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.