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.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Thursday, March 12, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
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.
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.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, March 9, 2009
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, whe
re 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.
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, whe
re 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.
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