The Good News in the Midst of… Isaiah 65:17-25, Mathew 5:43-45, Ephesians 2:13-21 Readings: Letter from Munib’s Aunt, Nurit’s Story, Story from former Israeli Major

“No injustice, no matter what, will ever justify another injustice.”

Dr. Hirajo Meyer, Holocaust Survivor

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

We are all caught in an escapable network of mutuality,

Tied in a single garment of destiny.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

            “They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat”… and the list goes on and I am thinking to myself, when, O Lord, when will this come to pass In Palestine? Which lifetime? When the former things will not be remembered?

             For the Palestinian people I accompanied for three months who often labored in vain because their fruit rotted in their fields because they couldn’t get through the checkpoint in time to harvest them, I wonder who would get to eat their fruit?   And yes, there was lots of tree planting, especially olive trees, but this was because the settlers decided that these fertile lands now belonged to them and so they had to destroy the Palestinian’s trees to “unclaim the land; they uprooted or burned them.

There was a lot of planting going on just trying to keep up with all the destroyed trees.

            And homes, do we have to go there, Isaiah, you, prophet of exiles and now the “internally displaced”, refugees from the Nakba or the Naska or both, or those unfortunate enough to live in area C near the illegal settlements, or those who simply live in desirable areas like hilltops, or close to springs or wells? Isaiah, how did you know that there would be a problem with building and living in your own home? Did you have house demolitions too where children were afraid to go to school because they might come back and not have a home? How did you know? Are empires so predictable?

            Way before humanitarian laws were written down in civil or in international laws, or the Declaration of Human Rights, or codified in UN resolutions, you knew that this new earth would require the basics--- the right to earn a living, the right to live in your own home. And you knew too that the lambs and wolves needed to be able to get along too but did you know that sheep too deserve shelter and the right to graze freely, the right not to have their feed troughs vandalized or their food contaminated?

            You knew Isaiah. And I read you differently, now that I have walked where your people walked. I hear you in a new more anguished way because I can also hear the hum of the bulldozers making their way through a recently planted vineyard or on their way to another house demolition. I hear you and wonder how your words would sound to my Palestinian brothers and sisters living as exiles in their own country, worried about what new form of control or “collective punishment” will be exacted for their steadfast desire for freedom and justice.

            I also experience these words from you, Paul, in your letter to the Ephesians in a new way now that I have spent early mornings at the checkpoint at the wall in Bethlehem counting thousands of workers. I think about walls differently now as I recall how difficult it was some mornings to keep the humanitarian line open.  I wanted no women giving birth at the checkpoint on my watch. In the dark of early morning I had time to contemplate how we are all connected even the young and sometimes surly guards.

            One morning while waiting for the metal detectors to open, I wrote a poem. It is a response to a poster that hangs on the wall on the Jerusalem side of the checkpoint near the bench I often sat on.  The poem is called Meditations on the Poster at the Bethlehem Checkpoint: “Come and Feel the Glory” (picture of Gethsemane Basilica, Mount of Olives)

Come and feel the glory,

the cold of sitting

on a cardboard mat

in the wee hours of the morning,

the daily humiliation

of metal detectors,

permits accepted or denied,

identity cards

with worn out black strips

Don’t turn away from

pants slipping down

as belts are removed

Feel the glory, O Israel

your people enslaved

in a matrix of control

at best

at worst

a systematic daily strip search

of human rights.

Don’t turn away from

the sound bomb going off

the tear gas discharging

rubber bullets flying

Feel the pain, O Christians

Jesus in the garden

praying for deliverance---

the cup to pass

the strength to continue the journey

Don’t turn away

stay awake, stay awake, stay awake

See the glory, faith delegations

the extreme patience,

even good humor

at this prolonged dark hour,

63 years of grinding humiliation

waiting for an end---

the right to return home

stay in your home

build a new home

Come faithful ones

get on your knees

and pray with Christ at the Checkpoint

pray with the ones touching their heads to the ground,

pray for forgiveness---

for your sins of omission, commission and indifference

pray for the glory to come

to catch even a glimpse

now

            Paul, you say that “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility….” This dividing wall is no longer a metaphor for me. It is huge and made of concrete or sharp razor wire. It is meant to keep the “other” out, to protect some, and segregate the Jews from the Arabs.  This dividing wall of hostility is very real and it is growing each day, gobbling up more and more land, threatening more and more villages, and separating more and more people from their families. It is making it difficult for Israelis and Palestinians to know each other, be friends, not enemies. This wall of separation that some call the Apartheid Wall is also making it impossible to imagine a two state solution as what is left for Palestine looks more and more like African Bantustans or small enclaves of people living disconnected from each other.  The land left for Palestine looks more like Swiss cheese on the maps.           

            The hostility between Israelis and Palestinians is real too. There is a general mistrust of one for the other borne out by large and small experiences of racism and violence like the killing of a thirteen year old girl, Nurit Peled-Elhanana, by a Palestinian bomber in September of 1997 in Tel Aviv or the recent shooting of Munib Masri who was shot in the back by an Israeli soldier in Southern Lebanon while taking part in a “peaceful demonstration to commemorate the Nakba of 1948.” The hostility is real and often violent and sometimes fatal.

            But then I am reminded, often by those who have suffered the most or sometimes by even by the perpetuators of violence that the struggle is not between Israelis and Palestinians, Jews or Arabs, but as Nurit’s mother said “The fight is between those who seek peace and those who seek war. My people are those who seek peace.  My sisters are the bereaved mothers, Israeli and Palestinian, who live in Israel and in Gaza and in the refugee camps. My brothers are the fathers who try to defend their children from the cruel occupation, and are, as I was, unsuccessful in doing so.”[1]

            The struggle is between those who seek peace and those who seek war. And sometimes it is those who have served in wars who turn out to be the most ardent of peacemakers like the Israeli Major who saw the connection between his daughter and the Palestinian girls in the village where he had just demolished a home. This seeing his daughter in the eyes of this Palestinian little girl became the catalyst for turning him from a combatant for war to a  “combatant for peace”.

            Former Archbishop of Cape town, Desmond Tutu, put it this way when thinking about God’s beloved new community, the new Jerusalem, “God’s dream begins when we begin to know each other differently, as bearers of a common humanity, not as statistics to be counted, problems to be solved, enemies to be vanquished or animals to be caged.  God’s dream begins the moment one adversary looks another in the eye and sees himself reflected there…It culminates in the defeat of oppression perpetuated in the name of security, and of violence inflicted in the name of liberation.”

            God’s dream does not begin with us but it needs us. However, it is hard to look in the eye of your adversary and see yourself reflected there especially when you don’t like what you see. It is also hard to not want to sometimes vanquish your enemies.

            I had a problem with these commands while serving in Palestine I confess. It was especially hard for me to do this with soldiers carrying guns. I found it difficult to always see how we were connected. It was easier to despise than to pray.  This was especially true during our weekly demonstrations when soldiers pointed their guns at the peaceful demonstrators or shot tear gas at us. One time right before the soldiers were getting ready to tear gas us, I mouthed off with, “So, is this the democracy that my country supports?” After a few moments, one of the soldiers answered, “Yes.” And then I retorted, “Not for long.”  My fellow accompaniers had to come and pull me back before I got myself arrested. Another time happened when I was confronted with soldiers shooting at youth outside a school in the small village of Tu’qua. I had to resist the very strong urge to go up and rip the guns out of their hands and yell,” Not with my tax dollars.” I confess I did not feel like a nonviolent resister at these times and I could or did not want to feel kinship with these perpetrators of so much violence.

             But God’s dream for a new earth needs us, even if we are weak and prone to outrage ourselves. This outrage at injustice can be used to advantage too I discovered.  Such was the case of the tax revolt by the predominately Christian Palestinians from the village of Beit Sahour, Shepherd’s Fields, during the first Intifada. Like Mary and Joseph before them, living under an Empire that relied on tax dollars to pay for its wars, the good people of Beit Sahour decided that they would withhold their taxes from the Israeli authorities. This was not only taxation without representation but also taxation without basic services like water and electricity. The villagers withheld their tax dollars and lost  altogether about 1.5 million dollars worth of cars, appliances, clothes, and property while over 40 were taken to prison.

             I love the divine coincidence that the birthplace of this intifada, this uprising, this “shaking off of oppression”, took place next to the birthplace of the Prince of Peace. I also like the fact that it happened in the same place that the lowly shepherds first heard the Good News.  The Good News of Jesus’ birth and the Good News of the Tax Revolt happened during times of imperial repression and occupation. The Good News comes in the midst of oppression and trouble not in spite of it.

            The Good News comes to me too in bits and pieces in the middle of great trials. I would like to leave you with one final story. It happened on my last day but I think the message had been there all along but I wasn’t ready to receive it. It happened on May 15, the commemoration of the Great Catastrophe. My fellow EAs and I went to Ramallah to the big event to see the new unity government standing together. After the formal ceremonies and marching bands, we headed off to the Kalindia checkpoint where we heard that the youth would be gathering to march toward the checkpoint. We suspected there would be a violent response and we felt it was our last call of duty to be present. So we put on our vests for the last time and made our way to the checkpoint where we found hundreds of heavily armed soldiers firing tear gas and rubber bullets at the rock throwing youth. It was a real David and Goliath kind of scene except young David was not winning but actually every few minutes getting wounded or injured. We took pictures to document the event and the disproportionate use of force by the Israeli soldiers including live ammunition. 

            Contrary to my beliefs that the soldiers wouldn’t shoot tear gas up close, they did. The fumes disabled all of the soldiers and all of us and so we scattered to get away. I lost sight, literally of my group, and ended up stumbling around in a tear gas haze.  Within a few moments, however, arms were wrapped around me and I was given an onion and a kefia. An Israeli women from the Machsom Watch group embraced me, a group we worked with at the checkpoint on issues around permits. She offered me temporary shelter and comfort and told me, “I know who you are. We are very grateful that you are here. The work you do is important and your presence makes a difference. Thank you, and now take this onion and breathe and hold it near your eyes so you can flush out the chemicals. Wrap your face in this Kefia so more doesn’t get in.  It helps, believe me.” And with that she gave me a gentle hug and led me to a place out of the gas. Through the tears from the tear gas and the onion and now relief mixed with joy, I and the work I had been doing for three months was affirmed. It happened just like that in the middle of a battle.

            The Good News comes not in spite of bad things but in the middle of oppressive situations, in the middle of empires acting out. It comes as it did back then to the shepherds in the middle of it, in the darkest night when hope seemed the dimmest. It always has. May we rejoice in this unlikely news that the Good News that we are called to testify will come if we have ears to hear and hearts ready to be broken open to bear it and share it with others.

Rev. Loren McGrail

Ecumenical Accompanier in Bethlehem

Team 39

             

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[1] Quoted in Mark Braverman’s book, Fatal Embrace:Christians,Jews, and the Search for Peace in the Holy Land