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.