Jan 10 - Bethlehem & Hebron

So much has happened since I last wrote I hardly know where to begin. There is so much I could share with you: our bus being stopped and our needing to walk individually through the police checkpoint; celebrating Holy Communion in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre--a moving experience, made possible by the hospitality of the Franciscans; meeting with the Chief Rabbinate of Jerusalem; attending a Shabbat service on Friday evening in Jerusalem; visiting Augusta Victoria Hospital (www.avh.org/english.html); being hosted by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

As you can see by our visits, we have tried to structure this trip to reach out to both Israelis and Palestinians, to Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

We are now staying in Bethlehem and therefore walled off from Israeli territory. Here is an ELCA website with a video clip about the wall that you might find helpful and informative: http://archive.elca.org/peacenotwalls/educate/2008video.html. To illustrate the times, we saw a nativity set today with a wall erected so the Wise Men were unable to visit the Child in the Manger. But our time today did not focus upon the imposing, humiliating, despair inducing Separation Wall. Our time was spent hearing the testimonies of Bishop Younan and Pastor Mitri Raheb, both of whom are proclaimers of hope born of God.

Pastor Raheb serves Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem and has brought a passion for ministry grounded in the Gospel of Jesus. He said the congregation in the early 1990's was dying, that if things didn't change this Lutheran congregation, started by Germans in 1860, would soon close. In a context of despair, where Pr. Raheb says the culture is a liturgy of death because of the daily violence and oppression, Christmas Lutheran Church today is an oasis of hope. Christians are a minority in Bethlehem, perhaps 2% in this predominantly Muslim city. But Christmas Lutheran today, because of vision born of prayer and trust in the Promise of God, is a place bustling with energy and life, serving the community as peacemakers and reconcilers of all. Their ministry is to bring abundant life to all people, but they focus especially upon children, youth and the elderly. This is a congregation that feared it would lose its life by focusing its energy on the community, something I often hear from congregations in the synod; but just the opposite has happened. In 1995 this tiny congregation in Bethlehem began Dar Annadwa, or International Center of Bethlehem, a ministry that seeks to serve the whole Palestinian community. They offer programs in art and music, a school for children, a health and wellness center, and most recently have opened Dar al-Kalima College. They are Lutheran based but ecumenically oriented and their mission is that all might have life and have it abundantly. A Muslim on their staff said this mission statement is why she likes these ministries so much; in the face of death they offer life and hope. Visit the websites at: www.annadwa.org/en/ and www.brightstarsbethlehem.org/ and www.diyar-consortium.org/.

We are doing so much in the Central States Synod to put mission at the center of our congregations and the whole of the synod. As I listened to Pastor Raheb I heard lessons for in the witness of Christmas Lutheran Church. We must seek to be what God would have us to be about. We must know who we are as followers of Jesus and in prayer seek to know how God would have us participate in his mission. We must be courageous and risk, trusting in God to provide as we venture forth.

In 2002 Israeli forces entered Bethlehem and held the city hostage. Pastor Raheb has written about this in Bethlehem Besieged (2004); he is also the author of an earlier work, I Am A Palestinian Christian (1995). In both books as well as in his testimony today Pr Rabeb gives witness to what God can do when a Christian community centers its life and work in the grace, mercy, and hope of God in Jesus Christ.

This afternoon we traveled to Hebron for a visit to the Haram al-Ibrahimi or Mosque of Abraham. Next to the Western Wall this is the most revered site in Israel, important to Jews, Christians and Muslims, and, according to tradition is the burial site of Abraham and Sarah, Issac and Rebecca. For more information: www.sacred-destinations.com/israel/hebron-tombs-of-the-patriarchs.htm. Hebron was a site of demonstrations yesterday, protesting the continuing attacks in Gaza. It is a city of where Israeli settlers live in close proximity to Palestinians and often taunt the Palestinians in their places of work and as their children walk to school. We entered the town with a police escort and with local Ecumenical Accompaniment Partners (http://www.eappi-us.org/) guiding us along safe paths. We were shocked at the conditions under which Palestinians must live, conditions made visible by the signs we saw. The picture above was along the path to the mosque. We were greeted with hospitality by the Islamic hosts and given a tour of the mosque, the site where a Jewish settler murdered 27 Muslims in 1994.

Earlier today Bp Younan said: The sin of Israeli occupation is feeding Palestinian terror. Everything we have seen and heard confirms the truth of that statement. And that is why the Christian witness is so vitally important. We come as servants of the Prince of Peace. We know there are pleace loving people in all faiths: Jews, Christians and Muslims. We also know, as Bp Younan said: violence is the means of the incompetent. We are here to accompany our brothers and sisters in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Land and encourage them in their mission of peacemaking. And we pray God to raise up competent leaders for peace in the world today.

Finally, it was a special joy this evening to return to the International Center of Bethlehem for dinner and find a group of faculty and students from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago also at the Center. They are here on J-term and had just gotten into town from Galilee. And three of the students are from the Central States Synod!!

God's peace to all.

Bp Jerry