Worship in wartime
Canadians visit Palestinian communities surrounding Jerusalem in ‘solidarity pilgrimage.’
“You can’t understand what it means to us when you come to us in this hard time,” the bishop said. It was our first day in the West Bank: a dozen Canadians on a 10-day Solidarity Pilgrimage hosted by Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem. Despite only living four miles away from where we were staying, Bishop Munib Younan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land had travelled 35 miles to meet us, due to closed checkpoints.
The Western churches, Bishop Younan said, are “quiet” – that is, they don’t want to offend some of their own parishioners. Of all nations, only South Africa, with its own hard-earned understanding of apartheid, has spoken most boldly in favour of Palestinians.
The whole world is in turmoil, the bishop continued, not just Palestine. Western nations, who long ago helped bring forth the Charter of Rights at the United Nations, now do little to uphold it worldwide. “Though we do not know the future, we have hope, knowing by faith that a God of justice lives. It is the role of every Christian to speak prophetically. To say that all are created in God’s image and are loved, and that God is full of wrath when any of God’s children are abused.”
A ministry of visiting
On Sunday morning, we worshipped in Bethlehem at St Mary’s Melkite Byzantine Catholic Church. During the service, the procession of the Gospel was entirely by children and youth. A woman congregant read the Epistle. Father Yakov invited all of us Protestants to receive the elements and take full part in the Mass. Afterward, everyone celebrated the 44th anniversary of Father Yakov’s ordination. We sang a birthday greeting in Arabic (or tried to), shared cake and coffee, and conversed with new Melkite friends. They said that during this war what gives them most hope is visitors like ourselves. We thought of how Jesus, travelling constantly, spent his ministry visiting people in their homes and neighbourhoods.
Outside in the plaza, some of the children who had led the procession of the Gospel during worship were now playing “Red Light Green Light.” The need to play, to worship with family and to share a meal becomes more important than ever during wartime.
On the border to Gaza
Because of the war, there were almost no other guests at our hotel in Bethlehem. In Jerusalem, in the narrow streets near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, usually crowded with visitors, most of the little stores were dark and shuttered.
Among many challenging experiences, we spent time in Sderot, a town in Israel of about 30,000 Israelis, about two kilometres from the Gaza border. The people of Sderot have suffered. Some were killed on October 7, 2023. Some are still hostages. We met in a Sderot Children’s Centre, in a room decorated with cartoon characters and children’s art, to hear from Jewish Israeli Roni Keidar. She lives in the village closest of all to the Gaza border and knows many Palestinians. Like almost all Israelis and Palestinians she knows, she wants a kind and peaceful life. On October 7, Hamas militants invaded the house where she lives with her son and grandchildren. Her granddaughter, who was home alone, hid in a closet beneath the stairs with their dog. The militants left and blew up the house next door.
Roni and her Gaza friends formed an organization called Other Voices. They met for dance, song, improv drama. Every Friday, before October 7, her group would gather on the border with one of several small groups from Gaza. Even now they still chat on social media. They want to know how each other is doing. They still are friends.
“Most Palestinians are not terrorists,” she said. “We all deserve a better life. About all this I cannot keep quiet.”
Roni Keidar has five children, 17 grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.
In the middle of a roundabout in Sderot is a statue of children dancing and holding up a globe.
Hospitality and grace
On our fifth day, we had planned to help Palestinian Christian farmers harvest their olive crops. Part way there, our leader from Sabeel got a call on his cell from the Rabbis. Israeli soldiers had stopped their buses ahead of us, decreeing that the farms we were going to were now a closed military zone. The Rabbis chose another farm. Our bus turned that way. We were all stopped again. Twice more we had to U-turn and try another route. It seemed that the so-called military zone was now defined as anywhere the harvesters might try to go. The West Bank is under total martial law. There would be no olives harvested in Taybeh that day. Not for Palestinians.
This is daily life in the West Bank.
The most lovable feature of Palestinian culture is hospitality. When we finally reached Taybeh and St. George’s Church, congregants invited the discouraged would-be harvesters to rest. They served us coffee in their lounge. We visited their sanctuary. There together we sang “Amazing Grace.”
Next door is their House of Parables. This is a 350-year-old stone house, a family residence till the 1970s, built partly underground and carved out of the stone, as houses there have been since before the time of Jesus. There the congregants have put traditional furnishings, as were used in Jesus’ time – pottery urns for water and wine, a leather churn for milk, woven baskets, a wooden bowl, a grinding stone. And there’s a manger, because the people lived together with their animals, for safety and for warmth. The manger is carved from the rock. They have lit it with a simple bulb.
The stable where Jesus was born, they say, would have been some hospitable family’s home, a home just like this. In the West Bank, you may have a plan, and then it falls apart. But the Spirit will show itself some other way.
