Narrative Matters

Written after a trip to Israel/Palestine with a class from 

Candler School of Theology in January 2018

            I must admit, I began this trip a little distracted.  I was all caught up in the Christmas hubbub, commissioning paperwork, and all the things I need to do in my final semester of seminary before I move across the country to an unknown destination and begin a job in full-time ministry that I only marginally feel prepared for.  My perfectionist character stresses at the slightest thing out of my control, which feels like just about everything right now.  So when I finally arrived at the airport in Atlanta about to board a plane that would take me to Paris and then Tel Aviv, I hadn’t really spent much time considering the journey on which I was about to embark.  My prayer was one of calm.  I hoped to just be present on our tour through the Holy Land.  I wished to put aside my fears and preoccupations about me so that I could fully participate in a life that I could only view as an outsider.

            I’ve actually studied the situation in Israel/Palestine a fair amount.  My call to ministry in some part stems from a desire to learn how religion has been used to further both large amounts of good and large amounts of pain in the world.  In the words of Moshe Halbertal, a Jewish philosopher at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, “when you bring in the religious dimension, it absolutizes the conflict – you can divide the land, you can divide the security, but the sacred is indivisible.”[1]  Though not all people in Israel/Palestine would admit that their motivations to live or relate to their neighbors in a certain way is religious, all of the region (and all of the foreign powers that are involved in the region) are implicated in a religious conflict that is bigger than land, politics, and power alone.  I took a class with Alex Awad, a Palestinian Christian and former professor at Bethlehem Bible College.  Alex instilled in me two things, 1) a basic understanding of the Israeli occupation in the West Bank, what that means for Palestinians living under occupation, and how issues of religion, money, and politics are all mixed up in the problems and the solutions, and 2) a deep sense of Christian compassion for all people living in the Holy Land.

            The sacred is indivisible, and as Alex often reminded me, the sacred is in each of us as we are created in the image of God.  As I arrived in Tel Aviv and rode the bus to Jerusalem I couldn’t help but notice how people here are like people everywhere.  Though we might label and divide them as Jews, Muslims, Christians, or as Israelis, Palestinians, tourists, we could also probably describe them all as mothers, fathers, siblings, and friends, all children of God.  Immediately I felt a tension emerge between the commitment to justice for the people living under occupation and the placid reality that is most people’s lives.  In the words of Dr. Beth Corrie, we witnessed tension “between the good and the good.”  This theme would permeate our travel as I thought about the thousands of people who have, do, or will call this land home.

            The first day of our visit highlights a shift in my own attention and attitude towards the trip.  As I mentioned, I set out distracted.  I wish I could say that I shook this distraction and was able to be truly present through the entire trip, but that is not the case.  After a busy day at Hope Secondary School, the Herodian, the Nissan Brother’s olive wood shop, the Shepherd’s Field, Bethlehem Bible College, Church of the Nativity, and Lutheran Christmas Church with Mitri Raheb, all I wanted to do was curl up in bed and fall asleep.  Instead, I joined the group for a mandatory reflection meeting.  Dr. Ellen Shepherd opened the meeting by asking us all to think about where we felt close to Christ and where we felt far from Christ in the day’s travels.  I admit, my first thought in response to that question was, “did I even think about Christ today?”  No, I hadn’t really, not as a living and real component of my life anyway.  I do recall standing on the Herodian and gazing out at the horizon, thinking, “This is the land that Jesus walked on.”  I did smile at Bethlehem Bible College where Grace told us that Bethlehem means “House of Bread,” and that their mission was to bring bread to the world with their eyes set on the Kingdom of God.  I did appreciate Mitri’s articulation that “hope is what we do” in the face of occupation.  But I didn’t really think about the connection between my experience and Christ.  My heart was removed.  I wasn’t present.

            As I began to intentionally reflect on that day’s experience, I recognized Christ in the Muslim call to prayer, in the hustle and bustle of Palestinian life as we walked the tight alleyways of Bethlehem, in the faces of people I passed.  These people longed for the real resurrection and freedom that Mitiri writes about for the people living in the face of empire.  Jesus was born in this land, among these people.  Slowly my attitude toward this trip began to shift from being about me to being about the people I interacted with.  As Mitri writes, “If we really want to understand the Bible, we need to start listening to it with the ears of the people of this land.”[2]  With this reflection a theme of narrative emerged: my narrative, the Palestinian narrative, the Israeli narrative, the Joshua narrative, the narrative of Christ, and more.  All of these narratives are complicated and nuanced.  People are the stories that compose their lives.  As we traveled, narratives were confirmed and questioned, often revealing tension between the good and the good and sometimes the not good.

            We were intentional about listening to the Palestinian narrative.  John and Elizabeth from the Methodist Liaison Office and Daoud from Tent of Nations all articulated the struggle for justice that they endured and worked for in their lives, day in and day out.  Daoud’s narrative was as much a testament to his family’s struggle against the heavy shadow of occupation at is was a testament to the light of Christ and the good of humanity.  “We refuse to be enemies,” he said, “with separation no one can achieve peace.”  The Palestinian narrative of oppression written on the walls that separate the West Bank from Israel is not the only part of their narrative.  Daoud outlined the four principles that the Tent of Nations is built on, 1) refuse to be victims, 2) refuse to hate, 3) live our faith, and 4) believe in justice.  Their journey is one of resistance as they plant trees in faith, love, and hope for a future of peace.  The voices of Anton, Mary, and Hagop from Kids for Peace and the Youth Theological Initiative added to the Palestinian narrative that I heard.  Though they lived amidst censorship, checkpoints, fear, and anger they too hoped for a different reality just as they attended to the requirements and necessities of their daily lives.

            Though we spent less attention on the Israeli narrative it nevertheless shown through.  Checkpoints and the presence of Israeli soldiers maintained the narrative that 1) Israel is in power and 2) Palestinians are a threat.  The Sea of Galilee put forward a blissful and happy partnership between Jews and Christians who together share in remembering their historical and religious ties to the land and to each other.  The City of David, “where it all began” positioned itself as the initial and rightful taking of what would be the city of Jerusalem, the God ordained location of the Temple, and the Jewish people forever.  This narrative of rightful ownership of the land, then and now, permeated our time in Israel.  Walls, ancient and modern, surrounded areas to keep in those who “belong” and to keep out those who don’t fit a certain mold (nationality, ethnicity, religion).  And yet the Israeli people were, like most of us, just people.  Adults going to and from work, children playing in the streets, concerned with all the normal things that they should be concerned with.  Occasionally members of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) would walk by with large automatic rifles, just doing their job, children protecting their nation.

I could not help but ponder the dichotomy between the biblical narrative that “gives” the Israelites this land (cf. Josh. 1:2-6) and what my eyes were seeing.  The Book of Joshua, though violent and puzzling at times, provides hope for a displaced people.  Reflecting back on the text in light of the current empire feels off.  It’s as if the State of Israel today is not the same people who were slaves and escaped from Egypt and spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness before settling in this land.  Indeed, even in the biblical account when the tides are reversed and Jerusalem is capital of the empire, Jeremiah comes with word that God is “going to sling out the inhabitants of the land at this time, and [God] will bring distress on them” (Jer. 10:18 NRSV).  It seems is if Mitri Raheb is right, we must consider the longue durée, of the land and the thousands of years, chains of empires, and people of faith who lived in and outside of this region.[3]

Jerusalem is the coalescing of narratives.  Here some narratives merge to tell new stories, other narratives stand proudly as they are and resist influence.  Competing narratives display side by side, on top of or underneath each other, all claiming the sacred as their own.  Jerusalem is divided into quarters (Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Armenian) and yet no walls prevent these narratives from mingling.  This reflection would not be complete without walls.  I spent a lot of time on this journey thinking about walls: remnants of walls where biblical figures walked, walls that separate oppressed from oppressor, walls that the president of the free world wants to build to keep dark skinned people out.  And then we came to the Western Wall, the Wailing Wall, all that is left of the second Temple, and all that is left of the building that housed the Holy of Holies.  And in this spot, the closest we can get to God, all I could think was “how could God reside in a wall?”

It is fitting almost that Jesus wept from the hillside, outside the walls of the city where he would die.  We walked the road that Jesus walked from the Mount of Olives to the Garden of Gethsemane.  We stopped on the hillside that Jesus stopped on, gazing out over Jerusalem and the throng of crowds all claiming the sacred land as their own.  “As [Jesus] came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that would make for peace!  But now they are hidden from your eyes’” (Luke 19:41-42).  I can’t help but think that Jesus would still be weeping.  We have still not found the things that would make for peace.  We each have a role in putting our selfish humanity before love of God.

            Perhaps it was the bishop’s preaching, or any of the other (many) people in our group who can also preach, but the narrative of Christ came alive in so many ways as I became reacquainted with the importance of reading in context.  Christ’s encounter with the Samarian woman at Jacob’s well, Caesarea Philippi and the gates of hell, the Sea of Galilee, and the path between the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane were just a few of the places where the narrative of Christ seemed to be reborn.  Just as Christ came to the Jews living under Roman occupation, so it seems that Christ is alive amidst the people living under Israeli occupation.  Though we walked through a land looking at dead stones, Christ is alive in the remembrance of the stories that we tell at those stones.  It’s almost sacramental in nature.  As we remember the movements of Jesus over the land we participate in those movements, just as we participate in Christ’s death and Resurrection when we remember the story in the Lord’s Supper.  Christ’s narrative becomes my narrative.  I am part of the story of the land, how will I use my part in the story that I tell?

Amidst all of these narratives that I heard and saw, my own narrative refused to disappear.  My body’s reminder for food, sleep, and time alone served as a personal reminder that we are all human regardless of the story we tell.  My own selfish distraction may be what keeps me from recognizing the other, but it is the same distraction that I share with the other.  We are all created by God and called to live into our humanity, in all its strengths and all its weakness.  Yet despite that weakness, Christ is in the stories of the people.  Come and see, go and tell.

Bibliography

Raheb, Mitri. Faith in the Face of Empire: The Bible through Palestinian Eyes. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2014.

Rudoren, Jodi. “In Jerusalem’s ‘War of Neighbors,’ the Differences Are Not Negotiable.” The New York Times, November 18, 2014, sec. Middle East. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/world/middleeast/in-jerusalem-war-of-neighbors-the-differences-are-not-negotiable.html

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[1] Jodi Rudoren, “In Jerusalem’s ‘War of Neighbors,’ the Differences Are Not Negotiable,” The New York Times, November 18, 2014, sec. Middle East, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/world/middleeast/in-jerusalem-war-of-neighbors-the-differences-are-not-negotiable.html.

[2] Mitri Raheb, Faith in the Face of Empire: The Bible through Palestinian Eyes (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2014), 97.

[3] Raheb, 98.

God of Justice and Peace

It's been awhile....  I've been writing, just more for school than for fun.  As a resurrection post of sorts, here is a sermon I preached a few weeks ago:

Emily Ripley
Sermon: 11/13/16 – Grace UMC

Isaiah 65:17-25  --  God of Justice and Peace

I love the week after Halloween. No, not because of the abundance of sugary treats everywhere I turn, but because I can partake in watching the best Halloween pranks of all time unfold: Jimmy Kimmel’s “I told my kids I ate their Halloween candy.” In case you haven’t heard of this Internet phenomenon, television comedian Jimmy Kimmel has challenged America’s parents to deliver the worst news possible to their children on November 1st, that all the previous night’s treasures have been consumed, leaving no more sugary snacks for the kiddos. As I’m sure you can imagine, this news is devastating to some little ones. Some kids cry, loose all bodily capacity and just fall to the ground (I’m not sure what this is about, but perhaps parents of toddlers know better). There are some kids who try to reason with their parents, presenting solutions such as going out to get some more, or other kids who scold their parents for eating so much sugar and warn of the impending bellyaches. And then there are the kids who just shrug it off, moving along with their day as if nothing has happened. But my favorite response comes from the kids who hear the bad news, then try to processes the disconnect between the way the world should be (with Halloween buckets overflowing) and the way the world is (candy all gone). Here is a clip to show you what I mean:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOwEwJD_p2w]

Watch 4:22 to 4:41

What I love about this child is she is wrestling with a question that I often wrestle with. She is trying to reconcile her feelings as she discovers that the way the world should be is not always the way the world is, and she is working through how to respond to such a contradiction. This is kind of what I feel like when I read this passage from Isaiah. Isaiah presents a vision of the world as it should be, and yet, it is far from the reality that we find ourselves in today. How do we take this news? How do we live in the space between hope for peace and justice that God envisions and the reality of the violence and hate that is so prevalent in our world today?

Isaiah begins “Look! I am creating a new heaven and a new earth!” To which I wonder, what’s so bad with the old one? But of course, I don’t have to wonder for very long to figure that out. Because before I look beyond my own family I see my mom who has been blocked from attending meetings because she is a woman. Before I look beyond Ponce de Leon I see homeless men and women in search of work, food, and shelter. Before I look beyond the United Methodist Church I see a denomination that refuses ordination and marriage to people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. Before I look beyond most of Atlanta’s infrastructure I see design that excludes people with disabilities. Before I look beyond the United States I see closed boarders to refugees and others. No, I don’t have to look far at all.

And the Israelites didn’t have to look very far either. This passage in Isaiah comes after return from exile, after nearly 70 years of living as refugees in a foreign land, after the heartbreak of war and violence at the hands of the Babylonians, after struggling to maintain their identity and faith in a foreign world. And then, when the exile is over and Cyrus, the King of Persia, lets the Israelite people return to Jerusalem with the hope of starting anew in the land of milk and honey, things don’t go quite as planned. Political tensions are high (can you imagine?). The Israelites go forward with dreams of freedom, joy, and peace and instead are met with opposition, injustice, and fear. They came with hope of flourishing, and once again their hopes are dashed. God where are you? God why can’t you see us? Why don’t you ease our pain? Where are your streams of justice and righteousness? How long, O Lord, how long? And as the people are experiencing this despair, God comes in with this promise of shalom: 

“Look! I am creating a new heaven and a new earth. Past events won’t be remembered; they won’t [even] come to mind. Be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating, because I’m creating Jerusalem as a joy and her people as a source of gladness. I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad about my people. No one will ever hear the sound of weeping or crying in it again... They won’t hurt or destroy at any place on my holy mountain.” 

God comes in with a promise, indeed with a beautiful promise. The Hebrew word “bara’,” used three times in the opening lines of this passage in Isaiah is the same word that is found in the book of Genesis, when God creates the world and “saw that it was good.” Bara’, meaning to create, shape, or form is specifically used when God is the subject, that is, when God is creating, shaping, or forming. When God creates a new heaven, a new earth. When God creates and the people rejoice forever! When God creates Jerusalem as a joy, and when God creates the people as delight. This return to the language of Genesis suggests that in this vision in Isaiah the state of the world is returned to Eden, when God creates, and it is good; when all is right; all is just; all is at peace.

Now, I believe that God is always creating, and that God’s creation is always good. However this does not mean that everything that happens in creation is good. And this distinction is important. There is a difference between God’s good creation and the sin that we introduce into that good creation. Ah yes, sin. Outright, this passage from Isaiah does not seem to be about sin, however I think that in order to adequately address and understand this passage, we have to talk a little bit about sin. You see, the story is repeated many times in the Old Testament (and perhaps perpetually in our lives): The people sin, God sends a sign (usually a prophet) to tell the people they are sinning, eventually (sometimes it takes awhile) the people repent, immediately God shows mercy and grace, and what seems like two days later the people sin, God sends a prophet, the people repent, God shows grace... This story is about relationship with God. It is about our propensity to turn away from God time and time again, to sin, to worship false idols, to loose faith in the Holy One. But while these patterns of sin are prevalent, God constantly calls for renewed relationship, all the while God stands beside us, waiting for us to return to communion with our Creator.

This passage in Isaiah is about sin. The entire middle section of the passage, between the “creating a new earth” opening and the “wolf and lamb together in peace” closing is a section where God reverts society and life to the state it was in before sin entered the picture, that is, before humans in their pride and fear dictated their own lives rather than relying on God, before humans in their pride and fear put their faith in elected leaders rather than in God... It is a reversal of the curses the Israelite people brought upon themselves by turning away from God. This is even more evident when we consider that verses 1 though 16 in this chapter of Isaiah, immediately before this new vision, focus on God’s judgment to those who worship false idols and turn away from God. Isaiah 68:1 begins with God in a somewhat snarky tone saying, “I was ready to respond to those who didn’t ask. I was ready to be found by those who didn’t look for me. I said “I am here! I am here!” to a nation that didn’t call on my name.” Contrast this with the language in verse 24 in the passage about a new vision where God says “Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear.” When we turn from God, God yearns for us to return like a mother in search of her lost child.

This turn away from God is not necessarily a conscious decision, but rather a facet of human life as fundamentally self-centered. It is rooted in how we understand our finite selves in relation to our infinite Creator. To claim to know the will of God, for our world, our nation, our lives, regardless of the content of that will, is to put ourselves in the place of God, to turn away from our relationship with God our creator, and to assert our own power over our own lives and the lives of other people, and in doing so, upend the created order and introduce brokenness into our world. And that brokenness is experienced in many ways. The passage in Isaiah reveals that it is experienced as people labor in vain, bear children for calamity, plant food but still go hungry, build shelter only to not have a place to live. Likewise, we experience that brokenness in our world today. We experience it in the social systems that systematically oppress women, LGBT persons, people of minority races, and people who are poor. We experience it in the hate and division currently circulating in our country. And because of this brokenness, people suffer. Because of this brokenness people are hurt.

Although the brokenness of the world causes suffering, we must resist blaming individual suffering on individual sin. This construction of sin as the cause of suffering has historically been used to further marginalize people who are already marginalized in our society. The most striking example of this construction of sin is to blame disability on the sin of that person with disability or that person’s family. This conception of sin is harmful and inadequate. However, aspects of sin do cause suffering. The ways in which society separates people with disabilities from community are oppressive, sinful, and causes of suffering. In this way, the social constructs that disable people are inherently sinful, inherently not as the world was created to be.

In this worship service today we are focusing on ways to make worship inclusive to people with disabilities, and to celebrate the many gifts that diverse members of our community bring to the table. Aspects of the service were designed so that people who worship differently than “most people” could also feel welcomed in this space to experience God’s grace and love however they desire. Additionally, this service is meant to provide an avenue for conversation, what do you need to bring your whole self to worship? But these questions and this worship service cannot proceed in honesty if we do not truly examine ourselves and our inability to form relationships with people who are different from us, often including people with disabilities, people of different races, genders, sexual orientations, and more.

Mary McClintock Fulkerson, a Presbyterian minister and professor at Duke Divinity School, writes about being in situations where she is the minority in race and ability. She writes, “On my first visit to Good Samaritan UMC there were more Africans and African Americans in attendance than whites, and I became acutely aware of the whiteness of my skin and my unfamiliarity with the experience of being a racial minority. When I approached two of the group-home members, one with Down syndrome, the other sitting twisted in a wheelchair, I felt uncomfortable, not knowing where to put my body or how to communicate with them.” She later reflects that her bodily reaction, her physical discomfort to the situation, revealed a deeper conscious about what she considered as “normal” and her fears about who didn’t fit into that description. She describes this as obliviousness to people who are different from her “normal.” And she names this obliviousness as a sin and a cause of injustice. The title of this piece, “A Place to Appear,” suggests that interactions with those who are different from us cannot be occasional instances of good intentioned inclusion, but rather real, deep, empathetic relationships that shake our foundations of what we, those in power, have defined as normal and right. It requires a return to relationship with each other and with God, a humble return that acknowledges God as the giver of justice and peace.

I read a story recently in a literary text. It was a short story about a little girl walking home from school with her best friend. She was late getting home, and her mother, both annoyed and worried, asked impatiently where she had been and why she was late. The little girl replied that on her way home she had passed her friend sitting on a step, crying because her doll had broken. “Oh,” replied her mother, “so you helped your friend fix her doll?” “No,” said the little girl, and with the wisdom of the universe she replied, “I helped her cry.”

God’s justice and peace on earth is not dependent on anything that we do to help or fix the brokenness of the world. The passage in Isaiah is clear about that. It is bara’, God creating a world of justice and peace. As much as we go out with good intentions to bring people what we think they need, God presents a different narrative. God challenges us to put aside our pride and our intellect, our desire to say that we are in control and that we can fix injustices and bring peace to the world, and instead to be in relationship with God and with each other. To cry with each other. To truly love someone without trying to provide for them and fill their needs, as if anything that we have isn’t already from God. To sit with someone who is different and not be the one who saves, but to love them empathetically as a whole beautiful body created by God. With much of our country in turmoil and division following the election last week, this becomes even more necessary. We must love each other, truly, passionately, and without restraint... in the same way that God loves us.

Living in the new vision that Isaiah presents is to live with the realization that the world is not as God created it to be. It is to recognize our own sin, our own propensity to turn away from God, our own pride and fears that perpetuate the brokenness in the world, while at the same time seeing ourselves and all those people around us as beautiful whole bodies created by God. To live into this vision is not to “fix” people or to “give” them what they need, but to live into relationship with them and with God. Because through relationship we see each other’s needs, and we see each other’s gifts. We become inter-dependent with each other, needing people in our lives just as much as people need us in their lives. And then we come together in worship and praise of God. This is all that is required, as the prophet Micah so reminds us: but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.

Amen. 

Thoughts on Entering Seminary

It is Tuesday, August 25th. I moved to Atlanta to begin my journey at Candler School of Theology one week ago. In this last week I have already learned and experienced so many new things I don’t even know where to begin. Four full days of Orientation and the whirlwind that accompanies moving to a new place later I am finally sitting down to write a reflection I had the intention of starting on my first night here. So #HereIAmCandler.

As I sat through each orientation session on topics ranging from the Curriculum to Student Programming to Spiritual Formation to the Library, I found the information overload to be a bit exhausting. As one professor put it, orientation is like drinking from a fire hose. All of this information is accurate, relevant, and good to know, but none of it applies to me right now.  As I sat in chapel each morning, I felt filled with a wonderful joy, a profound inadequacy, and an enduring apprehension all at the same time. I am excited to be here. I know I am in the right place. And yet I am still asking "Why me? How God? Where?" The start of seminary feels both imminent and surreal. I am starting, and I have not started. I am ready, and yet completely unprepared.

A focus of orientation at Candler has been how, as students of theology, we are to stay grounded in faith and spiritual practice as we study scripture and our relationship with God. The balance of prayer and work, play and rest has been emphasized over and over again. As one faculty member put it, you don’t have a "prayer life," prayer is all of life, and that cannot be forgotten when beginning to study scripture academically instead of (or rather in addition to) spiritually.

By far the most captivating part of my first week in Atlanta has been the conversations I have had with people from all over the country. I have met some incredible people who will be in my class, who have spent years doing amazing humanitarian and mission based work all over the world. I have talked with people who have prepared to begin seminary for literally years, saving up money and planning their time to be able to join this new class of seminary students. I have been humbled by people who are sacrificing so much to answer their call to ministry, and by those whose gifts for pastoral care, worship, and servant leadership are already beginning to shine in just the three days I have known them. And I am looking forward to learning and growing with them over the next three years.

As I finish up this reflection, I am munching on a piece of communion bread a friend and I made this weekend. We got the recipe from the Dean of Worship and Music, Reverend Barbara Day Miller. The bread isn’t consecrated, and I substituted the cross on the bread patty for a tic-tac-toe board, but it is still a reminder that each of us in this class, and every person reading this reflection, has been called to a purpose, to a ministry, whatever that may be. The gift of life that Jesus shares with the world knows no bounds, and God is walking with us always, through each and every day.