My grace is sufficient for you,for power is made perfect in weakness.2 Corinthians 12:9
Most mornings, when I've had my coffee in the States, I ask myself: "How political do I want to be today?" I take for granted that it's a choice. How much of the world's pain can I take on that day? Or, even more poignantly, how much politics is enough politics (or too much) for my church, for my family, for my neighborhood? I wonder if I should focus instead on the so-called pastoral tasks of my vocation, or maybe even the administrative ones. Leave politics for another day. Pace myself.
And my clergy colleagues will probably recognize the inevitable Thursday morning conundrum as well: "Is this the week for a 'political' sermon? Or do I play it safe this Sunday? Have I been hitting the political stuff too hard lately? Is this a good time to take the 'edge' out of the message?"
Stopping for coffee on a busy Bethlehem street this morning, I sat at a quiet table by the window. And I looked out at a bright, warm day, and villages, hilltops rolling into the distance. And then it hit me: My friends here in the West Bank have no choice. Across a ravine, ascending a hilltop to the south and east: a massive and illegal Israeli settlement, tens of thousands of subsidized settlers with lands and gardens and swimming pools and water rights that belong to Palestinians cast aside and displaced. Dunum by dunum. Town by town.
Zoughbi Zoughbi, my host and mentor, reminds me that 87% of Bethlehem is no longer Bethlehem at all, but colonized land, annexed or inhabited by American Jews, Israeli settlers, puppets of the state's desire to destabilize Palestinian society, cripple its economy and ethnically clease the land for its rightful "owners." Judea and Samaria. The systematic occupation of lands, systems and communities here is intentionally disorienting and demoralizing. A demographic plan. A land taken, not sanctified, by brute force, illegal maneuvering and subterfuge.
So Zoughbi wakes up every morning, in what remains of Bethlehem, and he has no choice. Politics is life itself. Spirituality is courage and grace; but it's a gift and a promise within a certain matrix of control. And that matrix of control is unavoidable. For Zoughbi and his colleagues, his friends, this means no freedom of movement across the communities of their homeland. It means checkpoints, biometrics, the watchful and demeaning eye of the state wherever they go. And it means family separation--married couples divided, unable even to live in the same home, the same town, sometimes the same time zone.
When Zoughbi has his morning coffee (cardamom pods included), he doesn't even ask the question. About politics. Whether or not he has running water---it's political. Whether he can get a permit to see his sister and her family one town away--it's political. The strangled economy affecting every bit of Bethlehem's life and his dear staff's future--it's political. Whether his beloved children will find sustainable jobs in an occupied land--it's political. The exploded rockets over Jerusalem the night before--they're obvioiusly political. While he's profoundly rooted in Christian faith and the particular traditions of Christianity in this land, Zoughbi simply can't divorce that faith from the politics that determine almost every decision of every day.
And this has so many implications for Christian practice, so many consequences in spiritual life. To pray "thy kingdom come," has to mean resistance and hope, even in seasons of disturbing violence and crippling loss. To follow in the steps of the one who serves to the point of sacrifice: this means daily discernment around limits and workload, around confrontation with unjust authorities and perverse systems of control. To receive the Body of Christ at Sunday's mass involves the heartbreaking realization that Christ's body is broken at checkpoints every day, that his body is deprived to the point of starvation now in Gaza, that he is no fairy tale, but an incarnate Lord. In daily life and struggle, in ordinary losses and human yearning.
Slow Genocide in the West Bank
Yesterday, over Sunday dinner, I heard Zoughbi say two things that caught my attention, and seemed new. Just minutes before, we'd been witness to three West Bank Palestinians, having scaled the apartheid wall, then lowering themselves via some kind of makeshift rope to waiting friends below. Our driver had reminded us that this is a regular occurence in her East Jerusalem neighborhood: Palestinians desperate for work, desperate to provide something for families on the other side, risking life and limb and freedom to find better pay. For a week or two. Until they're caught and sent back. More than once, one has slipped, fallen and been brutally injured climbing over and down.
First, Zougbhi said: "While there's no question anymore that Israel's vicious and premeditated assault on Gaza's Palestinian community is genocidal...it's just as clear that what Israel's doing--systematically--in the West Bank is a slow kind of genocide." Wholescale detention and incarceration of children, teens and activists. Brutal invasions and assaults on refugee camps and cities. Complicity in illegal settlement activity, land confiscation and attacks on Palestinian villagers. And, of course, annexation and apartheid, apartheid and annexation: humiliation and control, violence and economic deprivation. Women dying at checkpoints because they can't get to birthing centers. "A slow kind of genocide." Judea and Samaria.
And then, his second point. "We are beyond the point of urgency. While civil societies in the West are doing what they can, even bravely and brilliantly, their governments continue to look the other way, offering only blessing and an occasional critique. And even if there's a little opening, the US continues to veto UN resolutions. So we know what happens: when an abuser is unchecked, when an empire lays seige. When an entire people is beaten and abused for decades on end, and then driven from their lands, from camps to tents, and from tents to other camps--with no recourse to resistance and self-preservation. There will be retaliation. And the awful cycle will continue. If something is not done, there will be retaliation. If not this year, then in ten years. If not in ten, then in forty, in fifty."
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| Pentecost 2025: "Dream dreams!" |
Retaliation? Or nonviolence?
What he's saying is clear. He has dedicated his life--every breath of every day, really--to nonviolence and love. He stands as deliberately as a human being can in the tradition of Gandhi, Chavez, Huerta and King. And he knows that violence is a demon, a plague--that renders its hosts incapable of discernment and compassion.
Only nonviolence, King says (and Zoughbi is quick to add "militant" nonviolence), offers the people real hope for a practical future of restorative justice and reconciling peace. With occupation and genocide, with violence and bloodshed, trauma inevitably burns its way into the hearts, bodies and even faith traditions of a people. Almost, the DNA of a people. We can say nonviolence isn't realistic, but realistically violence is a dead-end for us all, nihilism rationalized. Only nonviolence builds trust, speaks truth, protects hearts for the hard work ahead.
Just the same, King noted that what he called "popular" violence wasn't hard to understand. In a 1966 interview with Mike Wallace, reflecting on rioting in American cities, he said, "A riot is the language of the unheard..." And then he added quickly: "And what is that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years." What he was saying, of course, is that the "unheard" will eventually choose to be heard; and if there are no politically recongized avenues to change, if nonviolent action is criminalized and taken from them, violence (or, "retaliation") is almost certain to follow.
And I can tell--in his voice, in his fatigue--that Zoughbi fears this in the West Bank and Palestine. Everytime that Palestinians have organized nonviolently, the global community has (with Israel's encouragement) cried "that's unfair" or "that's antisemitism" and met resistance with devastating force. In Gaza, Palestinians organized the Great March of Return in 2018, a brilliant campaign signaling their intention to live in freedom on their own lands, only to watch nonviolent protesters shot and maimed shamelessly over months. From the beginning, the Boycott/Divestment/Sanctions campaign (formed in the great global tradition of nonviolent economic resistance) has been discredited as vicious and antisemitic, scaring many (but not all) away. Which isn't to say it's been ineffective...but too often in the West we've failed to seize on BDS opportunities to do good work, nonviolent work, together.
I can tell that Zoughbi fears a grim future here, should violence/retaliation be the only accessible tool, the only response that seems viable to a proud and persecuted people. It's easy to see now that the Israeli state anticipates, even counts on violence and terror--and that this becomes their sanction for expanded attacks (even on the hungry and starving) and genocide's fulfillment. Judea and Samaria.
Jesus and MLK
Martin Luther King, however, would not give in, or give up. And clearly, Zoughbi has no intention of doing so either. Nonviolence is the way of the cross, the path of the Savior. And for each of these remarkable men, Jesus stands at the center of every intersection, every crossroads, every moral moment. As a friend and a teacher. As a promise and a reason to go on.
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| From Janet McKenzie, Vermont |
And so it is here in the West Bank, or at least that's where Zoughbi's hope rests:
That there is still a beloved community--beginning here among Palestinian visionaries and activists, and reaching out across the international community--with the will, resources and creativity to dismantle "structures" that demonize Arabs and institutionalize racism, contempt and distrust (even in the name of twisted biblical visions). A revolution against injustice.
That there is still a beloved community with the will and the resources to rescue all Israelis and Arabs alike and lift the "load of poverty" and apartheid that oppresses every last human being in this beautiful place, and all of their fine traditions too. A revolution against poverty.
That there is still a beloved communitiy with the will and the resources to build a binational state of remarkable cultural diversity and religious depth and economic equity; to bring Gaza's genocide and the West Bank's destruction to an end once and for all. A revolution against xenophobia and racism.
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| Pentecost, Kelly Latimore Icons |
Pentecost: Visions, Dreams and All Peoples Together
Yesterday, on Pentecost, we read Acts 2, of course, and the narrative of "tongues of fire" falling and resting on peoples who'd come to Jerusalem from all over the known world: the Galillee, Egypt, Libya, Rome, Cappadocia and Mesopotamia. Is it a realistic story, an accurate account of a pivotal first century moment? I'm not sure. But perhaps its historicity isn't the point. Perhaps our imagination is! Are we willing to entertain God's spirit so generously, so boldly, so humbly--that we can imagine and then receive the kind of anointing that might release us from angst long enough to see a common future? Are willing to invite the Holy Spirit into every last crevice of our community, every last breath of our prayer life--so that we can at last step out of the shadows of endless war and hostility (and, let's face, it capitalist craving) and craft a world our children, and their children, will be happy and proud to call home?
Maybe Pentecost isn't simply a lovely story about diversity and unity (although that's cool!)--but also a story about divine courage and POWER! Not the power of our ancient fears. Not the power of our Lockheed weapons and Elbit AI guidance systems. Not the power of cement walls and checkpoints administered by bored kids who should be in college. But POWER! The power of the divine, "I am!" The power of Sophia, The Wisdom in all traditions! The power of Mercy and every prophet who has cried mercy into the fanged winds of injustice and war through the ages. POWER! Let there be power among us! Not yours and not mine. Not my holy power which outflanks yours. But POWER! The shared and holy power of a people from all over the world, from all nations, tribes, tongues and faiths--eager to glorify the One we love by the way we love one another!
This is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit, my Power, upon all flesh,
and your sons and daughters shall prophesy,
and your young folk shall see visions,
and your elders shall dream dreams!
