Sad Friday

The Arabic word for Good Friday is jum’a al hazini which means “Sad Friday’.  This seems like a much better name for the day that Christ was humiliated, tortured, condemned and crucified as a criminal. It is a day of deep despair for it appears that the forces of evil and oppression have won, empire once again has triumphed by collaborating with political and religious leaders fearful of prophetic and new leadership.

 Palestine itself sometimes feels like “Sad Friday”, worse than ever as violence against Palestinians is on the rise from all sides. Some say that the US veto was the catalyst because it meant the Israeli government could do what it wants without fear of reprisal from the US; others say it is because Arab revolution is in the air and needs to be nipped in the bud through tighter controls and punishments.

 I stayed overnight in Jerusalem in order to walk the Stations of the Cross with hundreds of pilgrims the next morning at 6:30 AM. We crowded the narrow streets to sing and chant stopping in front of each station, each of us in our respective groups, to remember the way of the cross, the way of Jesus’ passion. I want to tell you that it was a holy time visiting these possible places/stations where our Christian history unfolded but it wasn’t so much for me. There was too much pushing and shoving for me plus my postmodern atonement theology does not believe as the refrain to each station prayer emphasized, “Because of your holy cross you have redeemed the world”. My theology holds that Jesus’ life and consequent suffering and resurrection is what redeems us not only the cross.

I did appreciate the liturgy of prayers added to each station highlighting contemporary issues of injustice.

Between one of the stations I heard three different groups singing ‘Were You There When They Crucified My Lord”.  As most of you know this is a “Negro Spiritual” that comes from slaves making sense of their own suffering along side Jesus’ suffering. There is one particular verse that really speaks to this:

                        Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

                        Oh, sometimes it makes me tremble, tremble, tremble.

                        Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

                        Were you there when they nailed him to a tree?

 Yes, it says tree and not cross. African Americans in the south knew all about crucifixion via lynching. They saw their suffering mirrored in Jesus’ suffering and also their salvation in his redemption. 

I know you are not supposed to have a favorite station but the station that stood out the most for me was Station 6 where Veronica wipes the face of Jesus. I liked standing in this darkened cave like grotto with only a painted icon at the entrance and I liked even better the theology of incarnation that the transfer of his image onto the cloth reminds us of and how a woman acting out of everyday compassion offered what she could and because of this his image became visible. Veronica’s story and veil is a story of compassion and solidarity.

In Palestine and Israel, like in other parts of the world, women, in spite of or because of their own experience of suffering with Patriarchy, are the ones who stand quietly and firmly or loud and noisily against injustice. I have met many of these women here in Palestine and some I meet only at demonstrations like this woman from the Al Mas’ara Friday demonstration

There are also Israeli groups our teams we work with. Women in Black is a group of women who began witnessing the occupation in January 1988, and every Friday in Jerusalem at noon and across the world, they stand like Sophia on the street corners of the world dressed in black holding up signs on the shape of a hand saying, “Stop the Occupation” written in Hebrew, Arabic and English. Our teams join them when we can in Jerusalem.

Machsom Watch (Checkpoint Watch) is another women led group that formed in 2001 in response to human rights abuses of Palestinians at the checkpoints. We call them when Palestinians are being denied passage because of a permit problem. Because they speak Hebrew they are often able to intervene more effectively with the soldiers or to find out if someone is on the “Black List”.

Sad Friday is an invitation to walk with Jesus and all those who are suffering and being crucified today so because of this I left Jerusalem after the walk down Via Dolorosa to be with the Palestinian people who every Friday try to exercise their right to freedom of assembly and expression. I went to join that mixed group of Palestinian, Israeli, and International activists who every Friday after the prayers are finished in the Mosque in Al Ma'sara try to go and visit the field of the farmer who was shot a few years back and whose land was and is still being confiscated for the expansion of the Efrata Settlement. Our goal is to march to the land and sit under one of the remaining olive trees to remember what happened. Some Fridays the emphasis changes. For example the Friday before we went and remembered all of those in prison in remembrance of Prisoner’s Day.

 Abraham Heshel said once about marching for justice and freedom that his legs were praying. My legs and spirit left the narrow congested streets of Jerusalem to return to the people I knew who were being persecuted today, my Palestinian brothers and sisters in Al Ma'sara. Their cries for freedom and liberation need to be heard and I am privileged to be one of the witnesses not only of the brutality of their unjust treatment but of their courage and strength in speaking truth to empire's brutal power.

Sad Friday can be celebrated by allowing ourselves to remember the passion or it can be celebrated by us joining with those who are being persecuted and working for justice today.

It is a somber day that invites us to reckon with our own complicity in the system and to contemplate the ways we can pray and work for the liberation or resurrection of others.