death. Help us follow in the way God has set out for us and to be messengers of resurrection along that way. Amen.

The Women in Black

Lent 4, Week of March 22, 2009
Numbers 21.4-9

“…everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.”

How terrifying, this plague of snakes, sent by God, who had lost all patience with this recalcitrant people. They don’t like the water, the food; they are thirsty, hungry for meat. On and on….they complain. Finally, God had enough of their complaining and sent the poisonous snakes that bite and kill.

The photo is of Giovanni Fantoni's sculpture on Mt. Nebo, in Jordan, where Moses looked out over the promised land he would never enter, and where he died.

Their suffering is great; they are dying of the poison. And so the people repent, Moses intercedes and God relents. God tells Moses, Make an icon of the serpent and look on it; gaze on the bronze serpent and through it, see my mercy and promise. It will give you life. God’s remedy? Repent; face your fear, and through your greatest fear, you will see God’s promise and be healed.

What are our fears? We must know them, for, if we don’t, they will bite us and their poison will kill us.

The Women in Black have stared down their fears and they gather, all across Israel, every Friday, 1-2 pm, to silently protest their government's occupation of Palestine.

One of the greatest fears of all Israelis and the American Jews who visit Israel, is that they will get on a bus or drop their children off at the mall or even at school and a suicide bomber will attack.

When I first visited the Western Wall, the holy place of prayer for devout Jews, I prayed with the women on the smaller side, the area reserved for the women—with old women wearing headscarves and sturdy shoes, younger women in long black skirts, American tourists with colorful shawls over their bare shoulders, young women with babies in strollers, and a whole group of schoolgirls with their classmates. The girls didn’t need any instruction; they had been here many times before; they knew just how to approach the wall reverently, stand at the wall and say their prayers, walk backwards, facing the wall as they left. But once on the promenade and on their way back to the bus, they were laughing and playing, teasing one another and sharing secrets, like schoolgirls everywhere.

Like schoolgirls everywhere, except for the young man following them with the assault rifle. At first I was terrified when I saw this young man with a backpack, carrying this combat weapon; I panicked, but I looked around and noticed everyone else seemed perfectly calm. I still wasn’t sure, so I followed the group and watched as the girls got on the bus, the young man with the automatic weapon standing guard, looking around at the crowd, as they boarded the bus.

This is what fear does. It changes our behavior. It makes us hire bodyguards, buy automatic weapons, put up walls and barbed wire to keep the danger at bay, and start wars by attacking our enemies before they can attack us. According to the Women in Black, this is what Israel has done—given in to its fears. And the fears have changed the people. The fears have taught 18-year-olds to handle automatic weapons and absorb their power; taught them to disregard the suffering of the Arabs waiting at the 110-degree heat in the sun at the checkpoint; taught them to ignore the pleas of the husband with his pregnant wife who is going into labor, ignoring the desperation in his pleas to let them through to the hospital. Their fears have taught the guards to regard every Palestinian as a terrorist, so that they come to believe it is so.

Hannah, a Jewish grandmother living in Jerusalem, told me that she monitors the checkpoints and protests the occupation because she sees how the occupation is changing the people. Everything is military, she says, Military, military, military. Nothing else matters anymore. She protests so that her grandchildren will have a different future, a future not controlled by fear and submachine guns. She is not naively ignoring the danger of terrorists, but she has looked her most dreaded fears directly in the eye and seen through the fear to God’s promises of peace and wholeness and new life. She has gazed on her fears and they have healed her and she is now working to heal her country’s wounds. If we don’t look our fears in the eye, they will bite us and we will die from the poisonous venom. But if we look at the serpent of bronze, we will live.

O God, liberator of Egyptian slaves and creator of a people, look upon your terrified children with compassion. Give us courage to face our worst fears and through them to see your loving compassion and your promise….for the sake of our future, our grandchildren. Amen.

"Is Peace Out of Reach?"

Thirteen Minutes to Understanding Peace Prospects in Israel/Palestine

Kudos to CBS coverage of peacemaking in Israel/Palestine!!!!!!

Spend 13 minutes and take a look at Bob Simon's report on 60 Minutes on January 25, "Is Peace Out of Reach." He does an excellent job with on-site interviews and video footage of what is happening on the ground in Israel/Palestine to show why peacemaking is so difficult: http://endtheoccupation.org//article.php?id=1811 (the report comes on after a short commercial)

If you have already seen this report, watch it again and think about what you can do to help bring peace in Israel and Palestine or in your own community. Or click on the link above and look at other action alerts posted on the U.S. Campaign to End the Occupation.

Gracious God, we confess that our lives, too, depend on the displacement of others from the land. Like the settlers, our homes sit where others once lived and hunted, providing food for themselves. Help us, as inheritors of this legacy, to become agents of change - overturning the tables of authority wherever we see power misused in our world today. Amen.

Why does all the talk lead to nothing?

This 2-minute video says it all:
AFSC
"Israel-Palestine: A Land in Fragments"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ewF7AXn3dg

Write your Representative and encourage him/her to support HR 130, supporting Senator George Mitchell as Special Envoy for Middle East Peace and urging bold actions for Middle East peace: http://www.cmep.org/Alerts/2009.March3.htm

O God, the land where you revealed yourself to us is groaning in pain. Your people are suffering--on both sides of the conflict. Give us healing hearts and willing hands to begin the work of reconciliation, here, where we live and work. Amen.

Women of UNconventional Wisdom

Lent 3, Sunday, March 15, 2009
John 2.13-22

If we want to know God, we must look to Jesus. Not to our priests or our rituals, not to our Bibles or even our potluck suppers. If we want to know God, we must look to see who Jesus is. This story in John’s gospel makes it very clear—God is the one who turns everything upside-down. He overturns all the rules, all the ways of doing “business as usual.” Jesus stands in civil disobedience to the ways of the world, against the conventional wisdom, the wisdom of the rulers and the powerful religious leaders.

And he calls us to follow him.

In Israel the conventional wisdom says, guard yourself against attack—build a wall to keep out suicide bombers; require travel permits for anyone who looks or acts suspicious; keep the dangerous people walled up inside their West Bank towns—like Bethlehem and Ramallah. Conventional wisdom says imprison people who you suspect might want to harm you—even if you can’t charge them with any particular crime. Just to be on the safe side, keep all Arab young men out of Jerusalem; you never know who might be a suicide bomber.

The women of Machsom Watch, however, are UNconventional….AND very wise. These Jewish grandmothers have had enough of war and weapons and the militarization of their grandchildren who are trained in Israel’s army to harass Palestinians at the checkpoints. The women of Machsom Watch are turning the tables on the checkpoint system. These 500 women show up at the checkpoints and watch what happens there. Then they write down everything they see and compile reports of the way Palestinians are treated as they try to leave Ramallah or Bethlehem or Qalquilya or any of the 50 checkpoints they monitor.

These Jewish grandmothers turn the tables on the system of checkpoints by stepping in to help in situations where Palestinians are being harassed—like the man who was returning home after surgery to remove his leg. He had entered Israel for his surgery with both legs attached to his body; he tried to leave with one of his legs in a bag—he was taking it home so that it could be buried and when he died the leg could be buried with him. But the soldier at the checkpoint held him there because the man had his own ID card, but he had no ID card for the leg and no permit to bring a leg through the checkpoint. For ten hours this man sat at the checkpoint while the soldiers summoned a doctor to look at the leg to verify that it was indeed his leg and that it had no explosives in it. And Hannah waited with him, determined to see his ordeal through to the end.

Hannah is one of the grandmothers of Machsom Watch. She told us this story and many others—stories of families trying to get their children to the hospital for cancer treatment, unable to get through the checkpoint because they did not have the proper papers—papers for the child, but not for the mother to go along; papers for the mother, but not for medical purposes; papers faxed to offices the family cannot get to because they are on the other side of a checkpoint.

Hannah has seen it all and she does her best to overturn the tables, to turn the rules upside down so that people’s needs are met—the hungry fed, the sick given medical care, the poor helped.

Watch a 3-minute video of the checkpoint in Bethlehem, made by one of the grandmothers of Machsom Watch. Every morning more than 2000 workers stand, pressed in the crowd, to get to work. American USAID money was used to “humanize” the checkpoint—money spent on decorative “welcome” banners, flowers and shrubbery, and twelve guard stations, only a couple of which are open each morning.

O God, your foolishness turns our worldly wisdom upside down. Give us courage to act in unconventional ways so that our rules do not impede your justice. Open our eyes to see those places where we confuse our need for safety and security with your will for your people. Amen.

A Foolish People

Lent 3, Sunday, March 15, 2009
1 Corinthians 1.18-25

“Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?”

Let’s face it, we ARE all perishing. We see it every day—suicide bombings in Iraq, deadly drug wars on our Mexican border; new wrinkles and gray hairs, aching joints, foreclosure notices in the mail, the plummeting value of our 401Ks. Perishing is all around us, sometimes threatening to suffocate us.

Faced with these daily signs of perishing, the wisdom of the world swoops in for the rescue. For, faced with perishing, the world reacts by resisting: spend more time at the gym; buy more expensive face creams; color your hair; build deadlier weapons, preferably weapons that fire from a safe distance; build bigger prisons; strike the enemy first, before they have a chance to strike you; build a bigger wall for to keep the danger our. This is the wisdom of the world—to protect and isolate ourselves from death.

This is why we have Lent—to remind us that this is only the way of the world, not the way of new life. For God’s way, the way of life, is not worldly wisdom; to the world, God’s way is foolishness.

Surely it is foolishness to build a new school for the children of Bethlehem, when the Israeli soldiers can come any time of the day or night and surround the school with tanks (this happened in 2002). Surely it is foolishness to build a cultural center in Bethlehem, a place that encourages Palestinian artisans, houses art exhibits, holds concerts and films series. Surely that is foolishness when the huge tanks can come rolling down the narrow streets, breaking all the glass in the windows and firing mortars, making holes in the building (this also happened in 2002). Surely it is foolishness to purchase computers for the International Center and the offices of the schools and church, when the soldiers can break down the door, march in and smash the computers to bits (this also happened in 2002). Surely it is foolishness to begin again after all that destruction.

But the people of God in Bethlehem, the congregation of the Lutheran Christmas Church, take their cue from their very foolish God and flaunt their foolishness—building their institutions and rebuilding them when they are destroyed; building bridges with people of other faiths and nationalities.

Foolishly, the tiny Lutheran community in Bethlehem builds for a future that seems impossible. They follow their ancestor Abraham, believing, beyond all reason, that there is a future for them and for their children, and that God will be faithful to that promised future.

The people of the Lutheran Christmas Church and their foolish pastor, Mitri Raheb, are building a university in a community where the young people are leaving because life is so hard there. Their two-year academy offers media training and tourism, so that the world will come to Bethlehem and learn about their lives and their culture. Although the Israeli tourism industry deems Bethlehem too dangerous to visit, the people of the Lutheran Christmas Church foolishly train the young people of Bethlehem for future they can barely imagine, walled in on all four sides by a 24-foot high wall and prohibited from leaving Bethlehem by an impossible permit system. See some of their foolishness!

I travel to Bethlehem because there I can witness God’s foolishness, the hoped-for future that God promises. Walking Bethlehem’s streets, I witness God’s foolishness at work in the lives of the people, bringing hope where none seems possible. The lives of these remarkable people and their supporters like us all over the world witness that “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” THIS is proclamation of Christ crucified and risen!

O foolish God, we praise you for the foolishness of your glory! You have promised a bold future for us and for all your creation. As we follow in the footsteps of your son, help us find ways to build this bold future, proclaiming your good news to your wounded world, bringing hope where none seems possible. Amen.

Remembering the Sabbath in Jerusalem

Lent 3, Sunday, March 15, 2009
Exodus 20.1-17

“Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy.”

With our western devotion to liberty and freedom, it is hard to imagine a celebration of the law. Especially for Lutherans, who take great pride in our understanding that God does not value us according to our obedience to the law, but that our relationship with God depends, not on us, but only on God’s mercy and grace, God’s pure gift to us.

So we Lutherans, sometimes too intent on abolishing the law, can learn something from our Jewish neighbors. “Rejoicing in the law” is the theme of a Jewish holy day, Simchat Torah, a holiday which follows Sukkot, in the fall of the year. Simchat Torah is the celebration of the Torah, marking the completion of the annual cycle of Torah readings and the beginning of the new cycle. In a year the entire Torah is read, beginning with Genesis 1 and finishing with Deuteronomy 34. This is a joyous occasion for the Jewish community. The scrolls of the Torah are carried in procession around the synagogue with high-spirited dancing and singing—an exuberant celebration of the gift God has given us in the Torah, the rules by which we live our lives. The law is God’s gift to us because it shows us how to live in harmony with God, with our world and with our neighbors. When we live by these rules, we find we are living in peace and contentment. Without the law we would be miserable, living in chaos.

The ten commandments which we read today, then, are not God’s “gottcha!” God’s rules for living are, rather, a gift. These rules are how God provides for our well-being and happiness.

When I was in Jerusalem, I got to participate in another lively celebration, Shabbat, which happens every Friday at the Western Wall, the only remnant of Solomon’s famed temple. Toward sundown on Friday, children, women and men walk from all over Jerusalem, entering the gates of the Old City and making their way to the Wall, where they dance and sing and celebrate the beginning of the Sabbath, another of God’s gifts to them—a time for rest and relaxation—a time set by God in the these commandments we read today. Friday evening Shabbat is a time for bar-mitzvah and bat-mitzvah parties and for family gatherings, a time for Jewish pilgrims to the holy city to pay their respects and make their prayers at the Wall. A time for the joyous gathering of the community. Women gather in circles, singing traditional Jewish songs and dancing. The men do the same. It is a festive time as the shopkeepers close up and the city quietens for the night. It is a brief time of joy and harmony and peace, in a city that is sometimes more known for conflict than peace. The photo shows prayers, written on small pieces of paper and left in the cracks of the Western Wall, the remnant of Solomon's Temple.

Central to the Jewish faith is the understanding that God’s laws are for our benefit and happiness, a gift to us because of God’s great love for us. Earlier that Friday, just before the beginning of the Sabbath, I had walked the streets with the Franciscans on their weekly Stations of the Cross, a Friday ritual commemorating Jesus’ walk through Jerusalem’s streets carrying the cross, on his way to death. Jerusalem is an amazing city, with room enough for three great religions and a multitude of peoples, all of us descendants of Abraham. May we live to honor God’s city and God’s gifts to us.

O God, you desire only what is best for your creation. You give us beautiful gifts of time, your creation and one another. Help us to honor your laws, your gift to us for our happiness, so that, obedient to your laws, we may live lives of peace and find our true freedom. Amen.