Lent 2, John—Testifying to What We Have Seen and Heard

We speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen...
John 3.1-17

I heard it again last week—"I needed to tell everyone what is happening. I was convinced that if they knew, the situation will change."

The first time I heard these words I was at the coffee hour at Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem and it was a personal plea to me—the young man wanted to make sure I would tell the people in the US what was happening to the Palestinians in the West Bank. He earnestly said to me, "Surely if people knew what is happening here, things would change for us."

Since then I have heard this from so many Israelis and Palestinians that I have lost count—almost everyone I meet expects us to come back and tell our government. They are fully convinced that if people in the US knew what is going on, the US will stop funding Israel's occupation and their lives will change.

Then last week I heard it again—from a young Israeli, a former IDF soldier, Eran Efrati. This time he was talking about his own witness.

As a 19-year-old, he served in the IDF, stationed in Hebron, where 800 settlers have forced their way into the heart of the old city, at first occupying rooms in a hotel, then claiming property above the market. The settlers create conflict with the Palestinians, by occupying their property illegally. Then the Israeli military is called in to protect the settlers.

In Hebron, there are 800 settlers—with 500 Israeli soldiers and 300 Israeli police to protect them.

Israel has divided Hebron into two zones, H1 and H2—one zone for Israelis and one for Palestinians. Then the soldiers moved the Palestinians out of the Israeli zone. Today the once-busy market street, Shuhada Street, is empty, stores closed and shuttered—only Israeli settlers, American tourists and the patrolling soldiers are on the street.

Eran was one of these soldiers—raiding Palestinian homes in the middle of the night, asserting Israel's authority, terrorizing adults and children. He tells about testing new Israeli weapons—on these very real live people—and being praised for combatting terrorism when his unit accidentally killed a boy.

At the beginning, Eran had been so very sure that if he told his family and friends and other Israelis about what their army is really doing in the West Bank, it would change. Like me, he learned that telling what we have seen may change some hearts, but it does not change government policy.

Eran Efrati is traveling the US with Maya Wind, telling their stories—"The Soldier and the Refusenik," telling stories about their dawning realization that Israel's military occupation of the Palestinians is rotting the core of Israeli society.

Eran and Maya's story is our story too—when, after years of assuming that Israelis and Palestinians would eventually agree to terms and there would be peace, we are confronted with a different reality, one that is not so popular in the news we follow or with our friends.

It's painful to realize that my country is supporting this violence against an indigenous people.

Gracious God, we are so grateful for the good news your son Jesus preached on the hillsides of Palestine. We know that evil does not have the last word, but it is so painful to watch—in Palestine and in so many places on our nightly news. Forgive us our complicity in the oppression we see and empower us to speak out as the victims implore us. Amen.

Lent 2, Romans—Wandering Children of Abraham

For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith.
Romans 4.1-5, 13-17

A Tale of Two Peoples and Two Realities

Jeff Halper is the founder and director of the Israeli non-profit, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). Salim Shawamreh is a Palestinian whose home has been destroyed more than five times and rebuilt by Jeff Halper and ICAHD volunteers. Dalia Landau is an Israeli who opened the door of her home one afternoon and met the Palestinians who had been forced from the home in 1948.

Click on the "Steadfast Hope" study guide below and listen to these Israelis and Palestinians, children of Abraham, talk about living together in a land shared by two peoples.

Watch a video about the rebuilding of Salim's house last summer, July 2013.

Lent 2, Genesis— …so that you will be a Blessing

Genesis 12.1-4a

“Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.” Gen 12.1-2

God’s blessing to Abram is difficult to imagine today, as we listen to the news from the land where Abram journeyed. Abram and Sarai traveled from Ur near the Euphrates, north along the river through present-day Iraq, into Syria and then south. His journey took him near places whose names are now familiar to us: An Najaf, Karbala, Fallujah, Ramadi, Aleppo, Homs, Damascus, Amman, Jerusalem, and Hebron, where he received a gift of land from Ephron the Hittite for a burial place for Sarah. Because Abraham was a sojourner in the land. He did not own any land; he was a nomad, a guest.

Does God’s blessing endure? Is God’s blessing being shared by the descendants of Abraham, the people of the land today? How are they reflecting God’s desire for the land?

I think of Eran Efrati, who was in Colorado last week, telling us the story of his own journey—a Jewish Israeli who served in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), and is now speaking out about the harm being done to Israeli society by the practices of Israel’s military. Like Abraham, Eran’s family also journeyed to the land that is now Israel. They came from Iran, from Iraq, from Hungary. Eran, who is in his late 20s, is a seventh generation Jerusalemite.

Eran began his story by telling us about his grandmother, a holocaust survivor who lived with his family. When she was a small child, her father had been taken away by Nazi soldiers, and she was eventually imprisoned at Auschwitz. He tells how she would awaken in the middle of the night, screaming. From a young age, Eran had a strong desire to make sure the horrors of the holocaust would never happen again and he vowed to guard against such violence.

After high school, like all Israeli teenagers, he served his term in the IDF. His unit patrolled the West Bank city of Hebron—if you’ve been there, you have seen how the city is literally a military zone—500 Israeli soldiers and 300 Israeli police protecting 800 ideological settlers intent on claiming the Palestinian city for Israel. 

Hebron is where Abraham received the gift of the land from the Hittites. He buried his wife Sarah here. The Ibrahimi mosque also houses the tombs of Abraham, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah.

Eran tells that during a night raid on the home of a Palestinian family, soldiers in his unit overreact and shoot a small boy. In the confusion, the boy’s father is arrested because he is screaming at the soldiers. Eran hears the boy’s grandmother screaming her grief, and it is the scream of his own grandmother in the night.

Her scream was a turning point for the uneasy soldier, who sought out people who were opposing Israel’s occupation and soon found himself on the other end of the IDF weapons in a protest against Israel’s wall.

Eran joined a group called Breaking the Silence, which records testimony of Israeli soldiers who question what they were ordered to do in enforcing the occupation. He is now touring the US, with his wife Maya (“TheSoldier and the Refusenik”) telling their stories.

See Eran and Maya tell about their journeys in their own words: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fR8_Kn9tQ0 

Gracious God, we have not lived up to your promises for us. Strengthen us in our desires to be a blessing to those we live among. Amen.

Lent 1, Genesis—Tilling and Keeping

Genesis 2.15-17; 3.1-7

Dear God,

It’s me, Eve. Again.

It sounded like such a good idea, especially when the snake put it the way he did. Knowledge is a good thing, right? What could be the harm? And the snake….he was so good-looking and his words made me feel powerful. Tilling and keeping….it’s all so boring, and the snake was offering me something more—to really make something of my life.

But it hasn’t turned out so well, has it?—thinking I had the wisdom to rule the world has only brought us starvation, enslavement, pollution and war exploding all over the planet.

Look at what is happening in your part of the world today—we have made a mess of your good creation. Marchers in the square, guns and tanks on every corner.

In Bil’in, in the Judean hills, the bulldozers are still building the wall, cutting the village off from its farmlands. Tomorrow, after Friday prayers, the people will march from the mosque, out onto the road, past the memorial to Bassem Abu Rahma, killed by Israeli soldiers firing a tear gas canister in 2009. Photo shows Bassem flying a kite in protest against the separation barrier around Bil'in, in July 2008.

The protesters will be joined by Israeli supporters, working to free their country from the tyranny of militarization and occupation, and by peacemakers from all over the world, with a dream to free Palestine from M-16s, the boots of Israeli soldiers hitting the ground and tear gas canisters. 

They will march to the wall, singing freedom songs, waving hopeful Palestinian flags—middle-aged men, old women, young mothers carrying babies, young men wearing the traditional Palestinian kuffiyeh and the young boys, who will pick up handfuls of stones from the road and throw them, in a protest of resistance, at the 27-foo-high concrete barrier blocking access to their land.

That sweet-tasting and beautiful-looking fruit Adam and I ate has rotted and turned poisonous. All our knowledge has not made us happy; it’s just given us a false sense of our own power; and now we are ashamed. We build walls to protect ourselves and they end up imprisoning us; we make bigger weapons and they kill our children.

We try to figure out which side to support, but all our knowledge will not end the suffering.

Looking back, I’m sorry I didn’t just stick with the job you gave us—to till and keep the garden, to serve you and protect what you created. It turns out all you wanted was our happiness—if we had only listened.

Maybe that’s why you gave us Lent.

Love,

Eve

Gracious God, you have given your creatures abundance beyond anything we could dream of. But we have not paid attention to your generous desires for our happiness and have followed our own desires for power instead. Accept our heartfelt remorse and turn our hearts to the tilling and keeping of your beautiful creation. Help us to see you walking with those who continue to seek their freedom; keep them safe today. Amen.

A Lenten Geography—an Invitation

Although it has become a message for every age, Jesus’ ministry happened in a specific place and time. As I have walked the streets of Jerusalem, sailed on the Sea of Galilee and traveled the winding roads down to the Jordan, I remember that Jesus walked the same dusty roads and climbed the same dry hills—the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea that the Romans called Judaea and later renamed Palestine. Today we call it Palestine or Israel or sometimes even Israel/Palestine, revealing our own confusion and ambivalence about this land.

In the time of Jesus, the land which was the Roman province of Iudaea or Judaea was the scene of war and violence, bloodshed, torture and displacement. The Roman occupation meant onerous taxes for the Judean peasants; when they objected, their protests were put down violently, with all the protesters killed or crucified and entire towns burned to the ground. Finally the Roman Emperor Hadrian defeated the Judeans for the last time in the third rebellion in 135 CE. By renaming the land Syria Palaestina (and renaming Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina) he hoped to wipe out all trace of the Judeans. Rome brought foreigners to colonize the area.

When Jesus walked these roads, the land was under occupation—the Roman Emperor and his army, his governors and procurators controlled the land and the lives of everyone who lived on the land. The Judeans disputed Rome's control of their lives and their land. Today ownership of the land is once again disputed and the land which was to have become a Palestinian state is under armed occupation.

The gospel writers make us acutely aware of the role of the Roman Empire in the lives of even the most ordinary people in first century Palestine. In Luke’s account, the story of Jesus’ birth opens as Mary and Joseph make their way from Nazareth to Bethlehem for the mandatory counting—required by the Empire for all of the occupied people. The Empire wants to determine the value of that which it possesses. Matthew’s account, too, is specific about Jesus’ birthplace: “in Bethlehem of Judea.” (Matt 2.1).

Jesus was born, not only in a specific place, but in a specific time, with a specific relationship to what was going on in the world. And so it is today. The land of Palestine/Israel is a specific geography and the story of the passion, of God coming to live among us, of God’s work in the world, is ongoing.

Where is God at work today among the people of Palestine and Judea?

The stories of the “living stones,” the people of this holy land, show us God’s work. Each time I visit the Holy Land, the people I meet beg me to tell their stories. They speak with confidence that if the world knew what was happening, their lives would change and the occupation would end. There is a growing movement among Jews within Israel that would end the occupation because of the way the system of checkpoints and walls and permits for Palestinians has damaged the humanity of the Jews themselves. Join me to hear some of these stories from these “living stones”—people working for justice and peace in this much-ravaged land today.

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