Lent 1, Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy 26.1-11
“Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate...” (Deut. 26.11)

For a variety of reasons, Israelis live in settlements constructed in the West Bank, on land where the international community expects a Palestinian state to be eventually located. Not all settlers are there because they are religiously or ideologically staking a claim on all “historic Israel.”
A few radical settlers claim all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean; they want all Palestinians removed from that land. But most Israelis either are oblivious to the settlement-building or support the settlements because they provide a less expensive housing alternative. Housing in the settlements is subsidized, either by wealthy American and European Jews, or by the Israeli government. According to ICAHD (Isreali Committee Against House Demolitions: http://www.icahd.org/ ), most of the young families who buy homes in the settlements live there because the housing costs much less than in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

Some settlers, however, are fiercely militant, loudly and sometimes violently defending their right and obligation to populate all of the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, and they prove their claims with passages like these verses from Deuteronomy. So, when I read “the land that the Lord your God is giving you,” I cringed. These are the very words that I have heard settlers utter in defense of their illegal occupation of Palestinian homes and lands.

I was surprised to hear in today's text, however, that once the people of Israel have offered their first fruits to God in gratitude for this gift, they are instructed to celebrate “together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you.” In the gift of the land, God does not assume that the Israelites will remove all the prior inhabitants of the land. God apparently did not envision 1948, when soldiers broke down doors and forced Palestinian families out into the streets and on up the road, out of town, most ending up in refugee camps, some as far away as Jordan and Lebanon. These verses in Deuteronomy present a different plan. God’s plan for the land is that it will be a place where the Israelites (who, we are reminded were once aliens themselves, “afflicted” and “oppressed”) can thrive, but also a home for the “aliens.”

This is not the reality of this land today. Non-Jews cannot thrive, cannot participate in the abundance God offers Israel in these verses. Non-Jews live under different rules. West Bank Palestinian cars must have green license plates, to ensure they do not drive on Israeli-only roads. Palestinians applying for building permits, whether to build an addition to their homes or a new school in their community, are routinely denied—for years. Palestinian homes are still being demolished. In January a home was demolished in Jaffa. Palestinians must have a permit to do anything. Even the Palestinians who live in “autonomous” areas of the West Bank, like Bethlehem, must have travel permits to be allowed to leave their town—even when they are traveling to another town within the West Bank. Israeli soldiers stand guard at the entrances to Bethlehem and check identification of everyone entering or leaving—except my own busload of American tourists.
Photo: House demolition in Jaffa, January 18, 2010

Wouldn’t this celebration described in Deuteronomy be a grand vision for peace in Israel/Palestine? Jews and Palestinians together, in one great big party, celebrating the abundance of the land, offering up their abundance in gratitude for God’s gift. After all, God is God of Jews and Palestinians (whether Muslim or Christian), all descendants of that “wandering Aramean.”

God, you led Abraham and Sarah to a land of milk and honey, with enough bounty for all the inhabitants of the land. We thank you for the plenty in our own lives. Help us to trust in your promise of abundance, opening our hands and hearts to share our bounteous harvest with the alien in our midst. Amen.