Called to Bless
by Luke Rembold
I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about the best way
to share and reflect on my trip to Israel
and Palestine
this last January. What can I say to bring light to this burden I now feel on
my heart? How do you take an emotional, visceral, personal experience and
communicate it in a clear, passionate way?
To say there are a lot of politics involved in this
conversation would be an understatement.
I’m aware of the context that we come from, or at least that I have come
from as a middle-class American. But to be honest, I left on this trip mostly
ignorant. I’m sure some of you come into this topic with a great deal more
knowledge than I had before I left, and some of you probably still have more
knowledge than I have now. I’ll try not to get political. Operative word here
being “try.” Honestly, the intersections of politics and religion here are so
tightly wound together that trying to detangle them is to drastically
oversimplify the complexity of what we’re talking about.
I shared before church some of the economic, social, and
environmental struggles taking place in this region, in terms of crops, water
rights, housing rights, and residency. What I want to share with you now, and
try to bare of bit of myself for you now, is my own spiritual journey as the
trip progressed. I’ve come to realize
that in a region full of various narratives and stories, some differing greatly
based on perspective, all I can speak to is my own story, my own experience. I can’t hit every note of journey, but I’ll
try to strike the major chords to help bring you along, and I hope that some
aspect of the journey connects with you.
I went to the Holy Land
searching for the holy. Simple enough, right? Now, I might have tried to tell
myself that my delegation was based on becoming more aware of the struggles
that are taking place, that I was going to educate myself as a peacemaker, but
really, I was seeking the divine. I was looking for where God was in this holy
mess, searching for God in the deserts of the Holy Land,
seeking guidance both for my own life and for the lives of everyone in this
region.
My trip began in Jerusalem,
the city of Kings,
the central municipality for all three Abrahamic traditions. Our first night
some of us explored Old Jerusalem, fighting off jetlag with a circuitous walk
to the Western Wall, a pilgrimage and holy site for the Jewish tradition. The
peace of the square at night, just a few pilgrims praying quietly, was a warm
welcome to our pilgrim hearts.
Our next morning brought the Call to Prayer, the mezzinas
awakening us around 5 am with Arabic songs praising God. I’d experienced this
before in Turkey,
and I love it. While people of the Muslim faith gather in mosques for this time
of prayer, I’ve always enjoyed the opportunity to wake up, lie in bed in
prayer, and then go back to sleep after it is over. That opening day, the call
to prayer brought me peace.
Our first presenter and conversation that day, however,
brought with it the stark realities of inequality in the region. Ruth, an
Israeli activist working with the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions,
took us to a point overlooking the city where we could understand border lines,
“settlements,” and the wall. In the interest of education, let’s take a brief
moment to break each of those down.
Much of the conflict in the area comes from the lack of
clear and understood borders. In 1948, when Israel declared independence, here
are the political lines of the new country. In 1967, Israel
expanded, capturing Jerusalem
in addition to this additional land. When we talk about “settlements,” we are
almost exclusively referring to Israeli citizens, protected by the Israeli
Defense Force, moving onto what is internationally recognized as Palestinian
land, as a means of pushing Israel’s
political boundaries.
I’ll discuss the wall separately. I want to do that because
my first exposure to this wall came when I went to Triennium in 2004 as a high
school junior. In my small group at Triennium was a young man by the name of
Jiries. Jiries was and is an incredible
pianist, but his first-hand account of the wall being built at that time
forever changed my view of the Holy Land. And
so seeing this wall, spoken of to me 10 years before as it was still in
construction, was hard for me. From our viewpoint just outside Jerusalem
that first day, I could see it winding and snaking its way through the Holy City,
dividing relatives from one another and people from their crops. It should also
be noted that this wall follows neither the political lines of 1948 nor 1967,
but instead encroaches with impunity on Palestinian lands wherever it likes,
further reducing the amount of land available to Palestinian farmers and
families.
Our tour with Ruth finished with a visit to a home
demolition site, where a Palestinian building was destroyed by contractors
working for the Israeli government (I want to note that I will try to be very
careful in my language as I define Israeli, referring to the political
governmental body, and those of the Jewish faith. While Israel’s desire
is to be the homeland of the Jewish people, there are many Israeli citizens
that claim other faith traditions). Our
workshop before church discussed this topic, as while West Jerusalem has a huge
construction economy and constant building taking place, no building or
expansion permits are issued in East Jerusalem,
and therefore entire neighborhoods of Palestinian housing are falling apart, or
are not big enough to support the families living there. Since 1967, over
28,000 homes in the Palestinian territories have been destroyed, thousands in East Jerusalem, with reasons for destruction being cited
as everything from a threat to public safety, or that building took place
without proper permits. That’s almost three times Baker’s population losing
their homes over the course of the last 47 years.
My heart was heavy after our tour with Ruth. She took us
through some checkpoints, as we watched Palestinian people (typically darker in
skin color than their Israeli counterparts) wait in chutes uncannily similar to
cattle chutes wait to be allowed through, usually for the purpose of work. We
visited an Israeli settlement just outside Jerusalem, perfect landscaping and grass in
the desert, complete with olive trees transplanted in roundabouts to create an
image of permanence. My heart was angry.
This was injustice, blatant injustice taking place, mostly through military
force.
At the risk of the longest sermon ever, I can’t reflect on
every speaker we met and talked to, whether Israeli, Palestinian, Zionist or
not, Muslim, Jew, or Christian. I have to flash forward a little bit now, to a
young man we met in Bethlehem
by the name of Muhammad. Muhammad has
spent his whole life in the AIDA refugee camp, one of the refugee camps set up
after the 1948 war that led to the displacement of over 700,000 Palestinians.
That is more people than the entire city of Portland evicted and displaced. Aida doesn’t
look like a refugee camp as I at least, picture it. It is not tents and
temporary structures. This is a community that has existed since 1948, and the
camp now consists of many permanent buildings, all built right within the
shadow of the wall. That wall keeps a constant eye on the refugee camp…the day
we were there we had to hurriedly leave because soldiers were getting ready to
come in for a sweep (they use it - the AIDA refugee camp- for training new
soldiers). As we left Bethlehem
later that day, we saw the smoke from tear gas billowing up into the air from
the wall near the refugee camp where we had enjoyed tea, hospitality, and a
tour just hours earlier.
Muhammad now serves as the director of youth activities at
the local community center. Muhammad said something I’ll never forget: He said,
“You, as Americans, have more rights in my homeland than I do. You can come
here, then go to Jerusalem.
Another day you might go to the sea. Most of the youth who live here will never
see Jerusalem,
will never see the sea. We are prisoners inside these walls.” As two friends and I walked the 7 miles from Bethlehem to Jerusalem
later that day, we passed through the checkpoint that essentially keeps Bethlehem a completely
walled-in city. When we needed to produce our passports to gain entry into Israel, the
guard took one look at us and waved us through without even glancing at our
papers. Indeed, we had more freedom in Muhammad’s land than he did.
3 weeks after we left, Muhammad was struck in the head by a
rubber bullet during an IDF sweep of the camp. He was leaning out the window of
the community center, urging youth to empty the streets, when an IDF soldier
shot him in the head. When his cohorts
in the community center tried to rush him to the hospital, IDF forces in the
streets prevented them from leaving, citing safety concerns. Thankfully,
Muhammad lived to tell the story. And
Muhammad’s message for us made me brutally aware of the privilege I carry as an
American strutting through the Holy Land.
I don’t want to only speak of those things that made me
angry. There were lots, to be fair. Injustice does that. Inequality does that.
Grappling with your own privilege and complicity in an illegal occupation is
difficult….no one likes to look in a mirror and see themselves as an oppressor,
but if we are serious about ending injustice we must examine our own
participation in it. So the final image I want to share with you is one of
courage, of nonviolence, and of hope.
We were lucky enough to spend one night in a small village
named Bi’lin, north of Ramallah and in a crucial location in the Palestinian Territories. 10 years ago, the wall was
built through the olive orchards of many Bil’in residents, literally cutting
them off from the fields their families had worked for generations. The wall
wasn’t running along political lines or international lines…it was serving as a
tool to seize land where it could. And the residents of Bil’in decided to do
something about it. Every Friday, for the last 10 years, they have organized a
nonviolent protest that walks to the wall and demands justice. Sometimes they
dress up as characters from the movie Avatar. Last Christmas they went one time
dressed as a hundred Santa Clauses. Their creativity in protest gives spirit
and life to their movement, and rather than being confrontational, aspires to
draw
people into the conversation.
These villagers have been tear-gassed too many times to
count, shot with rubber bullets, and imprisoned. One leader of the movement has
been killed by a tear gas canister shot directly into his chest instead of into
the air. Yet this community continues to believe in the nonviolent resolution,
earning international support and belief through their dedication to
nonviolence. About a year ago, the wall was moved back about a half mile. The
villagers still don’t have their full orchards back, but they’ve been able to
once again work in the fields they have so long cultivated.
I bring this message of hope before I come back to stark
realities. One of our final days in Jerusalem we
went to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust
Museum. It was absolutely
heartbreaking. Reading, learning about the atrocities
of the Shoa (the Jewish name for the Holocaust), it gave me a broader
understanding of the historical narrative that led to the creation of Israel. And I
realized that in my anger, in my frustration, and my sadness, I was at risk of
blaming too heavily, of drawing too hard a line in my heart. I sat down in the
coffee shop of the Yad Vashem and pulled out my Bible, thumbing to Matthew’s
Beatitudes. I’ve never liked Matthew’s Beatitudes as much. I’m pragmatic. I’m
action based. Luke’s Beatitudes deal with physical, real-life issues. Luke says
“Blessed are the poor.” Matthew’s are more difficult. I’ll stop after just that
first one: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”
There is some graffiti on the separation wall that reads,
“One Wall, Two Jails.” In the Holy Land, for
one of these oppressed people, that jail is that of poverty, of inequality, of
injustice, and of occupation. It's easy. "Blessed are the poor."
There are other people that are oppressed by fear. They have
been hurt. They have been killed in horrific ways that make your heart break.
They are a people who have felt the terror of occupation. But now they live in
a jail of fear. They've locked themselves in without a way to get out.
"Blessed are the poor in spirit."
Genesis speaks of the chosen people as those blessed. And
then there’s that tricky little line at the end that states “in you all the
families of the world shall be blessed.” For the entirety of my time in Israel and Palestine,
I was asking myself, “if we use this Biblical text to justify the creation of
this country, how can we so quickly look past this “blessing the rest of the
world” in a land of occupation and inequality?
I don’t like a sermon without a call to action. It’s just
not in my DNA. And while this is my journey, I recognize that it might not be
your own. Your story, your understanding, your narrative is going to look
different than mine. That’s great. I’ll willingly admit I bring more questions
than answers, and I invite and implore you to explore your own understanding.
Go read on these issues. Try to find viewpoints from all over the
spectrum. Pray for wisdom. Pray for
peace. I hope we can be a church that despite differing views, can pray for
peace in the midst of turmoil.
For me, I know these are all God’s children. Every person
caught in the middle of this conflict is a precious child that God loves, and
it breaks my heart to see those oppressed, whether by physical walls or by
paralyzing fear, that makes us forget that “those people” are in fact those same
brothers and sisters descended from Abraham that
Genesis speaks about?
And if I am willing to look in a mirror, I have to recognize
these faults in my own life. I have walls, both literal and imaginary, that
prevent me from knowing, understanding, and loving my neighbors. At times, I go
out of my way to avoid former high school classmates I see around town. I’ll
see them in an aisle at Albertsons and go down the next one. Sometimes at Open
Door, I have such a desire to correct behavior and protect church property that
I forget to encourage the space to be shared.
I allow that political sign in someone’s front yard to wall me off from
even approaching them to discuss the issues. I had to go around the world to
see the walls in my own context, and let me tell you, walls abound.
The good news? Friends, we are followers of a God of
resurrection. We believe in a redeemer that can take what is broken and flawed
and make it whole. So today, I pray for peace in Israel
and Palestine.
I pray for Ruth and the other activists we met. I pray for Muhammad and the
refugees of the AIDA refugee camp. I pray for the people of Bil’in. And I also
pray for the legislators and lawmakers of the Israeli government. I pray for
the members of the Israeli Defense Force that are compelled by law to take up
arms against their neighbors. Prayers for peace, and prayers for courage to
fight injustice when we see it.
Now we can’t just pray for peace somewhere else without
thinking of our own walls. So I pray for peace in the divisions in our own
community and country. Let us pray to the God that tears down walls, that we
might each be freed from our own prisons, that we might courageously love
freely and abundantly, and share that love in a real, tangible blessing to
others. Amen.
