Peace Pilgrimage to the Holy Land

A sermon preached by J. Stuart Taylor III

St. Mark’s Presbyterian Church

June 1, 2008

So Stuart: how was the trip to the Middle East? It’s going to take me a while to figure out how to answer that question. But let me begin this morning by sketching with large brush strokes the last 2 weeks and what they looked like for all of us who participated in this Pentecost Peace Pilgrimage sponsored by the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship.  The delegation was made up of 16 Presbyterians from all over the country who were all very fine people.  We very quickly bonded as a community and it seemed like everyone was able to make a meaningful contribution to the good of the group.  The members of the delegation were very clear that they wanted this experience to be a true peace pilgrimage to the Holy Land. For us to experience this trip as a pilgrimage, a spiritual journey required that we attend to prayer and scripture, and to processing together what we were experiencing from the perspective of our faith. This is where I was being asked to make a contribution. Each day, usually in the evenings, we would gather for prayer and community time. I proposed that that the Psalms would be a very good focal point for us since many of them were originally composed as prayers for Jewish pilgrims journeying to Jerusalem.  Like Psalm 122 which says, “I was glad when they said unto me; let us go to the house of the lord. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Peace be within your walls, and security within your towers. For the sake of my kin and for the house of the Lord, I will seek your good.”  So each day I chose a Psalm that somehow resonated with the events of the day. These psalms we prayed will forever be associated in my mind with my memories of our time in the Holy Land.  My fellow pilgrims also offered a rich abundance of readings and poetry for reflection. After prayer we would then begin to unpack what we had experienced and try to see it through the lens of our faith. I think this daily prayer was an important touchstone for all of us and helped us keep the pilgrimage dimension before us. I know that it did for me.

For me personally the first sight of Jerusalem was a joyous thing that thrilled me to the bone. The first glimpse you catch driving up from the Jordan valley, across the Judean wilderness and over the hills surrounding the city is a sight of the Golden dome of the rock on the Temple mount. Then you see the striking exterior walls that surround the old city. We passed by several of the storied gates to the city until we came to the famous Lions Gate, also known as St.Stephen’s gate because tradition has it that it was here that Stephen became the first martyr of the early church.  We walked into the old city of Jerusalem through that gate and were immediately plunged into the most important pathway for Christian pilgrims, the Via Dolorosa, known as the Stations of the Cross. We followed the way of the cross in a surprisingly compressed area to the church of the Holy Sepulcher where tradition has it that Christ was buried. At this point some of us were struggling to create a narrative, a story line of our trip into which we could begin to place our experiences. It was challenging and somewhat troubling to begin our pilgrimage with Christ’s suffering and death. It was then that it occurred to me that Mark’s enigmatic story of Easter might provide a narrative framework for us. At the tomb the angel says to Mary of Magdala, he is not here. He goes before you to Galilee. So even as we began with Jerusalem and the suffering and death of Jesus, we knew that our journey would eventually follow the One who goes before us to Galilee. There at the end of our pilgrimage on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, we would stand where Jesus called the first disciples, proclaimed the Sermon on the Mount and multiplied the loaves and fishes. It is there that the Risen Christ invites us to begin again fresh and new the story of discipleship.  

But this was not just a spiritual journey to the Holy Land. This was also intended to be a peace pilgrimage. Beyond visiting the sacred sites of the Holy Land, the purpose of our trip was to immerse ourselves in the Palestinian – Israeli conflict to learn as much as we could about that conflict from an enormous variety of perspectives. And most importantly we wanted to discern where God was working   in the midst of it and how we as Christians from the US could join God in seeking peace and justice. Some days we would have as many as 5 meetings and encounters with Israelis or Palestinians. We met with human rights organizations and advocacy networks for political prisoners, we met with public officials and policy analysts; we talked with parents, both Israeli and Palestinian who had lost children in the conflict. We met with Palestinian non-violent activists and with members of an Israeli kibbutz.  We met with Muslim Sheiks and Israeli settlers and because we actually stayed several nights as guests in the homes of families, we were able to learn a little about how this conflict is experienced by ordinary people. Through all these encounters, we began to piece together more and more events in the 60 year narrative of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and even some important factors that led to the conflict like the Zionist movement, the British Mandate after WW1, the Balfour Declaration, the wars of 1948, of 1967 and so on. We learned a new working vocabulary: occupation, two state solution, kibbutz, settlements, checkpoints and security walls and intifada, the Palestinian word for uprising.  The one thing that distinguishes this trip from perhaps the vast majority of those who visit the Holy land, is the extent to which we stayed in Palestine, in the occupied territories of the West bank. It is my opinion that the vast majority of tourists and pilgrims that go to Israel never see what life is like in the occupied territories. In fact I would go so far as to say that most Israeli’s living in Israel have no idea of what it is like there.

If you were following the news you may have noticed that we arrived in Israel –Palestine at a particularly charged moment. Israel was celebrating the 60^th anniversary of the foundation of the Jewish state in 1948. And President Bush was there to extend his congratulations and try to breathe some life into his peace process. But along side of Israel’s anniversary celebrations, there was a parallel commemoration being carried out by the Palestinians. But rather than a celebration this was an occasion of mourning for Palestinians as they remembered 1948 as the "naqba", the catastrophe that dispossessed them of their land, destroyed countless villages and displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who became refugees not only across the Middle East but all over the world. These two competing and conflicting narratives, the narrative celebrated in the 60 anniversary of the Jewish state, and the naqba, or catastrophe for Palestinians became the central parable of our whole time in Israel –Palestine.  The Jewish narrative that began eons ago in biblical times, is a narrative that miraculously survived the Holocaust during WW2, a narrative that was seemingly reborn by the fulfillment of the hopes of thousands of Jews from all over the world who would finally come home to the promise Land. And yet the joyful return of Jewish people to Israel is the mirror image of the Palestinian narrative of the naqba. And the Palestinian narrative, largely unknown to the world and to US citizens but reaching as far back into time as the Jewish narrative.  And these two narratives are locked in a deadly struggle that threatens both with annihilation.   A Jewish author I was reading said that the goal of the spiritual life in the holy land is to exist at the center of an unbearable tension. This made sense to me because somehow we were called to listen to and learn from both of these narratives, to honor and respect each.

It was indeed very challenging to hold both narratives in our minds and hearts. One member of our delegation, who had made previous pilgrimages across Europe and Asia Minor, said that it was natural for the pilgrim to expect that arrival at the destination of the pilgrimage would bring about resolution, simplicity, and clarity. This was not the case with our pilgrimage to the Holy Land.  As we struggled to hold both narratives in our hearts and minds, the Jewish narrative and the Palestinian narrative, we began to notice some very important distinctions.  First we realized that the people of the US are acquainted primarily with the Jewish narrative. Most of us know only one perspective in this conflict and that is the perspective of Israel. Some of my fellow Presbyterian pilgrims readily admitted that they began this journey with a strong bias for the Israeli point of view. Very few people seem to know anything about the Palestinian beyond the images of a generally unattractive looking Yasser Arafat and the repulsive violence of suicide bombers. This lack of understanding of the Palestinian narrative is unfortunate and must change both at the level of media coverage and grassroots education. I have to admit that I also knew very little about Palestinian culture. But I did get a preview of what was in store for me when just a few days before I left for the Holy Land, I attended a Palestinian cultural festival here at St. Mark’s. There was Palestinian music and dance and food and of course, politics.  This preview prepared me for my introduction into the rich culture of Palestine. And although the Palestinians have never had a sovereign state, they are very much a people with a long history. And by the way, that history includes a strong but endangered Christian community which you will be hearing more about.

The second big learning about these two competing narratives was this: US policy makers have clearly made a choice for one narrative over the other. If we still had them, we quickly let go of ideas of the US as a neutral broker in this conflict seeking to bring about peace between Israeli’s and Palestinians. The US is very much on the side of the Israeli’s and has been for the 60 some years of this conflict. All of the weight of US support, billions of dollars in military and economic assistance is given to Israel and tacitly to maintaining the status quo. It is interesting to reflect on the ways in which these narratives are played out in surprising, convoluted ways. Let me give you two examples. The story of David and Goliath is a narrative that has been frequently invoked by Israeli’s as a story that pits them once again as the David taking on the Goliath of surrounding Arab nations hostile to their very existence. And yet this narrative is turned upside down when it comes to the Israeli’s and Palestinians. Even hardened Israeli’s had to wonder who was David and who was goliath when in the first intifada of 1987, Palestinian boys were using slingshots against Israeli tanks. Another example is as current as President Bush’s controversial speech made while we were there before the Israeli parliament. In this speech he referred to Masada, the mountain where a few hundred Jewish rebels held out for more than three years against the Roman Empire. When at last faced with certain defeat, these Jewish Rebels chose collective suicide rather than Roman slavery. Pres. Bush surely understood that Masada is a powerful symbol for Israeli’s, signifying their courage and their independence, and their willingness to fight to the last. But more and more Israeli’s recognize that if they don’t end the occupation of Palestine and figure out some way to live at peace and in equality with Palestinians, then Israel is once again committing collective suicide. Over the next four Sundays I want to share with you stories of the Holy Land. I want to give you a variety of perspectives on the Palestinian –Israeli conflict. In essence, I want you to make this pilgrimage with me with the sure and certain hope that the one we follow is the Crucified and Risen one who goes before us to Galilee. The Risen One we follow has conquered death and calls us to journey on into a future of love and justice and peace.