SABBATICAL 14: "A Praxis of Liberation"

A letter to my friends and teachers, 

Ched Myers and Zoughbi Zoughbi, 

two brothers whose faith is embodied 

in creative resistance and suffering love...

Tuesday, May 27

Dear Zoughbi and Ched,

I imagine that your paths have crossed, perhaps even here in Bethlehem when Ched visited some years ago.  Whether they have or haven't, your commitments to social, ecological and ecclesial transformation are profoundly similar.  And the two of you have had a deep and sustained impact on my faith and the unsettling of that faith in Jesus' beloved community.  Over many years.

A few reflections, then, that may interest you both:

In the second of my two months in Bethlehem this spring, I am haunted by the story of the Legion-occupied demoniac, half-living among the tombs, and Jesus' active commitment to the man's liberation and wholeness in and among his people.  Decades ago, Ched's reading of this story blew the lid off safer interpretations: insisting as he did that the demons that tortured, emaciated and drove the man to self-harm were the demons of occupation itself.

ONE BRUISING HIMSELF WITH STONES

And it's exactly this that haunts me here, and now: that the Israeli occupation aims to possess both land and spirit; that, in so doing, it systematically de-humanizes human bodies, scars embodied relationships, warping the many hopes and ancient prayers of children of the land.  

He lived among the tombs; and no one could restrain him any more, 

even with a chain; for he had often been restrained 

with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, 

and the shackles he broke in pieces; 

and no one had the strength to subdue him. 

Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains,

he was always howling and bruising himself with stones. 

Mark 5:3-5

The Demoniac, George Dawe, 1811

Long before 2023, the West Bank economy suffered from the architecture of occupation, the scourge of apartheid, rampant settler violence and land theft, and the mass incarceration of Palestinians young and old.  Since 2023, impacts have only intensified: armed settler intrusions and menacing IDF incursions, conflicts within and between families, addiction on the rise, tensions rising between Christian and Muslim neighbors.  Zoughbi reminds me that an occupied people, experiencing powerlessness in the face of militarized control, sometimes turns that violence in upon themselves.  And this too reminds us of Mark's story, and the self-harm--so vividly described--of the man posssessed, occupied.

To all of the above, Zoughbi adds that, in recent months, the occupier has leafletted city neighborhoods: warning families that any child caught throwing a stone at IDF conscripts may well provoke the "next Gaza" right here in Bethlehem.  This too is demonic, is it not?  That parents now caution their children against looking the wrong soldier sidewise; about doing something the least bit provocative, at the risk of inviting another wave of genocidal destruction.  In their neighborhoods.  That children grow up in such a cruel, menacing, repressive environment.  Trauma after trauma after trauma.

When he saw Jesus from a distance, the man ran and 

bowed down before him; and he shouted at the top of his voice, 

"What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?  

I adjure you by God, do not torment me."  For he had said to him, 

"Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!"  

Then Jesus asked him, "What is your name?"  

He replied, "My name is Legion, for we are many."  

He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country.

Mark 5:6-10

THE PRAXIS OF LIBERATION IN BETHLEHEM

This, Ched, is where Zoughbi's practice ('sulha'/empoowerment/resistance) anticipates the questions often raised in the text: What is the nature of this exorcism?  Is it a rare gift, a developed skill, both?  What does mutual liberation, or even collective liberation, look like?  What's the role of the beloved community in imagining, then actualizing this kind of healing?

Zoiughbi notes that he and his colleagues insist on three 'movements' in their work:

1.  The movement from blame to collective responsibility.  Zoughbi notes that cycles of blame tempt us all to believe that blame alone can alter systems of oppression and execute some kind of liberation (or relief).  But this only elevates the Israeli oppressor as 'lord' and yields to his design.  Instead, "sumud" looks to collective responsibility, joining sister to sister to brother to brother, linking communities of resistance, and celebrating the agency of the Palestinian people themselves.  Wi'am commits to this in so many ways: women's empowerment circles, programming and joyful play for traumatized children, leadership development, etc.  Agency in community!

Jesus does not accept that the "occupied" must be occupied forever...that he is doomed to a diet of rage and deferred joy and mutilated aspirations.  Jesus dares to believe that his movement--a community given shape and direction by the Liberating God of Moses and Miriam--can and will draw the demons out of the man's body and free him for participation in the movement itself.  Agency in community!

2.  The movement from retribution/vengeance to restorative justice.  Zoughbi insists that the latter includes practices of reparation, redistribution and individual/community mediation.  The purpose is always restoration in just arrangements, in equity among peoples, in the healing of broken communities and families.  (I might add, Zoughbi, that Ched's just published a powerful new commentary on the Gospel of Luke: "Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy."  In this, he insists that Luke's story offers the church a provocative [and yes, unsettling] call to restorative justice, redistributive economics [Sabbath economics] and reparations.)  Zoughbi would add that the cycle of violence (retribution) does nothing to advance the process of collective liberation--though it may feel satisfying in some basic way.  Resistance of this kind is difficult...especially now...in a time of maddening and catastrophic genocide.

3.  The movement from pacification (as a goal in conflict mediation) to transformation.  And this, too, is so important, as I struggle to grasp the prophetic edge of Wi'am and Zoughbi's ministry here.  Instead of viewing each conflict as one to be managed or pacified (or even "mediated") the Palestinian practice ("sulha") recognizes the need/opportunity for transformation: transformation of individuals to be sure, but also structures of oppression, systems of fear and defensiveness, whole communities and economies.  Within this shattered economy (75% unemployment, 35% poverty, 100% looking to emigrate whenever possible), conflicts are charged with despair and increasing by the day.  Zoughbi's commitment--which requires not only his own energies, but the support of so many others--meets each disagreement, each conflict, in this spirit.  As a moment of possibility--in which the spirit of community (and God) might move within the people to raise up leaders for the long haul, and imagine solidarity for resistance and celebration.

Ched often says that the human body "mirrors" the body politic in gospel storytelling...and it strikes me now that the demoniac represents (in equal measure) the pastoral task of loving the occupied neighbor and tending their wounds and then committing to mutual liberative action; and the political/communal task of collaborating to 'exorcise' militarism, materialism/poverty and systemic racism and experiment in new patterns of justice and peace.  Zoughbi's three 'movements' offer me (and others like me) plenty of grist for the mill--ways to approach our organizing (and pastoring) in the context of plutocracy and affluenza and genocide and repression.

THE CONCLUSION / WHICH IS JUST THE BEGINNING

Among so many other things this month, my hosts have opened my eyes to the devastating impacts of emigration here.  If Gaza faces ethnic cleansing and even annihilation, the West Bank is slowly and steady demoralized (and depleted) by systems of oppression that encourage young Palestinians, Muslim and Christian, to leave their lands and homes for safer regions.  That very process is clearly part of the occupier's plan: to cripple the culture of resistance by weakening families, neighborhoods, churches; the basic networks of communal support and encouragement.  

Against this backdrop. the conclusion of Mark's story is provocative and hopeful:

Those who had seen what had happened to the demoniac

and to the swine reported it.  Then they began to beg Jesus

to leave their neighborhood.  As he was getting into the boat,

the man who had been possessed by demons begged him

that he might be with him.

But Jesus refused, saying to him, "Go home to your friends, 

and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, 

and what mercy he has shown you."

And the man went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis

how much Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed.

Mark 5:16-20

"Jesus refused."  The man, now liberated and engaged, wants to leave: leave behind the tormented region (Decapolis), leave behind the occupation and its madness, leave behind friends and family for other opportunities.  But Jesus refuses.  The soul-swiveling twist here?  Not even the discipleship project itself should delay his return to the friends, and neighborhoods, and lands of his people.  That's where his liberation is to be realized...

So the exorcism is not fully complete, it seems, until Jesus says: "Go home to your friends."  This, Zoughbi, is Jesus counseling 'sumud'--Jesus insisting on resistance and resilience--Jesus urging the bright, committed, liberated man in Mark's story to return to his friends, to his community, even to his land-in-distress.  And not only this: he also takes his new found vocation to the streets, into the occupied landscape that is the Decapolis.  He is empowered, inspired and called into prophetic work and witness: a preacher, an organizer, a living sign of God's healing intention!

I read this now--thanks to Ched, and thanks to Zoughbi--as Jesus' insistance on steadfastness.  I read this now as his commitment to the "right" (or maybe the "rightness") of return.  It is good for this people to stay.  It is good for this man to return to his friends.  It is good for them, one by one, one healed body at a time, to live resiliently and compassionately and collaborate creatively in the lands they love and the communities they cherish.  "Go home to your friends," Jesus says, "and tell them how much the Lord has done for you."

And it is here--in this conclusion, that is no conclusion--that the practice of collective liberation (even mutual care and beloved community) comes home again.  A man once occupied by Legion, a man made whole through the ministrations of a beloved community and its Lord, a man with a voice of his own and agency...can return to his people and land to speak words of life, to speak into being a community of resistance and liberation, to do for others what Jesus has done for him.

COMMUNITY AS RESISTANCE

Apricots ripening in Wi'am's Peace Garden

You have reminded me, Zoughbi, that Wi'am's mission is intentional in its focus on the daily needs and human crises facing communities here in the West Bank.  There is no resistance if there is no people.  And your people are themselves the most precious, creative and "renewable" resource the Spirit has.  Liberation is only meaningful if there is a people here to imagine it, struggle for it, implement it.  I will do what I can to encourage your efforts and lift up its urgency.  I will do what I can to be a faithful partner, confronting the engine of occupation in my own land and people.

If this land is to be healed of the scars inflicted by occupations ancient and contemporary, it aches now for liberated partners: uprooting what will not grow, planting new crops that will, tending ancient ones beloved, and imagining anew the kinds of community that can resist together and rejoice together and "go home" together!

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See Ched's most recent book on the Gospel of Luke: Healing Affluenza and Resisting Plutocracy.

See Wi'am's amazing array of programs and opportunities in the occupied West Bank: HERE.

And please consider -- as a church, synagogue or community -- joining Wi'am's "community transformation" project as "Friends of Wi'am": HERE.  If you believe, as I do, that reparations and redistribution are called for, here's a small step forward.