SABBATICAL 9: "Holding One Another Accountable"

Monday Morning / Beit Sahour

Got a cab to Beit Sahour this morning to meet Rifat Odeh Kassis and Mays Nassar at the offices of Kairos Palestine.  Rifat is a Palestinian Christian who was born in Beit Sahour, in the West Bank. An active human rights and community activist, he has been arrested and imprisoned several times by the State of Israel.  

For our United Church of Christ, Kairos Palestine has been a key partner over the past 16 years, shaping our theological language, inspiring collective action and resistance, and pushing us towards "costly solidarity."  Over coffee and cookies, a hard conversation among the three of us, and an urgent exchange of ideas:

1. To be church together, Rifat says, means "holding one another accountable."  If all we're doing is sustaining endowments, institutions and real estate, we've lost our soul and our way.  In this spirit, he has, of late, told certain Christian leaders and global bodies that "we no longer share the same communion, we cannot be in mission with churches willing to justify apartheid and genocide."  Here is alienation, division, not on the basis of some obscure theological point--but violence and the systematic assault on Palestinian people and culture.  "We no longer share the same communion..."  In other words, there is a price to be paid for inaction and the acquiesence of friends.  A house divided cannot stand...

He notes, then, that in response to some of this, the Bishops' Conference of the Church of Norway just this week issued a much more pointed defense of Palestinian human rights and a much more urgent insistence of boycott, divestment and even Norwegian sanctions on the State of Israel.  "I tell them all," Rifat tells me, "that my Christianity is not at stake here; but yours most certainly is."  In other words, a church that accomodates genocidal violence--without taking up the cross to suffer alongside the people and advocate boldly for them--has wandered off the gospel map.  Rifat and Mays receive the Norwegian turn as a good sign in a dark time.

Priced onions in a Gazan market: 51 shekels is about 15 US dollars.

2. Mays shares that she and her colleagues are now preparing a third Kairos Document, to be shared at a world-wide Kairos gathering in November.  She notes that this next document--their first since the Gazan genocide--will be angry and defiant, but clear in its call for repentance and solidarity.  Fascism, Rifat adds quickly, is fascism, "and it does us no good to look away or rationalize.."  And still, "even as you support us," he says, "you must confront your own unacknoweldged history, the history of the settler-colonial conquest of your continent and all the lives, generations and cultures devastated there."  In own American context, he insists, there is an urgent need for repentance and reparations.  And for the church of Jesus Christ, this goes hand in hand with global solidarity.

3.  It's clear to me--in our time together--that Rifat and Mays share the deepest appreciation for the United Church of Christ's work, reflection and prophetic voice over many years.  Rifat specifies the 2015 General Synod resolution in support of BDS initiatives; the 2021 resolution which broke new ground around the language of apartheid here; and the 2024 statement by denominational leaders (encouraged by UCCPIN) identifying the ongoing genocide in Gaza and insisting on preventative action and American repentance.  While it's often unclear what kind of a difference statements make, Rifat is committed to the clarity of our language in opposing the catastrophic abuse of human rights that renders Palestinian peoples invisible to the global community (and even the church).  In each case, he notes, the UCC changed the conversation among US denominations and even global church bodies.  BDS.  Apartheid.  Genocide.  Say their names.

Speaking of language, he also appreciates the name change within our UCC network--from UCC Palestine Israel Network to UCC Movement for Palestinian Solidarity.  The key thing, he notes, is to undo this false sense of "double solidarity" (which is actually something they've named in the German church)--that it is possible to lean into solidarity with both the oppressed Palestinian community, while also leaning into solidarity with their oppressor.  The task before is not balanced arguments, but solidarity in the name of justice.  So that's the piece of the name change most salient to this long-time advocate in Beit Sahour!  Good feedback for our Steering Committee!

If you ask me to choose unity at the expense of the truth, Rifat says with some energy and even anger in his eyes, "I choose the truth at the expense of unity."  Jesus came, he reminds me, not to bring peace, but a sharpening sword...to clarify our commitments to justice, peace and human beings.  

4.  For the church, then, that hopes to be faithful to commitments like ours in the UCC, what now?  What next?  "Start somewhere," Rifat says, "and do something concrete."  He mentions with gratitude the Apartheid Free Movement, gaining traction in both religious circles and secular organizations.  He mentions boycotts "on the ground."  And he insists the church must divest in every way possible from wartime economies and the proliferation of deadly weapons.  If not, of course, we deliberately step beyond the boundaries of Jesus' life, Jesus' teaching, Jesus' practice.  And tragically divide the church itself.

It is too easy--and not good enough--to lift up particular individuals of singular conscience: the Desmond Tutus, for example, the Rachel Corries.  The church as the Body of Christ must come together over our shared life in the broken loaf and cup of peace--to offer a witness as that Body and resist as that Body and imagine for the world a new community of siblings.

5.  Then, finally, this theological reflection on Matthew 25 and 1 Corinthians 12:

"I believe," Rifat shares with me, "that for many years now the Church has betrayed the meaning of two very important but misunderstood texts.  We read, 'Whatever you do to the least of these... and we settle for simple gifts, for charity in the face of loss and despair, for a check every once in a while."  What he describes is familiar to me, a kind of transactional approach to ministry and mission.  Jesus says do this.  I want to feel good about my faith.   So I do this for them.  And I get some satisfaction from it.

But this is not the whole of it, he says, not even the key to the text and teaching.

In unmistakable words, purposeful images, Jesus insists on his own solidarity with particular groups of people--that his community might awaken to and begin to deconstruct the systems of oppression that benefit from their suffering.  The hungry.  The imprisoned and detained and deported.  The naked and houseless.  There are systems, Rifat insists, that continue to enforce these oppressions, and it is Jesus' intention that the church be actively engaged in undoing them, reimagining human wellness and communion.  To stand where Jesus stands (or kneel where Jesus kneels) is to see those systems from within the communities they shackle.  This is the only meaningful place to begin.

And this reminds me of an IAF training in Santa Cruz years ago, when an organizer reminded us that "I was a stranger and you welcomed me" bears meaning and imagination well beyond a kind of ordinary hospitality or simple tolerance.  That word "welcomed" is a verb/form of the Greek word 'synagoguia": so that Jesus is calling for intentional community, for brotherhood, sisterhood and active participation in one another's lives and futures.  "I was a stranger and you made common cause with me...I was a stranger and we become one in care and celebration..."

And the same, then, for 1 Corinthians 12, and our experience as the "Body of Christ," one body with many members, joined in mutual affection and ministry.  This kind of ministry cannot and must not accomodate oppressions, large and small, in the name of unity and even 'peace.'  Instead, it is our vocation (ours, together) to unmask the powers that divide us and privilege some over others.  And it is our calling, then, to work always toward a vibrant and beloved community accountable to the gospel and the life of the One Crucified and Risen among us!

Thank you, Rifat and Mays, for your remarkable ways with language, for your anger and even your rage, and for your discipleship in such a time as this...We are with you.