A relative of a Palestinian who was killed amid a flare-up of Israeli-Palestinian violence mourns outside a hospital morgue in the northern Gaza Strip May 10, 2021. After a flareup of violence in Jerusalem, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip traded rocket fire with Israelis. (CNS photo/Mohammed Salem, Reuters)
VIEW FROM THE PEW
If you haven’t heard the expression “a Hail Mary” used completely outside the context of our religion, you must not hear or read sports commentators who love that reference to a prayer as shorthand for a last-ditch athletic performance that’s nothing short of a miracle.
Another expression that has morphed away from piety is “a religious experience,” which at its best might describe awe at nature’s wonders; I’m remembering once standing beneath the shimmering aurora borealis. I’ve heard it used by an opera fanatic extolling a fabulous performance and a foodie describing the best meal ever.
I’m going to state for the record that celebrating Pentecost is a religious experience of the literal kind for me. It’s almost as much so as hearing, on Easter morning, the story of the women disciples finding the stone rolled back and the tomb empty … and imagining myself there, too.
That’s how my imagination takes me on Pentecost, seeing the Holy Spirit appearing as tongues of fire, coming to rest on each of the disciples, giving them the courage and grace to come out of hiding and proclaim what Jesus taught. I like it that, in the Acts of the Apostles account, the evangelist Luke was a pretty darn thorough reporter. The new Christians were Jews, but their words were being heard in the native languages of the horde of foreigners. Fifteen native lands or ethnicities are listed and your average modern Christian could recognize only a few. It’s a challenge for the lectors who have to read the list of places like Capadocia, Phrygia, Pamphylia.
Footnotes in a study Bible point out the likely reason why the writer didn’t just say that the audience was a whole lot of foreign tourists in Jerusalem. Luke was writing more than 50 years after the event for non-Jewish readers, telling them that Jesus’ message wasn’t exclusive to his fellow Jews, it is aimed at the whole world.
We didn’t hear it Sunday, but in churches where they celebrate the vigil of Pentecost, people heard the story from Genesis which starts with “The whole world spoke the same language, using the same words.” The plot continues with prideful people deciding to exalt themselves by building a tower to the sky. The Lord put an end to their plan, deciding to “confuse their language so one will not understand what another says.”
And that’s the story of the tower of Babel which, per scholars, was how the ancient writer tried to explain the reality of a world so divided.
My religious experience is complete when I watch our congregation lining up for communion. They’re not Medes, Elamites, Lydians, Egyptians and Romans as Luke listed. But I could match him, watching the wonderful rainbow lineup of Hawaiians, Portuguese, Filipinos, Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Samoans, people of Palau, Chuuk, Pohnpei, Marshall Islands and all kine people with European ancestors who are lumped together as haoles. And here we are, speaking the same language when we say “Amen” in a church on a Sunday. And hopefully, still doing the same when we interact with each other in the rest of our lives.
Tongues of fire aren’t just our image of the Holy Spirit in this week of Pentecost. They are before our eyes in devastating scenes in news coverage this month, Palestinian militia rockets raining down on Israeli towns, Israel’s bombs demolishing buildings in the Palestinian territory on the west side of the Jordan river. Hundreds of people were killed, most of them Arab civilians. It’s such a longstanding enmity based on political manipulations, religious zeal and greed for territory. I dare any veteran diplomat to explain it in 1,000 words or less; I sure won’t try.
Don’t most of us in America just think it’s beyond our comprehension. Tensions in the Middle East again and governments from elsewhere try to intervene to quench the fire. It’s politically correct to discuss it in terms of history or geography or politics but we know religious beliefs that have gone awry are the root cause and that’s a sticky subject beyond the capacity of peace talks.
Perhaps the Jewish and Muslim warmongers should meditate on mountaintops before taking seats at a conference table. Think about it, your belief in God leads you to hold this little patch of the globe sacred. So do these believers with other names. God must want all of us to be here so what can we do to make that work? Hah, I made that as naive as I could. Of course we are living in the legacy of Babel.
“I invite everyone to seek shared solutions so that the multireligious and multicultural identity of the Holy City is respected and fraternity prevails,” said Pope Francis at a May 9 service in St. Peter’s Square. “Violence begets violence. Enough with the clashes.”
Christians aren’t in the headlines as warmongers in this era, but we had our turn in the Middle Ages when crusades were launched from Europe to take back the places where Jesus walked and to loot for material treasures while there. But there were no news media to cover the slaughter, motives and political machinations in the Christians versus Muslims era.
So now it’s Jews versus Muslims, Israelis armed with a sense of entitlement based on the Old Testament book of Exodus, the story of Moses leading the Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt to this land some 13 centuries before Jesus. But this land wasn’t vacant when they arrived. The Old Testament is full of war stories written by the victors. I guess that’s why I’ve been humming the old spiritual “Joshua fought the battle of Jericho … and the walls came tumbling down.”
The indigenous people of the Holy Land have been identified by various tribal names, some included in that Pentecost reading. They’re all identified as Arabs now, and they are mostly Muslim; in this era, it seems it’s always them against the rest of the world.
The latest outbreak of hostilities sparked some memories for me, both learning experiences from Palestinians who are descendants of the crowd that the disciples talked to on Pentecost; even possibly descendants of the first crowds that heard Jesus himself. They are among a dramatically dwindling number of Christians who trace their roots to the beginning of our religion and are still living in what we consider our Holy Land.
A Christian Arab
The Rev. Naim Stiphan Ateek, a priest with the Anglican diocese of Jerusalem and former pastor in Nazareth, lectured here in 2002 at the Church of the Crossroads, the University of Hawaii and St. Andrew’s Cathedral. Introducing himself to crowds was a lesson in itself, a Christian Arab who is ethnically Palestinian and a citizen of the Jewish state of Israel. Ateek is the founder of Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem. His book “Palestinian Theology of Liberation: the Bible, Justice and the Palestine-Israel Conflict,” published by Orbis Books in 2017, is one of several books and articles he has written about the struggle.
He described his childhood memory from 1948, when the state of Israel created itself with the backing of the United Nations, as the British bailed out as the ruling force of the area. His family was given short hours’ notice to vacate their Nazareth home and the property was given to Jewish immigrants. When Jews celebrate May 15 as Israel’s independence day, Palestinians call it Nakba, the catastrophe, when more than 700,000 Palestinian Arabs fled or were expelled from their homes.
The Episcopal clergyman said in 2002 that “most Muslim Palestinians and Christian Palestinians are willing to live alongside Israel” but was urging the Jewish state to stop expanding beyond its boundaries. He told me then that “If God is the God of justice, and if he is concerned about the poor people of the world as we read the Bible, then God is not going to stand with people in power who oppress others.” He has traveled all over the planet lecturing about justice in the Palestinian conflict. The Episcopal diocese of Honolulu honored him on Jan. 3 this year, naming him an honorary canon of St. Andrew’s Cathedral in a live-streamed virtual service.
Islanders had another chance to hear from a Palestinian Christian whose story gave a stark inside look at a sovereignty movement gone sour. Claire Anastas, a Catholic, was sponsored by a University of Hawaii graduate student in her 2007 talks at local churches and colleges. Her family lives in Bethlehem, seven miles from the Church of the Holy Nativity, built on the site believed to be the birthplace of Jesus. It is located in Palestinian territory while many other Christian sites are in Israel. The family has a retail business which prospered for years as a destination for pilgrims. The town is also a destination for Jews from all over the world who visit the tomb of Rachel, wife of Jacob, whose sons were the foundation of the 12 tribes of Israel.
Anastas displayed photos of her home which appalled audiences who may have had a sentimentalized vision of the “little town of Bethlehem.” The Israelis’ 400-mile long, 25-foot-high concrete “security” wall, completed in 2005, cut through Bethlehem and closed roads across its length, ending Palestinians’ access to jobs and families. It made it very difficult for pilgrims to reach Bethlehem. Except for Jewish pilgrims; they made a side loop in the wall to acquire Rachel’s well as Israeli territory.
The wall towers over the Anastas home on three sides, with guards overlooking their private space. “Now tourists stop to take pictures of my house,” Claire said. “It used to be a most rich area for work. We used to have all kinds of festivals and shows and restaurants. Now we are caged, Bethlehem is caged in a big prison.”
“The Christian community in Bethlehem is all one community, Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, we are all together in God,” she said. But she predicted in 2007 “Christianity will, after 10 years, be gone from Bethlehem. People would like to stay here where Jesus was born; we would like to live in peace.”
According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, Christians living in the West Bank and Jerusalem total less than 60,000 among the total 4.6 million population.
About 177,000 Christians live in Israel, 80% of them Arabs, according to 2019 government figures. They are 2% of the total population of 8.9 million, while Muslims are 17.8% and Jews are 74.2%.
When the Israeli state was created in 1948, 86% of the Bethlehem population was Christian. It is now 12%, about 11,000 people.
Back to the beginning. When Pope Francis was leading the May 9 Vatican pilgrim crowd in reciting the Regina Caeli, a prayer invoking Mary, the queen of heaven, was he calling for a “Hail Mary” resolution to the strife in the land where she lived? Just thinking.
