Post Script

October 26, 2014


This is David writing today.  The last couple of days have added even more to our adventure--truly a bonus "P.S." to our time in the Middle East.

Saturday was a calm day--no classes because of the Islamic New Year.  We spent the morning and early afternoon cleaning, doing laundry, packing, and planning how to get the exact number of shekels, dinars, and Euros we would need for the various crossings we have coming up.  We then set out on a final walk around Bethlehem.  First stop was at a friend of Hejazi (our guide to the Dead Sea on Friday night), who said to just ask at the phone shop on Star Street for his friend.  We did that, and the store owner pointed at the apartment across the street, and phoned the person--Nabil--who dropped what he was doing to come and share mint lemonade and conversation with us.  He is a delightful person, and our visit was enriched by another person--a young American named Michelle who is teaching at a school in Jerusalem.  Turns out that she knows Micah Hendler of the YMCA  Youth Chorus, and spent time in Willmar and Benson, Minnesota and knew people we knew there.

With our new friend, Nabil

Michelle and Nabil

Our conversation was, as has always been the case in talking about the occupation of Palestine, animated and enlightening.  One of the amazing stories we talked about (a situation that Kathy had heard about from others earlier in the week) is a Palestinian farm south of Bethlehem owned by a family from Christmas Lutheran Church--Daoud Nassur.  Their farm (which they have had as deeded property since Ottoman times--and which the Israeli Supreme Court has ruled is theirs and that any encroachment on their land is illegal by Israeli law) is surrounded by Israeli settlements--putting them in a donut hole.  The settlers, with the help of the Israeli army, have cut off Daoud's electricity and water, and have bulldozed trees in their olive grove in an attempt to move them off of their land (this is typical).  Nassur's response has been to set up solar panels and dig their own wells, and to establish a peace center, "Tent of Nations" where volunteers can come and plant trees, and youth can have camp-like activities.  One can find links to them by googling "tent of nations."  It is a remarkable story of peaceful resistance, and we pray and hope that it will be successful--not only in keeping their family farm going, but in opening the eyes of the world--including the Israelis--that violent actions and oppression destroy not only the oppressed, but eat away at the soul and the humanity of the oppressor.  

We moved on with our walk to return a hymnal we had borrowed from Christmas Lutheran Church, and Ewa and Boulos gave us some directions to other places we wanted to find--a dessert place that made great kenafa, and a nearby refugee camp.  We found both--decided against dessert even though it looked great (we were hoarding shekels at that point), and walked through the refugee camp--essentially a slum area of Bethlehem established by the UN in 1950 for refugees from the 1948 War--which the Israelis call "The War of Independence"  and which the Palestinians call the "Nafka" ("The Catastrophe")--again--two vastly different perspectives.  It seems that inertia is a powerful force--people--and even more, nations and institutions--become used to the status quo, and structures, lives, expectations conform to that--either painfully accepting on one side or blindly happy on the other.   Despair on one side and fear on the either all too often leads to violence.

The walk continued with a swing back up Star Street past our apartment and on to Manger Square.  We followed up on an earlier invitation from a man in the street, Pastor Issa, to stop by their house church--"House of Bread"--an evangelical Palestinian church.  Our brief visit was pleasant, and delightful in seeing these people who were deeply religious and fervently praying for and expressing the power of God's Spirit in their lives and for the transformation of the world.  He gave us the contact information for a person he had met in Hugo, Minnesota (just north of St. Paul) on one of his mission trips.  We appreciated Pastor Issa's closing prayer with us, and his gift of a hymnal.

Pastor Issa and David in the House of Bread church

Pastor Issa at the entrance to his church

The next morning was final packing, finishing up the food, and catching a ride into Jerusalem with a friend who works with a church-related NGO that sponsors and trains support teams that come to Palestine.  We took an alternate route into the city, passing by a section of the Israeli Wall (with graffiti on the Palestinian side).

The Israeli wall in Bethlehem

She also pointed out the many Israeli settlements on the way from Bethlehem to Jerusalem.  She had an interesting observation about what has kept the conflict going for so long--money and power (no surprise there if one reads Scripture.)  It is in Arab countries' interest to keep the conflict simmering, as it takes the minds of their people off their own domestic problems and oppressions;  it is one of the few things uniting Israel, which is fractured in its politics;  and it provides money for military contractors and even the many ngos that are there working for peace.

We carried these thoughts into worship, where Kathy and I performed the spiritual "Religion is a Fortune"--again a hit.  The Gospel text was "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. . .and your neighbor as yourself."   The sermon was thoughtful, engaging, and compassionately presented, but, as so often seems to be the case, it focused on social justice issues, the political situation here, and what we need to do about it (or what God is telling us to do about it.)   While we agree with the  tenor of those thoughts, Kathy and I are disappointed when pastors in the pulpit--and faithful lay people, for that matter--fail to connect this to what God has done for us in Christ Jesus--for the true Kingdom of God's grace and love that surpasses any human political or social justice agenda, and makes a deeper, fuller, more complete transformation possible.   A couple of scriptural passages point out the need to avoid this trap of us trying to usher in a Messianic age that matches our own human agendas--

"Some trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we will remember the Name of the Lord our God." (Psalm 20:7)

(Jesus:) "You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have Me among you." (Matthew 26:11, Mark 14:7, John 12:8)

(Jesus:) "My kingdom is not of this world." (John 18:36)

This doesn't mean we ignore the needs for us to be Christ's hands for social justice in the world.   We just need to let the the horse be before the cart--remembering it is not us who are on the hook for this, but that Christ already placed himself on the hook of the cross to redeem us from human condition of sin.  Christ's redeeming love and grace must be the starting and ending point from which we live--which leads us to the abundant life God has in mind for us--even when it is in a painful world that seems to always fall short of God's plan for us.

After church, we swung by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and finally (on our fourth try) got to visit the Sepulchre altar itself--a way for us to put our time in the Holy Land to rest, and to look ahead to the daily resurrection to new life that we will continue to gain from this experience.

Out of focus picture of the Holy Sepulchre altar (jostled in line!)

Inside the Sepulchre shrine.

We moved on after a final shawerma/falafel lunch, rolling our luggage over the cobblestone streets (and hills) of the Old City, to meet a driver we had lined up to take us to the Allenby/King Hussein crossing by Jericho. It turned out that he knew other friends we had met--Mark and Susanne Brown from Lutheran World Federation.  It felt good to be in the hands of yet another angel God had sent our way without our planning.

At the border crossing, we met a delightful and VERY outgoing Jordanian-born (but grew up in Atlanta) body-builder and man of faith named Fadi.   We had a great conversation--he is a man who is eager to put his faith into action through acts of service.  He was pleased to hear that we have been married 30 years and asked how we did it--our response was that we shared the same faith and the values it carried, and that we freely forgave each other.  He was inspired by this and wants to apply that in his own life.  (I'm bummed I didn't get a picture of him with Kathy before we parted--he actually approached her first for a conversation--he has good taste).  Here's a picture of him from his email thumbnail  (His personal trainer business is titled "Body by Fadi"--he's obviously good at what he does:

Fadi Malouf in action

Fadi Malouf

In yet another wonderful happenstance, we bumped into Pastor Mitri Raheb at the Jordan border crossing; he was returning from the release in Germany of his latest book translated into German.  As we have mentioned before, he is pastor of Christmas Lutheran Church, founder of the Diyar Consortium, and President of Dar al-Kalima University.  Early in his ministry, he tried to work through the political process to bring about positive change as the Church.  He found that this continually came up short, and he has sought the path of beginning from faith and then going to action.  The goal of Diyar is to help people receive the abundant life that God wants for them, and to do it through opportunities in the arts, culture, health, and faith--ways to build the community, but on the foundation that is Christ the solid rock.  His work is inspiring, and he was a gracious host for us.  It was delightful that he was our final goodbye to Palestine (and that we got the picture we had earlier missed with him!)

Kathy, Mitri Raheb, and David at the Jordanian border crossing

On the Jordan side of the border, our driver friend, Khader Douad, picked us up and took us to his home for supper.  He and his family were very kind to us--particularly striking as they were dealing with a couple of family medical crises.  We hope and pray that their family is well.  He took us to the airport, where we waited for our 2:15 am flight.  We managed to get through security at the airport after a bit of an argument--we learned the need to be forceful by this point--and had a comfortable flight to Rome, via Paris. 

We'll be adding one more reflection blog after we return to the US.