In the summer of 1993, Marthame joined a young adult mission trip organized by the Presbyterian Church USA. He and several other young Americans went to Ramallah for three weeks, at the tail end of the first intifada. This opportunity to meet, work, live and dialogue with Palestinian people, as well as to experience first-hand (if only briefly) some of the difficulties of their lives, transformed Marthame. Upon his return to the States, he was bursting at the seams with excitement and passion for these people and this land. Yesterday Dr. Gary Burge said that whenever we move across a new frontier, it is affirmed by the descent of the Holy Spirit, and this certainly seemed to be the case for us.  In the years following that experience, we felt a call to return to the Middle East, and especially to the land of Christ’s birth.

As we were discerning this call, we took up a study of Paul’s letter to the Romans, and we were immediately struck by what Paul says in the first chapter, 11th and 12th verses:

For I am longing to see you so that I may share with you some spiritual gift to strengthen you – or rather, so that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine.

As Dr. Burge pointed out yesterday, this passage offers a powerful framework for Christian partnership and fellowship across borders, and the mutuality it projects has been a priority in the kind of ministry we have been engaged in since.

Even more, we were moved by something Paul says near the conclusion of his letter to Rome.  In chapter 15, verses 26-28, he tells the church in Rome that, although he is eager to see them, he must first go to Jerusalem. He says:

“Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to share their resources with the poor among the saints at Jerusalem.  They were pleased to do this, and indeed they owe it to them; for if the Gentiles have come to share in their spiritual blessings, they ought also to be of service to them in material things.”

And indeed we, the Western church, descendants of the gentile Church, are Macedonia and Achaia. We are the foreign recipients of the gift of the gospel from the East. As such, we have an obligation to be of service to them in their need.  I’d note that this mandate should be interpreted carefully, and not as an ecclesial invoice directing fund transfers from the West in exchange for the gospel. In Paul’s context, the church in Jerusalem was in need of material things, and that is what he brought.  However, as Paul articulated in the call for mutual encouragement at the beginning of Romans, and as has been voiced by so many in our conference, relationships bridging East and West should reflect our full component of gifts, material and spiritual.

And so, as we looked toward serving the Church in Palestine, we joyfully anticipated not only mutual encouragement and fellowship, and not only sharing gifts of support and solidarity from the West, but also we looked forward very much to learning about the church in the East, and receiving riches from it.

Our prayers were answered in the summer of 2000, when we received a call inviting us to come to Palestine. We were asked to come to the small mostly-Christian town of Zababdeh, about 10 km south of Jenin, to work with the churches and Roman Catholic school there.  Our work has several components: I spend much of my time teaching English at the school; Marthame works with the four churches in the village in ministries of support; and both of us spend a lot of time interpreting to the West the lives, joys, and sorrows of the people with whom we live and minister.
 
This last part of our ministry took on an even greater urgency only a month after our arrival, with the resumption of the intifada, prompted by Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Haram al-Shariif. Our partner churches in the States, our friends and families were eager to hear from us: How were our neighbors in Zababdeh?  What did they think and feel? Were they - and we - safe? After September 11th, and as the siege on Palestinian towns and lands tightened, we worked even harder to respond to the flood of questions in our inbox and to share through word and image what we saw and heard around us, and to reflect on these things through the lens of our Christian faith.  Most especially, angered by the media’s irresponsible, one-sided promotion of images of celebration on the streets of Nablus following the attack – we communicated the overflowing concern and sorrow expressed by all our friends and neighbors in Zababdeh and elsewhere in Palestine. In the panel before lunch, Dr. Mary Mikhael and Rev. Adeeb Awad both said the church in the East needs the church in the West to become a prophetic voice for truth, and Dr. Mary generously mentioned our efforts to that end.  We aspire to be worthy of her praise.

Most recently, we’ve had the challenge of understanding and explaining the events in Jenin. Before April, when we said we lived near Jenin, usually fellow foreigners responded with “where?” Now, we’re met with exclamations and worried looks. I’ll briefly say that our experience of keeping in touch with our friends in Jenin city during the siege, and our visits since the opening of the refugee camp have been very hard for us to stomach. In spite of the destruction and losses, amid the children scrambling over the rubble and the women still waiting for news of their husbands, we have to hold on to our faith in the Prince of Peace. Ours is a God who didn’t hesitate to come among us, to suffer among us, and to die like us. Scripture says that God pitched his tent among us – and we have to know that God is present in the makeshift tents and crumbling homes in that place.  As we take comfort in this, we have also been moved, motivated, and admittedly overwhelmed by the call to work for truth, justice, reconciliation, and peace.

A few hours ago, His Grace Selim Bustros noted that the church in the East calls upon the church in the west to acknowledge it and to visit it. He painted the image of all of us Christians living and sharing together as one family, ancient living stones and newer stones together. Indeed we’ve heard many of our speakers emphasize the need for a living, vital ecumenism, calling us to display the unity of the church, as the one body of Christ. We hope our work contributes in a small way to these lofty goals, as we live among and worship with our brothers and sisters in Zababdeh and throughout the northern West Bank. In Zababdeh, two thirds of the 3,000 inhabitants are Christian, and we share in worship with them in their Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, and Anglican churches, and look forward to the possible reopening of the town’s Melkite (Greek Catholic) church. Zababdeh is one of the only majority Christian communities left in Palestine or Israel. And it is the only concentration of Christians in the northern West Bank. Unlike those farther south, near Christian centers of Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Beit Sahour, Jerusalem, Ramallah, and others, Christians in the northern West Bank are fairly isolated. They don’t receive the foreign pilgrims who (at least used to) visit farther south, they are also far (and under the siege, essentially cut off) from their brothers and sisters in there.  It is a very disheartening time for them.

And yet the Christian witness perseveres, not only in Zababdeh, but also in several northern West Bank towns. Nearby Tubas is home to 10,000 people, 57 of whom are Christian. This small community of Greek Orthodox believers opened a new church hall 2 years ago, and this year inaugurated a new church library. The Roman Catholic church, its priest, and three Italian nuns serve a community of a few hundred Christians in Jenin. Just to the west is the small town of Burqin, where a few hundred Christians live and oversee the Church of the Ten Lepers. This is held to be the site of the miracle, recounted in Luke 17, in which Jesus healed 10 lepers as he was walking in the hills between Galilee and Samaria. We have had the great joy to worship and visit with these communities and others, crossing borders, sharing in mutual encouragement and fellowship, conveying the solidarity and prayers of our partner churches in America as we go. The appreciation and joy that this brings is great. Many of these people have felt forgotten and even betrayed by the West, and it is our honor and pleasure to be used as instrument of God’s grace and healing, helping to bind up these wounds in the Body of Christ.

It is clear from the conversations that we’ve already had over the last few days that the issues of Palestine and Israel are central not only to the region, but to the entire world.  Thus, in the time we have, I will only briefly be able to touch on the issues at hand.  But I trust that we will have more time in the hallways of this place to continue these urgent issues of the day.  I want to share with you my personal reflections on the conflict in the land that Elizabeth and I currently call home.  I won’t retread the history and sociology of the place.  Most of you here know more than I do about the conflict, so there’s no need in going over those details once again.

Instead, I would suggest that we should examine our models and paradigms for how we see the conflict.  In the West (and when I use this term, I use them rather sweepingly), there is the tendency to see the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in light of another touchstone moment in history, the anti-Semitism and Jewish genocide of German-dominated Europe.  When this model is transferred to Palestine and Israel, the Jews become the victims of the concentration camps, and the Arabs become the SS Officers marching children to the gas chambers.  Any of you who have been called a “Nazi” by the radical settlers in Hebron knows what I am talking about.

In the East, there is the tendency to see the conflict – more accurately, I believe – as that of European colonialism.  In this, a largely Western culture took land away from the indigenous population, claiming it for themselves by divine and moral right, submitting the inhabitants to a life of exile and humiliation.  As an American, I would suggest that our treatment of the Native Americans is similar to this model.

However, I would suggest that a sociological model – while an obstacle to truth – is not the largest stumbling block which plunges us into darkness.  That, in my opinion (as has already been suggested by many during this conference), is the theological lens through which we view the so-called Holy Land.

Christian Zionism – that is, the view that the modern nation-state of Israel is the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy and is a necessary prerequisite to the return of the Messiah – is a great sin that has become the prevailing myth in the halls of power.  I would even go so far as to say that it is heresy. I give three reasons for this:

1) As Dr. Gary Burge described, Christian Zionism has an emphasis on “Holy Land theology,” a casting of God as a divine real estate agent, giving a piece of land to the Jewish people for eternity.  I believe that to maintain this is to ignore the words of Christ: “my kingdom is not of this world,” and that, as he told the Samaritan woman at the well in modern-day Nablus, the true followers of God would worship Him not in Jerusalem or Mt. Gerizim, but “in spirit and truth.”

2) Christian Zionism draws heavily on Old Testament prophecy, particularly the passages about the promise of restoration, as evidence of the State of Israel’s divine place in modern history.  I believe that to do so is to ignore how the gospel writers themselves viewed such passages – words about the Jubilee, the comforting words of Isaiah, the promises of Zechariah.  The gospel writers clearly saw this restoration as fulfilled not in the Biblical land of Israel, but rather in the incarnate ministry and sacrifice of Christ.

3) Christian Zionism waits for the Messiah to return, which can only happen should the “gathering of the Jews” take place.  To read Old Testament prophecy, and New Testament prophecy, with such an eye is to miss the entire point of prophecy, I believe.  The purpose of the Book of Revelation, for example, is not to draw a road map of what will happen, but rather to draw us into the realization that what is to come is unimaginable and unexpected to our mortal minds.  The kingdom of heaven is not like the kingdoms of earth, nor is the justice of God like that of earthly rulers.  “My peace I give to you,” Christ tells his disciples, “not as the world gives.”

There are others, but to my mind, these are the three main emphases, fallacies, and, I would say, heresies of Christian Zionism.

I want to offer a few words about the violence to conclude my remarks.  Coming out of my particular context of the Jenin area, this subject has great urgency for me.  Violence has become the watchword of the Middle East, and we living in Palestine and Israel feel it and experience it on a daily level.  In my time in Zababdeh, not far from Jenin, I have grown more and more tired of just-war theory and arguments of military self-defense.  Elizabeth and I have witnessed the glorification of violence by Israelis and Palestinians – from the celebrations when the news of a suicide bombing comes, to the handing out of sweets and congratulations when soldiers return from the latest military incursion to “root out the terrorist infrastructure”.  There is much to say on the topic of violence: the rise of religious extremisms, the body-counting games, the double-standards applied both globally and locally.  But my hope is that the Christian response to violence is repentance, as the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Michel Sabbah has offered. Jesus was addressing the crowd when they brought the news that Pilate had mingled the blood of the faithful with their sacrifices.  In responding to them, in the face of this violent act, Christ cautions that we must repent; otherwise, we will suffer the same fate – that is, we will be doomed to perpetuate the dead-end game.

I have found myself adding my voice to that of many, both Palestinians and Jews, that the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and dignity must continue, but it must eschew violence and adopt a non-violent strategy.  Voices like Fr. Naim Ateek, Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom, the bold actions of the International Solidarity Movement – all of these are calling for the Intifada to continue, but in a way that accepts the humanity of, and even – dare I say – loves the enemy.  If Palestinians continue to meet the violence of the Israelis – who have targeted children in their classrooms, pregnant women on their way to the hospital, doctors in their ambulances – with violence, they will lose.  If you don’t mind, I will read to you from one of our monthly reflections, words which I read today with as much urgency as we wrote them more than a year ago.

The Israelis are strong, and they use the means of the strong – military weaponry, tanks, airplanes, helicopters, bulldozers, soldiers, snipers, armed civilians, closures, curfews, demonization, manipulation, propaganda, religious fervor.  The Palestinians are weak, economically, politically, and militarily, but they have resorted to the violent methods of the strong.  They can never win.  They can never achieve justice and peace, because the strong will always destroy the weak when they use the same means.

The Palestinians – and those in Israel and around the world who will stand with them against the injustices and humiliations and daily indignities they face – must first embrace their weakness, manifesting the power that is inherit in it.  The power of the weak will defeat the power of the strong every time.  And in their victory, all of the violence, power, terror, brutality, and cruelty will be redeemed.  This is the message of the cross – that the one who accepted its fate is the one who gave redemption to those who sought to destroy him.

This is my hope for a way out of the conflict.  I offer it not only because I think it is pragmatic, but because I believe it is faithful.  And I urge you, our brothers and sisters, gathered here today, to help us fight these battles using the power of the weak.  We shall celebrate its perfected victory together.