Sabeel held a clergy meeting in Ramallah on Friday 21st February. The meeting was attended by 40 clergy or parish representatives and explored the challenges faced by health services in local parishes.
On Tuesday, the 11th of February, vandals slashed the tyres of dozens of vehicles in the Arab village of Jish in Northern Israel and spray-painted slogans on buildings warning of ‘Jewish-Arab assimilation’. Police are treating it as another attack by the so called ‘Price Tag’ organisation of hard-right Israelis, which has carried out similar attacks against Arabs in recent years.
On Sunday, 2nd June Israel held its annual Jerusalem Day celebrations to commemorate the occupation of East Jerusalem during the 1967 war. These celebrations were marked with extreme right-wing Israeli youths marching through the Old City to Damascus Gate shouting chants against Christianity and Islam whilst proclaiming Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel. There were also conflicts at al-Aqsa Mosque when Israeli Jews entered the compound to pray – something which is normally forbidden especially during the final few days of Ramadan.
This week we are encouraged to engage with the second Kumi Care week, thinking about caring for the mental health of those engaged in activism. This care involves taking a break from challenges and calls to action. It is good to take the occasional break and relax, taking part in a restful activity to unwind.
Philippians 3: 4b-14 & John 12:1-8
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts, be acceptable in your sight O Lord our strength and our redeemer.
I am thankful to God for the privilege I had in serving this Cathedral and especially the Palestinian congregation in the 1980’s and 1990’s.
I am thankful to Archbishop Suheil for his usual warm welcome and kindness whenever I come back to visit.
I am also thankful to Dean Husam for inviting me to preach.
I also want to thank you, friends for coming to visit Jerusalem at this time and I pray that your Lenten experience be a blessed one. May your visit be a pilgrimage, a time of spiritual stimulation and renewal! May it be a time for the strengthening of your faith and the deepening of your love of God and love of neighbor!
The reading from Philippians is rich with ideas for our Christian life and especially during the Lenten season: Paul, the writer experienced much suffering for his faith in Christ. But he said, “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” For Paul, Christ is the pearl of great price. Everything else is of a lesser value, it is rubbish, trash. To Know Christ and to follow him is to find true life’s meaning in his love and service. What an amazing commitment Paul had. It puts many of us ministers of the Gospel to shame.
One of Paul’s great statements in the reading today is, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his suffering by becoming like him in his death that I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” In Lent we need to reflect on these words.
In the Gospel reading, we are introduced to an episode about Jesus’ visit with his friends, Lazarus and his two sisters Martha and Mary.
Jesus arrives with his 12 disciples to Bethany. Martha invites a number of people and puts out a splendid dinner, in his honor. After all, he raised her brother from the dead. Many times we show our admiration, respect and love for friends around the dinner table. Through food, fellowship, and discussion, we express our genuine love and friendship. Palestinian hospitality is not new. The early church encouraged it. The writer of Hebrews, “Do not neglect hospitality.”
Mary on the other hand, expressed her love through anointing Jesus’ feet, and wiping them with her hair using a very expensive perfume. Judas Iscariot, one of the disciples, did not like it. For him, it was a waste of money. It could have been sold for three hundred dinars and distributed to the poor. On the one hand, if Judas’ concern was genuine, it would have been an important concern to consider. On the other hand, Judas was not thinking of the poor. The poor were a cover up for his greed and love of money.
What Mary did was an act of love. Love cannot be measured with money. Genuine Love surpasses the material. Jesus accepted and appreciated Mary’s act of love. At the same time, Jesus said, to Judas and the disciples, the poor you will always have with you, but you do not always have me. Even today, we do things in the church and outside the church out of genuine love for Christ. Some people might still criticize us as a waste of money; but it is an act of love. At the same time, we must not neglect our responsibility for the poor and oppressed.
So how can we express our love and devotion to Christ today?
Let us remember what Christ said, if you do it to one of the least of my brothers and sisters you do it to me. It is worth reflecting on the fact that God who made the heavens and the earth “does not envision a world of scarcity.” We humans made and created the scarcity. The presence of the poor among us reflects our failure, as humans, to eliminate poverty. It is estimated that half of the world’s population, more than 3 billion people are poor. (less than $2.50 a day. 1.3 billion people, live in extreme poverty, less than $1.25 a day.) A small fraction of what the countries of the world spend on the purchase of arms and war equipment if used in the proper way, it would eradicate poverty. Oxfam estimates that it would take $60 billion dollars annually to end extreme global poverty. This amount is less than one fourth of the income of the top 100 richest billionaires. Today, hunger is the number one cause of death in the world. According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty. We are all guilty. It is a crime against our brothers and sisters. In the reading of “Forward Day by Day,” for today, Canon Pastor Glenice Robinson-Como of Christ Church Cathedral in Houston, Texas wrote, “God does not ask us to simply give to charity; God requires that we pursue justice. Charity offers temporary relief: justice seeks solutions.” (April 7, 2019)
Dom Helder Camara was an archbishop in Brazil. He used to say, “When I give food to the poor, people call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a Communist.” It is important for the church to condemn the unjust economic structures that keep the poor, poor; and make the rich, richer. Our world, including our land, Palestine/Israel needs a better just and equitable economic system.
I don’t have statistics about occupied Palestine. In the state of Israel, however, poverty is not much spoken about, but it exists. Last year in 2018, over 21% of the Israeli population was living in poverty. The more alarming statistics show that almost 30% of children in Israel are living in poverty, one in every 3. The poor are especially, the single mothers, the elderly, the Jewish Orthodox communities, and Arab Palestinians Israeli citizens. Israel is rated at the bottom of the list of OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries in terms of poverty.
The same applies to the political situation in our country. Friends don’t let your visit to the holy sites blind you from seeing the injustice that is rampant in our land. It is easy to come and visit the holy sites and return home and miss the political and economic injustice. The Palestinians, Muslims and Christians, are living under the occupation of the government of Israel. This occupation is illegal under international law. Israel has stripped the Palestinians of their land. Many of the Palestinians living in the refugee camps around Bethlehem, in Jerusalem, on the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip used to be simple small farmers. They lived of their land. The Israeli settlements are built on Palestinian land confiscated by the Israeli government. All the settlements are illegal under international law.
Every Friday, for the last year, after the Muslim noon prayers, the people of Gaza have been demonstrating non-violently calling for their Right of Return (according to international law) to their villages and land. Hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, especially women and children, by Israeli snipers and army fire. The Wall you see in your travel is illegal. Our people are imprisoned behind the Wall. Our people cry out for the end of the illegal occupation. They cry out for liberation. They want to see the establishment of their own Palestinian state living in peace alongside the state of Israel. We want Israel to live in peace; our people, the Palestinians want to live in peace, but peace can only be built on justice as defined by international law and United Nations Resolutions. Without justice there can be no enduring peace.
Friends, we are grateful for your visit. But, again, don’t let your visit to the holy places blind you from seeing the living stones of the land suffering from the injustice imposed by the Israeli government. Pray for all the people of the land – Jews, Muslims and Christians. Pray for the liberation of the oppressed. Become engaged in advocacy on their behalf. Work for justice and peace. Jesus said, when you do it to the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you do it to me.
Jesus calls us to be peacemakers. He said, “Blessed are the peacemakers…” It is by being peacemakers that we all become children of God.
Friends, may God embolden us and give us the courage to stand on the side of the poor and oppressed and work for their liberation.
And to God alone be glory and honor, Amen.
By
Canon Naim Ateek
On 28th February 2018, the Sabeel Center in Nazareth hosted the historian and researcher Dr Johnny Mansour to present his latest book on the Balfour Declaration.
Sabeel Wave of Prayer
Thursday 4th April 2019
Following rocket fire from Gaza and heavy bombardment by Israeli forces, the ‘Great March of Return’ on Friday was much smaller than normal. On Saturday 30th March, hundreds of thousands of mainly peaceful protestors marched at the fence to commemorate Land Day, and to call for the right to return to their lands. 207 protestors were injured by Israeli live fire and tear gas, with four young men killed.
The Kumi Now initiative focuses this week on the work of the MA’AN Development Centre.
The Centre documents violations by Israel of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child including child arrests, exploitation, torture, denial of the right to play and access to education.
Palestinians at home and in the diaspora marked the 43rd anniversary of Land Day on Saturday, the 30th of March. On this day in 1976 Palestinians demonstrated against the Israeli government’s confiscation of 21,000 dunams, (5,189 acres) of their land.
The World Health Organization (WHO), has strongly condemned Israeli forces for killing the volunteer paramedic, Sajed Mizher. He was on duty on Wednesday, the 27th of March, at the Dheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem.
Sabeel Jerusalem held an Easter Egg Hunt in Bethlehem for 120 children recognised by different charitable organisations as being at the margins of society.
Fully armed Israeli soldiers forced their way into Haj Ziad Jaber School in the city of Hebron and took away a ten-year-old boy, claiming he had been throwing stones. Students in two elementary schools in Tuqu, southeast of Bethlehem, were frightened and had to be dismissed early after Israeli settlers, accompanied by Israeli soldiers, tried to force their way onto the school premises.
Israeli authorities announced the cancellation of all family visits from Gaza to Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons on Monday, the 25th of March, until further notice. According to the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, Palestinians are entitled to family visits, which can “only be limited for security reasons, on a case by case basis, but never for strictly punitive or disciplinary purposes.”
On Monday 8th April, Sabeel will hold their annual walk along the Contemporary Way of the Cross with the Palestinian community, in preparation for the Holy season of Easter. This walk joins together the suffering of Christ on the Cross with the suffering of Palestinians at present, and connects the stations of the Cross with contemporary issues of injustice within Israel and Palestine.
Fully armed Israeli soldiers forced their way into Haj Ziad Jaber School in the city of Hebron and took away a ten-year-old boy, claiming he had been throwing stones. Students in two elementary schools in Tuqu, southeast of Bethlehem, were frightened and had to be dismissed early after Israeli settlers, accompanied by Israeli soldiers, tried to force their way onto the school premises.
The Kumi Now initiative focuses this week on the work of the MA’AN Development Centre. The Center documents violations by Israel of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child including child arrests, exploitation, torture, denial of the right to play and access to education.
Following rocket fire from Gaza and heavy bombardment by Israeli forces, the ‘Great March of Return’ on Friday was much smaller than normal. On Saturday 30th March, hundreds of thousands of mainly peaceful protestors marched at the fence to commemorate Land Day, and to call for the right to return to their lands. 207 protestors were injured by Israeli live fire and tear gas, with four young men killed.
