March 13, 2016
Last week David discussed the dangers of dualistic thinking in Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s book, Not in God’s Name. This involves the idea that there are people of a “true faith,” and that they, therefore, have the right to reject, demonize and destroy those who are not members of that “true faith.” The Jews were called by God to be light to the world, to welcome the stranger, to show the world what love of neighbor and justice could be. My sharing about my trip to Israel-Palestine today is a perfect example of how Israel, its government and many of its people are carefully, purposefully and strategically demonizing and destroying the Palestinian people with the excuse that God gave the Jews the land. That is not Jesus’ path.
Luke 4: 14-21
Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread to the whole countryside. He taught in their synagogues and everyone praised him.
He went to Nazareth where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went in to the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Jesus had been in the wilderness, praying and asking for God’s guidance as he wandered in the desert, listening to God’s words and direction. He had battled with Satan, over temptations of making his life easier with bread; over calling forth angels to save him from dying as he threw himself off the temple, so everyone would know who he was; over having earthly power. He had been clear in his answers to his temptations: The word of God has to be first, instead of our earthly needs, worship of God has to be first, we are not to put God to unnecessary tests in our lives.
All of us have experienced times when we are seeking God’s guidance, and trying to follow Jesus, and we are tempted to get off the path because it seems too hard. That happened to me as I was preparing to go on my Christian Peacemaker Teams Delegation last October and the violence was escalating in Jerusalem and Palestine.
My husband Kent was urging me to cancel the trip, my sister was worried about me going, and other friends were concerned. I felt clear about my decision to go whatever would happen, but was pulled off my clarity, not wanting to increase others’ fear and anxiety. I had to keep praying and reminding myself that this was my call, to be God’s peaceful witness in the midst of the violence. Jesus, too, had to keep going forward, no matter what the consequences were going to be in his life.
We need to focus on the words in the scripture, “Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit.” The desert time in prayer and the time of temptations had strengthened his Spirit. He came in to Nazareth with God’s power at a deep level. He had seen more clearly what was essential in his life, putting God and his call first to show others why he was on this earth. We must do this, too, in this short life we have.
Put God and His call to us first, no matter what is tempting us to get off the path. Prayer is what undergirds our power to be who God wants us to be. We cannot let our fear stop our call, no matter how scary it may be to us. Otherwise we will not fulfill what God birthed us on this earth to accomplish.
Then Jesus opens to Isaiah and reads his call to the community where he grew up. He is giving them the first chance to hear God’s vision for his life. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.” Jesus knows that God’s Spirit is the one guiding him into his call. He has seen the Spirit in his baptism and known he is God’s beloved son. He has heard the way he is to take in the desert. He has seen that the poor need to hear this message of good news, that they too are God’s beloved, and they too are equally important in being God’s messengers on this earth. Who was anointed in the Scripture? David was anointed as a King. But Jesus is aware that his anointing and the power of the Lord’s Spirit were for the poor, and those who were suffering.
So this message has been for me ever since Kent and I first went to Israel-Palestine in 2005 for a nonviolent civil disobedience at the checkpoint in Bethlehem on Palm Sunday. Our request of the Israeli Defense Force with 200 Palestinians from Bethlehem was simple: “We want to go and pray in Jerusalem.” The checkpoint was blocked by a row of 18-20 year old Israeli young men and women, in battle gear with their helmets, guns and uniforms, saying “no.”
Our brothers and sisters in Palestine are feeling more helplessand hopeless than they were in 2005. The wall has encircled Bethlehem, and many more Palestinian towns. More Palestinian land has been confiscated, more homes demolished in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, the Negev. Young Palestinian men are arrested, tortured and imprisoned for months with no reason given for their arrest. It is a systematic way of terrorizing the Palestinian community so they will not dare to challenge the occupation of the West Bank. Jesus’ words strike home to me as I think of my Palestinian family I visited in the Al Arroub refugee camp just south of Bethlehem.
Jesus says, “He has sent me to proclaim freedom to the prisoners.” Two of the young men in my family have been arrested. The oldest, Saeed, because he was throwing rocks at the Israeli soldiers, He was traumatized when he returned home after being tortured, and was not able to finish college like the others in the family are doing. The second son, Ismail, was only told of his sentence after he was released months later. He had been volunteering for the Red Crescent, like the Red Cross, and had put into the ambulance someone the Israeli soldiers had injured and called a terrorist. Ismail holds no anger in his heart. He is determined to be free of anger towards his oppressors. When the head of the prison brought him in to his office and was looking at his Facebook page, he asked him, “What is this smile you have? Why are you always smiling in these pictures? I am going to take away that smile.” Ismail told him “No you will not. Only the person who gave me that smile will take it away.” The head of the prisonasked “Who is that?” He said to him “God and my parents.” Ismail told me that he wants everyone to show their shining soul and not their dark heart in the world. His father’s name is Theeb. Theeb’s father was arrested at age 70 and was in jail for 2½ years.
Palestinians are humiliated at military checkpoints, not allowed to go through to get to their jobs, kept there in a medical emergency so they die before they can get to the hospital.We met one of the deans of BirZeit University in 2005 who had three of his babies die at the checkpoint because his wife was in labor and was not allowed to get to the hospital. The Israeli soldiers had refused to let her through.
Jesus says he will bring recovery of sight to the blind. The Israeli government needs to recover its sight. They are blind in following power and systematic plans to destroy a beautiful culture and people in their oppression of the Palestinians. As we went through the Holocaust museum, YadVashem, we were all struck by the haunting words, “Never Again.” We wondered why the Israelis do not see that “Never Again” needs to be for the whole world, not just for Jews. “Never again” needs to be seen in the light of what they are doing to the Palestinians. When the traumatized do not look at their own darkness, they will perpetrate that darkness on others. “The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation.” So it is now with the Israeli government and its people. Why do they not see that they are creating a cruel oppressive apartheid system similar to what they themselves suffered in the holocaust?
Jesus says that he will release the oppressed, as we must! It was not only those in the West Bank that are suffering. The Bedouin people in the Negev are being oppressed. We visited two towns in the Negev, the southernmost part of Israel-Palestine. In one village, El Araqib, which appeared to be a desolate wasteland except for the cemetery, Azziz, the son of the Sheikh, told us the story of the destruction of their village 87 times. In 1999 the Israeli government began to spray their vegetables with Roundup and all the vegetables died. This was done again in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003. Two hundred of their sheep died, two camels died, many goats and sixteen horses. In February, 2003, his uncle was out feeding the sheep when the village was sprayed; twenty-two days later he died. Their land was confiscated by the JNF Ambassador Forest, but they refused to leave. In 2010 five hundred Israeli Defense Force soldiers and police came with ten bulldozers to their village and destroyed sixty-five homes. 5,700 people were left homeless. The people still refused to leave. Whenever the soldiers and police come to destroy their village again, the people run in to their graveyard. That is the only place they feel safe. They cannot leave the land because their ancestors are buried there. Azziz has been arrested seven or eight times for wanting to stay on his ancestral land. He told the story of his camels being stolen. He looked for them everywhere. He found out that there was an Israeli camel farm that was starting near their land and he went to see if he could find his camels. He found them there, but was told he had to pay 7,000-10,000 shekels to get them back within a few days. He could not afford to pay, so now he is forced to buy camel milk from the peoples’ Farm who stole his camels.
People in East Jerusalem are having their homes demolished or are kicked out of their homes so that settlers can move in. During the few weeks we were there, many young people were killed by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Saeed, the oldest of my family in the Al Arroub camp, showed me a video of the body of a seventeen- year-old Palestinian boy who had been killed by a settler in Hebron. The settler was with the Israeli Defense Force soldiers, with the murder weapon in his hand, not being arrested. Instead one soldier looked around to make sure no-one was looking, and placed a knife by the boy’s body to make it look like he had threatened someone with it. There is a tent in Hebron now where the families of the children who have been murdered sit, protesting that they have not received their children’s’ bodies back. The soldiers will not release the bodies until the families pay 30,000 shekels, (almost $10,000) which no one can afford.
Jesus shares that he is “proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor.” What is bringing and will bring the year of the Lord’s favor to Israel, Palestine and to the United States? My visit to the Tent of Nations owned by the Nassar family, who are Christian Palestinians, which is located on a beautiful hill south of Bethlehem gave me the hope in this oppressed land. Bshara Nassar’s father, Daher, showed us around the land. I have pictures of rocks on which they have sayings that demonstrate their vision of God’s world. “We refuse to be enemies.” “You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill can not be hid. Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.” Daoud Nassar shared that they refuse to be victims, they refuse to hate, they refuse to immigrate. They use creative nonviolent action to fight the occupation. They do things legally. They plant trees on their land. Even though they have five settlements built around them and settlers have damaged their property and destroyed their trees, they remain clear they do not want to respond with anything but nonviolence. Military bulldozers came in at night once and destroyed 1500 trees. A Jewish group from Europe had compassion and replaced 250 olive trees.
Daoud and his family works hard at getting international attention and inviting the world to come to the farm to volunteer in their programs, and help with cultivating, planting and harvesting crops. The farm has creatively circumvented the many Israeli restrictions placed on their operations, and has become almost completely self-sustaining. They provide a summer camp for children from the refugee camps, they have a project in the town near them to teach women computer skills, they have harvest camps for olive picking. The Nassar family’s vision is to establish a school on the property which would teach self-sustainability, and they need a volunteer to write and develop the curriculum. They would also like to start a wine-making operation for their grapes, creating an international market. They would like to have a farm shop on the land where Palestinian farmers can sell their produce. One settler who was at first antagonistic is now in their camp and tries to influence the other settlers in a positive way. Their land has had demolition orders which they keep on taking to the courts. The demolition orders are placed anywhere on their one-hundred-acre farm so they will not be noticed so they can not respond in a timely way. They remain convinced that God has given them this land, which their family has owned since 1916 for God’s purpose.
In order to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, Palestinians must be given their human rights to live in peace in their land, in their homes, to have freedom of movement, freedom to not be arrested for no reason without due legislative process. The United States must stop providing three billion dollars a year to continue the Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and the imprisonment of the people of Gaza. Our corporations who build military equipment benefit from these funds because Israel is expected to spend a great deal of this money on orders from US corporations for military equipment. Our government is considering giving an additional 1.5 billion yearly to Israel for military equipment beginning in 2018 for ten years. We must stop this. We must boycott all Israeli goods, as we did to stop the apartheid system in South Africa. We must divest from all companies who are involved with the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. We must put sanctions on Israel until the military occupation ends and all Palestinians have their freedom.
Jesus ends his reading with the words, “Today the scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” Jesus was here to show us how to fulfill this scripture. He was here to bring love, justice and peace to this world of occupation, violence, and murder. He was here to show us a path of honoring the poor, releasing the prisoners, opening the eyes of the blind, ending oppression. He was here to bring his Spirit so deeply in to our lives that we can face the fears of really following our call to do things that may be dangerous and require a courage based on God’s power and not our own. I invite you all, brothers and sisters, to follow Jesus’ challenging path. You will have his presence forever!