Lent 4 - Gospel of Luke

Luke 15.1-3, 11b-32

The much-loved story of the Prodigal Son has inspired literature and art for two thousand years. We love to read about our God, so generous that nothing—not even total rejection of God and all the ways God would have us live—can cut us off from God’s unfailing love and mercy. No matter how far we stray from what God has intended for us, God will always welcome us back. All we need to do is return, turn toward God (“turning” is the definition of repentance); the door is always open. It’s interesting that the prodigal son had not reformed his life; he had not gotten his life together. He returned at the lowest moment, when he had lost everything. And this darkest moment is precisely when God welcomed him back with a lavish party, an extravagantly abundant celebration.

How different this notion of God is from the God who punishes evildoers by rewarding suicide bombers with a special place of honor in heaven; or the God who has promised all of the land, from the Euphrates to the sea, to descendants of the Israelites who practice one particular form of religion. How large and grand God seems in the story of the Prodigal Son; how tiny the God of the young man who walked into the Park Hotel in Netanya and killed 30 people with his suitcase-full of bombs, or the settler attacking schoolchildren on their way to school in the Hebron hills…..or the God who smiles upon American hegemony in the world, for that matter.

The signers of the Kairos Palestine document know a very large, generous, abundant God. The God of this document, “A Moment of Truth, a Word of Faith, Hope and Love from the Heart of Palestinian Suffering” is the prodigal God of our story today. Palestinian Christian leaders of thirteen denominations issued their call to the world in this document on December 15, 2009. It calls upon the international community and, in particular, the church community, to recognize their complicity in the occupation of Palestine and to take action and stand against this occupation that is causing so much suffering and despair.

Photo: signers of Kairos Palestine, Lutheran Bishop Mounib Younan, second from left

Like the South African Kairos Document issued by church leaders in 1985, the Palestinian church leaders hope that this document will begin discussion in churches around the world, encouraging them to talk about the injustice of the 43-year occupation of Palestine by Israel. The document calls the military occupation of their land a sin and defines true Christian theology as “a theology of love and solidarity with the oppressed, a call to justice and equality among peoples.”

The document begins with a list of ways that the occupation is making life unlivable for Palestinians and discusses the ways Israel’s actions violate international law. Proclaiming, “The land has a universal mission,” the document sets forth the theological and biblical understandings that shaped their statement. It identifies signs of hope and proclaims a prophetic mission for the church, “to speak the Word of God courageously, honestly and lovingly in the local context and in the midst of daily events.” Finally, it looks to the future with faith and hope.

Do we believe we are created in the image of God, or do we imagine a God created in our own image? How is God looking at the lives of Palestinians and Israelis, two peoples in one land, suffering the effects of sixty years of war and terror? What is God doing there today, and what would God have us do?

These church leaders invite us, “Come and see.” They promise to welcome us as pilgrims. They invite us to “know the facts and the people of this land, Palestinians and Israelis alike,” and “to see the face of God in each one of God’s creatures.”

And they look to the future: “In the absence of all hope, we cry out our cry of hope. We believe in God, good and just. We believe that God’s goodness will finally triumph over the evil of hate and of death that still persist in our land. We will see here "a new land" and "a new human being", capable of rising up in the spirit to love each one of his or her brothers and sisters.”

AMEN!

Read about the document: http://www.aaper.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=quIXL8MPJpE&b=5492575&content_id=%7bCE92264D-510D-419B-9524-93966890E472%7d¬oc=1
View the document itself: http://www.kairospalestine.ps/sites/default/Documents/English.pdf

O God, you welcome us home with a love so much greater than anything we can imagine. We have sinned against heaven and before you. We are no longer worthy to be called your sons and daughters. Yet you throw open doors of exclusivity and shame, and you welcome ALL who enter, without judgment or conditions. Help us, who have been created in your image, to follow your example of extravagant love. By your generous welcome, break down our barriers of fear and shatter our so-carefully-guarded opinions. Give us courage to use our own prophetic voices in your work of reconciling the world. Amen.

If you would like to accept these Christian leaders’ invitation to “come and see,” think about making your own pilgrimage to the Holy Land. There are many opportunities, and we have a group going from the Rocky Mountain Synod. Check it out: http://www.pilgrimageholyland.blogspot.com/

Lent 4, Joshua

Joshua 5.9-12

“Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt.” Josh 5.9

As they stand poised to move into the land God has promised them through their ancestor Abraham, the Israelites pause to remember who they are—liberated slaves—and where they have come from…….Egypt. And who has brought them here? God. They did not do it on their own. God has taken their shame away and today they stand tall and proud, ready to claim for themselves their inheritance.

More than three thousand years later, Christians in Palestine feel their own disgrace. The humiliation of standing for hours at the checkpoints, the tanks that can roll into town anytime, day or night, the terror of not knowing if they will ever see their loved ones again. And then they hear God’s promise—the God who brought the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt has surely not forgotten these present-day slaves held in bondage by the Israeli occupation.

If you have visited the Holy Land, you probably went to the Shepherds’ Fields, where it is believed that the shepherds heard the angel’s announcement of Jesus’ birth. If so, you have been in Beit Sahour (“the place of the nightwatch”), one of the three towns that make up the Bethlehem District. During the intifada Israel levied special taxes in Beit Sahour (a form of collective punishment because it penalized everyone, not just the rock-throwers)—a glass tax for broken windows, a stones tax for damage done by stones, a missile tax for the Gulf War damage, among others (Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beit_Sahour#Tax_resistance).

The people of Beit Sahour refused to pay these taxes: “No taxation without representation – No taxes without a government.” “We will not finance the bullets that kill our children.”

Israel responded, led by Israeli defense minister Yitzhak Rabin, who said: “We will teach them there is a price for refusing the laws of Israel.” In retaliation, after a joint prayer service of Israeli Jews and Palestinians at Beit Sahour’s Orthodox Church, the Israeli army imposed a 45-day curfew; they also blocked food shipments, cut telephone lines and seized millions of dollars in money and property from the homes of the tax resisters; 40 people were arrested.

When the UN Security Council debated a resolution condemning the siege and the indiscriminate seizure of property, the United States vetoed the resolution, even though it was supported by the eleven other member countries.

They organized nonviolent demonstrations, and with the support of Israeli and international peace activists, the people of Beit Sahour were successful. They continued to refuse to pay the taxes until 1995, when the Palestinian Authority (PA) assumed governance of Beit Sahour.

Even though the PA governed Beit Sahour, Israel maintained an army base nearby at Oush Grab. In 2006, after the Israeli army abandoned the base, the residents of Beit Sahour built a Peace Park on the land, with plans this year for a new playground. However, early this year the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) declared the area a “closed military zone.”

Last month soldiers showed up with bulldozers to begin construction of a watchtower. Why a watchtower? …..to protect the Israeli settlements that surround the entire Bethlehem district, cutting off Bethlehem, Beit Sahour and Beit Jala from the rest of the West Bank. (see map—brown/tan areas are Palestinian; blue areas are Israeli settlements—all lands to the east of the green line are in the West Bank; red and purple lines are the Israeli separation wall)

The residents of Beit Sahour, 75% Christian, hear God’s promise, “Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt,” and they are responding again nonviolently. On February 22, they marched on the road to the Peace Park, carrying signs protesting the building of the watchtower. Israeli soldiers attacked with tear gas. See video of the marchers and the soldiers, along with more details of the latest Israeli incursion onto Palestinian lands: http://www.palestinemonitor.org/spip/spip.php?article1276

Although we usually see only the stone-throwers on TV, there is a large nonviolent movement in the Palestinian communities throughout the West Bank—Muslim and Christian. I’m part of a book group which reads books that help us understand the conflict, and our latest book is Once Upon a Country, a Palestinian Life, by Sari Nusseibeh, a staunch advocate of nonviolence. (You can join us for discussion of this book on March 30, 7 pm at my house; email me: janlmiller@q.com.)

Gracious God, your servants in Beit Sahour are suffering. For sixty years, our government has supported the occupation; forgive us our part in supporting their suffering and turn our hearts to new ways of living together. Help us to recognize the places where your kingdom is breaking in—around the world and in our own communities—and give us the courage to join in. Amen.

Lent 3, Gospel of Luke

Luke 13.1-9

Our Lenten journey with Jesus is taking us closer and closer to Jerusalem, where we know the horrific fate that awaits him. In this portion of Luke’s gospel, we are reminded that Jesus is not the first Galilean whose blood will be spilled in the Holy City—Jesus lives in dangerous times, when one’s politics can get one brutally murdered, even in the precincts of the temple. The drama of Jesus’ crucifixion intensifies for us in this third week of Lent.

While his followers may have hoped that this disaster story would frighten Jesus, perhaps dissuade him from his death march toward Jerusalem, Jesus will have none of it. He uses the story to show that they have it all wrong—God is not an avenging superhero; God does not zap people for their sins (much as we might hope). Instead, Jesus uses these disaster stories to teach an important lesson about repentance.

This is a lesson we, too, can understand, in the wake of Haiti and Chile and Katrina. In times of overwhelming disaster, people ask, Why? Because these people were more sinful than the rest of the world? Jesus shows us how foolish our usual answers are.

Jesus shows us that there is more than one kind of perishing—the physical death under the collapsing tower, and the perishing of the soul because there has been no repentance, the soul has not changed course and turned toward the kingdom of God. God’s kingdom HAS broken in. Jesus has already called out for people to change their ways which produce only suffering and death.

Today we again witness God’s kingdom breaking in when we see people who refuse to cooperate with the death-dealing ways of the world, people who do not allow their anger and despair to define who they are. We have witnessed this in people like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi. I have also witnessed this in the Palestinian town of Jayyous, where Israel’s security wall is cutting the farmers off from their fruit orchards.

The parable of the fig tree is something every Palestinian can understand, because fruit trees are the riches of their land, too rocky and barren for wheatfields or vegetable gardens. And patience is a hallmark of a people dependent on olive trees that take seventeen years to produce fruit. In Jayyous, Israeli soldiers uprooted more than 6000 olive trees to clear the way for their wall. Then the wall cut the farmers off from their fields, so that now they have to go through a checkpoint to get from their homes in the village at the top of the hill to their olive groves at the bottom of the hill. Sometimes the checkpoint is not open; sometimes the soldiers will not let them pass, even though they have the proper papers. Photo: Jayyous farmers waiting at the checkpoint, June 2008

But the villagers of Jayyous, these cultivators of olive trees, are a patient people. They do not let the wall define who they are. They do not let the Israeli soldiers’ rudeness and arbitrary behavior determine their reaction. When the soldiers are demeaning, the farmers smile. When the soldiers rough them up, they organize nonviolent demonstrations against the wall. They march and carry signs. They sort through centuries-old documents to prove their claim on their lands. They file lawsuits in Israeli courts, using Israeli law to prove the validity of their claims. They welcome international visitors with hospitality—a delicious lunch prepared by the women of the village. They want the world to see how Israel is behaving unjustly—first by building the settlement of Zufim on their farmlands and then taking more of their lands to build a wall to protect those settlers from attack….from the villagers of Jayyous, who, by Israel’s reckoning must be very angry about all the land that has been taken from them by the bulldozers. But the Israelis have it all wrong.

The people of Jayyous are suffering physically—many of these farmers now depend on UN food aid and families are separated because the young people must go elsewhere to earn a living. Forty of the men of the village are in Israeli prisons, some held for years without even being charged with a crime.

But their souls are not perishing. Even under occupation, they are taking charge of their own lives, CHOOSING a nonviolent response to the violence being done to them and to their hundreds-of-years-old olive trees by the bulldozers. Surely we are witnessing a tiny sign of God’s reign; surely we can join in. Surely we can heed Jesus’ call for repentance, turn from our own ways of military domination, and join them in their nonviolent resistance.

Gracious God, you patiently tend your fig trees, planting, cultivating, nourishing us in faith, as we slowly learn to trust your bounteous goodness. Help us flourish in your tender care. Make us messengers of your good news. Help us bear good fruit for the life of the world. Amen.

Lent 3, Isaiah

Isaiah 55.1-9

“Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters;
And you that have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”
Is 55.1

The pulsing heart of every Middle Eastern city or village, is the marketplace. With its geographical location on the sea, between the great cities of the ancient world, this strip of land that is now Israel has long been a commercial center—a stop on the way between Rome and Egypt and Mesopotamia, a marketplace for Egyptian cotton, spices from India, bronze from Rome, and silk from China. In Jesus’ day, food and other goods passing through Palestine fed and clothed the widely scattered cities of the Roman Empire.

On a walk today through the market in Bethlehem or Jerusalem, the pilgrim traveler encounters the descendants of the first-century merchants, still calling out, “Come into my shop!” “Come inside and let me show you my beautiful…..Hebron pottery, Druze weavings, Bedouin rugs.” “Come taste my spices, sample my honey and pistachio pastries.” “Come see my photographs; let me get you something cold to drink!” Palestinians today stand in a long heritage of commerce and hospitality that we hear in Isaiah’s call to the people, “Ho, everyone who thirsts….”

In today’s text, Isaiah stands in the marketplace, hawking his merchandise: “come, buy and eat!” But he shocks his listeners when he adds a new twist to the familiar sales pitch: “….Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”

Isaiah is calling out to his people—the exiles, the Israelites who were conquered by Nebuchadnezzar and had been marched hundreds of miles across the desert to Babylon after the destruction of Jerusalem. The prophet is speaking to a homeless people, refugees longing for the land they had been forced to leave by the soldiers, many years ago.

What Isaiah offers, however, is more than food and water. When he tells these suffering people that water and delicious food is available to them “without price,” he offers hope, hope for a future unlike the captivity of Babylon.

All they need to do is listen…. “Incline your ear…listen so you may live.”

This is a message that Palestinian Christians hear very clearly today. This message speaks to their exile as well. The message speaks to 60 years of living without a homeland. Sixty years since they were routed out of their homes by conquering soldiers—many forced to march long distances, to end up in refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon. Sixty years of living in a foreign land, governed by other people; sixty years of living under occupation—first by Jordan and, since 1967, by Israel.

Isaiah calls out to them, hawking his wares—refreshing water, tasty wine, nourishing milk—promising new life and abundance, calling on them to “listen…..so that you may live,” offering a covenantal promise, “my steadfast, sure love….” “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thought than your thoughts.”

This is where these Palestinian Christians place their trust—not in missiles and M16s, not in peace proposals and elected leaders—but in God’s ways. And so, they build schools, train leaders for a future Palestinian state, teach their children traditional Palestinian dances and songs, and continue to worship each Sunday and, as Holy Week begins, walk the Palm Sunday road into Jerusalem…..whenever they can get permits to travel, that is. They listen to God’s covenantal promise…..it is the only thing that gives them life. Photo: Bright Stars of Bethlehem after-school program for children

God of promise, you come to us in every age, offering again your covenant, if only we will listen. We pray today for open ears to hear your good news of hope and plenty. Help us to call upon you and follow in your ways of justice and peace. Amen.

Lent 2, Gospel of Luke

Lent 2, Gospel of Luke
Luke 13.31-35

Standing on the Mount of Olives, millions of pilgrims have beheld Jerusalem; then they walk down the hill, remembering Jesus’ last days. The Mount of Olives is the highest point in Jerusalem, and this is the view Jesus would have seen as he walked into Jerusalem.

Each time I stand there, my heart weeps for this city, with its gold domes and towers, a magnificent testimony to love for God. For centuries, religious people have built churches, mosques, synagogues, monasteries and holy shrines. The view is breathtakingly beautiful.
Photo: Jerusalem from Dominus Flevit, the Mount of Olives

On Sunday, as we were listening to these words from the gospel of Luke, young Arab men, hiding in a mosque built where the temple stood in Jesus’ time, started throwing stones at the people visiting the Temple Mount. They were angered by Israel’s decision to designate holy sites in Hebron and Bethlehem as Israeli heritage sites (see Monday’s meditation).

“Four policemen were lightly wounded by Arab stone-throwers yesterday during riots that began on the Temple Mount but soon spread to the alleyways of Jerusalem's Old City. Eight rioters were arrested….Senior police officers attributed the riots to the [Israeli] government's recent decision to declare Hebron's Tomb of the Patriarchs and Rachel's Tomb near Bethlehem national heritage sites. That decision has sparked days of rioting in Hebron, and yesterday it spread to Jerusalem, police said. But Arab residents of East Jerusalem said the riots broke out because the police allowed a larger than usual number of Jewish visitors to ascend the Temple Mount yesterday.” (Haaretz: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArtVty.jhtml?sw=temple+mount&itemNo=1153021ml?sw=temple+mount&itemNo=1153021)

Protests continued on Monday, as seven Palestinians were arrested (photo of protest from Palestine Network News): http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7907

The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians appears so intractable that resolution seems hopeless, that these places where Jesus walked will never see peace. Israeli confiscation of Palestinian lands and stone-throwing young protesters have been constant news over the past 60 years, especially since 1967 when Israel occupied the West Bank and Gaza.

“Go and tell that fox….” Jesus’ words in this week’s gospel are a stark reminder that the powers of the world, whether Israeli, Palestinian or American, are not the last word. “Jerusalem,” the seat of religious and secular power, is the object of God’s mothering love. Behind all Herod’s foxy maneuvers for power, God waits…..not in judgment, but to surround Jerusalem with her mothering wings, protecting her chicks. God, whose spirit hovered over the waters at the birth of the world (Gen 1.2), is Lord of creation—not Herod.

If world peace depended on the efforts of the Palestinian Authority or the Israeli Knessett or the U.S. Congress, or our President, we would surely despair. “Jerusalem….the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings….” Today, as Palestinian youth, express their desperation and frustration at their own powerlessness by throwing rocks, Jesus reminds us of God’s plan to nurture us into new life, and gives hope for the future.

Mothering God, you have loved us since you birthed your creation. When we forgot your covenant, you sent your son to reclaim us. Nurture in us the courage to be messengers of your love for all the world. Help us find ways to bring hope—to the people who live in the shadows of despair, both here at home and in your troubled homeland. Amen.