The Land: Evangelicals and Israel

Many Christian tour groups to Israel and Palestine never seriously engage with the fact that there is a dispute about the land and its governance. They visit the holy sites, shop a while, and get out. Many group participants are led to believe that the way things are now is how they ought to be. They assume that the political arrangements, including the occupation of the West Bank, is decreed by Scripture. The fact is, the entire Middle East as we know it know is a modern construction. As a good friend put it to me recently, "Modern nation-states throughout the Middle East were born in a political context in which 'countries' as we know them were just emerging, stifled somewhat by the colonialism of the Europeans after World War 1, and the Ottomans before that. Europe initiated the idea of 'countries' at the treaty of Westfalia in the 1600's as a response to interminable warfare. It took to the middle of the 20th century for that model to cover the whole world." Christian understandings of the land of Israel, and its relationship to Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have actually been rather diverse. Of course one can read entire books on the subject (and I will post a bibliography some day soon). A good place to start is the article by Gerald McDermott, "The Land: Evangelicals and Israel." The title of the article is slightly misleading, in that McDermott surveys more than "evangelical" approaches. CLICK HERE to read the article.

O Little Town of Bethlehem

Most tour groups whisk people in and out of Bethlehem. Half a day at the most. They visit the traditional site of the Shepherd's Fields (either Latin or Orthodox), then the Church of the Nativity and they're gone. On the Ancient Stones, Living Stones tour, we spend four nights in Bethlehem. This gives us barely enough time to get a feel for the city and, most importantly, to meet some of the people who live there. It's important to me that tour participants get a good sense of what life in Bethlehem is like. You might want to read the National Geographic article and watch their short video about Bethlehem today.

We will be staying at the Casa Nova Palace (OK, not a palace) right on "Manger Square." Next door we'll visit the Church of the Nativity, built by Emperor Justinian in the sixth century A.D. on foundations that go back to the fourth century. There are fine mosaic floors still visible from the 4th century structure. Of course any visit to that church raises the question, Where was Jesus born? Kenneth Bailey offers a helpful response to that question in an article titled "The Manger and the Inn." To read a short version, click here, and for a more in depth article, click here.

I always enjoy meeting the people in Bethlehem. During our days in Bethlehem we'll take a tour of the Deheisheh Refugee Camp, we'll visit with Zoughbi Zoughbi of the Wi'am Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center, and we'll worship with Palestinian Christians in Bethlehem on Sunday. I plan to set up a conversation with Mitri Raheb, Pastor of Christmas Lutheran Church. If you are able, you may want to read his book, I am a Palestinian Christian (Fortress Press, 2005).

I hope this whets your appetite for an engaging and eye-opening experience in Bethlehem, home town of King David, birthplace of Jesus.

Stations of the Cross

It used to be possible (before the big separation wall) to walk from Bethany (home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus) all the way to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. I've done that with groups on previous tours. I mourn the loss of that opportunity. What a wonderful day-long adventure it was to do that walk as Jesus may have done many times. Now, instead, we walk only from the top of the Mount of Olives, through the Kidron Valley into Jerusalem, and then all the way down the Via Dolorosa to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. I wasn't schooled in the tradition of praying the Stations of the Cross. But walking the streets of the Old City reminds me that the passion story of the Gospels took place in real space and time. Moreover, Jesus did invite us to "take up our cross." What might such a cryptic saying mean? Walking the ground in Jerusalem, that contested holy city, forces us to ask that question in fresh and imaginative ways. Here's a short article by Dennis Bratcher that I recommend: "The Cross as a Journey: The Stations of the Cross for Protestant Worship." CLICK HERE to read the article

24 things to do in Jerusalem

Participants in Holy Land tours usually have the privilege of getting a day off in Jerusalem to do whatever they like. Although I should probably sleep half the day to recover from the gruelling schedule, I usually end up exploring the city and visiting with shopkeepers. Given the other 20 very structured days of my tour, I like to relax by hanging out in the Old City. This is what I would enjoy if I could get up early enough. Begin by attending the 6:00 a.m. worship at the Armenian Cathedral of St. James. After that, find a place to sit and drink Arabic Coffee until 8:00 (probably at Samir Said's at 11 Christian Quarter Road). Then walk the ramparts from Jaffa Gate to Damascus Gate. Wander the streets of the Old City until about 11:00, visiting with some my favorite shopkeepers. Then go to Abu Shukri for lunch (photo above), arriving there around 11:30. I always make sure I visit my friend Yasser Barakat's shop in the Muristan area of the Old City. Return at least once to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

If you would like to see all 24 of my suggestions, CLICK HERE.

Queen Rania on Israel/Palestine

Here's a fine speech by Queen Rania of Jordan. Although we will be in Petra next spring, unless we have a great stroke of luck, this is as close as we will get to having her address us in the "Living Stones" part of the tour. To hear the speech, click on the link below the photo.

Queen Rania addresses students at Yale University

Queen Rania Al Abdullah calls for greater political courage in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. New York, United States / September 23, 2009 الملكة رانيا متحدثة في جامعة ييل: السلام يتطلب الشجاعة والمسؤولية والتحرك، والتزام تام من المجتمع... الدولي والعالم العربي. الولايات المتحدة، 23 أيلول 2009Read More

The Meaning of Pilgrimage

This tour is both a study tour and a pilgrimage tour. I encourage anyone considering a Holy Land tour to read Tom Wright's short book The Way of the Lord: Christian Pilgrimage Today (Eerdmans, 1999). Here are the last few paragraphs of that book. To read the entire final chapter, "The Holy Land Today," CLICK HERE.

When we go on pilgrimage today, then, we do not go in order to comment on or criticize other people for their inability to solve political problems. God knows we can’t solve our own, which are much smaller and less rooted in history. Of course, we will grieve over injustice, oppression and violence wherever it occurs and whoever instigates it; but in highly complex situations it behoves us to go with our eyes and ears open, ready to learn rather than to condemn. But as pilgrims we go, above all, to pray. In the same passage where Paul speaks of God’s intention to make the whole world his Holy Land, to renew and liberate the whole of creation, he also speaks of the whole creation at present groaning in travail; and then he declares that we who have the first fruits of the Spirit groan inwardly as we, too, wait for our final redemption (Romans 8.18-27). It is in that context that he says that all things work together for good to those who love God (8.28). What can he mean?

He means, I think, that our vocation as Christians includes the vocation to be in prayer at the place where the world is in pain. We are not to expect to pray only at places of great beauty, stillness and peace. We are not to look only for selfish refreshment, to top up our own spiritual batteries while forgetting everyone else. We are to stand or kneel at the place where the world, and particularly our brother and sister Christians, are in pain and need, and, understanding and feeling their sufferings, to pray with and for them, not knowing (as Paul again says) what precisely to ask for, but allowing the Spirit to pray within us with groanings that cannot come into articulate speech. We are called, in other words, to become in ourselves places where the living, loving and grieving God can be present at the places of pain in his world and among his children. We are called to discover the other side of pilgrimage: not only to go somewhere else to find God in a new way, but to go somewhere else in order to bring God in a new way to that place, not by tub-thumping evangelism or patronizing, well-meaning but shallow advice, but by our presence, our grief, our sympathy, our encouragement, our prayer.

As we do this, in going to the Holy Land today, we find the three things I said about pilgrimage in the introduction to this book reinforced and given particular direction. Pilgrimage is a teaching aid: at this level, it teaches us not only about the roots of our faith, but about the ways in which injustice still rampages through communities, some of them within our own family. It opens our eyes to see God’s world the way it is, rather than the way we would like to imagine it. Second, pilgrimage is a way of prayer: both a way of drinking in the presence and love of God in Christ, as we visit places particularly associated with him, and also now a way of standing at the place of pain, at the foot of the cross literally and metaphorically, holding on to that pain in the presence of God in Christ, not knowing what the solution will be but only that God is there, grieving with and in us, in a perpetual Holy Week at the heart of the Holy Land. Third, pilgrimage is a way of discipleship: both to be reinforced in our own daily life and work as Christians, and now also to be reinforced in thinking, working, speaking, writing and praying for justice and peace to be restored to the Middle East, to Northern Ireland, to the Sudan, to God’s entire creation.

We do not go on pilgrimage, then, because we have the answers and want to impose them. That would make us crusaders, not pilgrims; the world has had enough of that, and I dare say God has had enough of that. We go on the pilgrim way, we follow the way of the Lord, because he himself is the way – and, as he said himself, the truth and the life as well. We go to meet him afresh, to share his agony, and to pray and work for the victory he won on the cross to be implemented, and for his way to be followed, in Israel and Palestine, in our own countries, and in the whole world.

A "Living Stones" Pilgrimage

Part of the tour title includes the words "Living Stones." This alludes, of course, to the text in 1 Peter 2:5, which refers to believers as "living stones" being built into a spiritual house of God. In the context of this tour, the words refer to the people who continue to embody the story of God in the twenty-first century. The June 2009 issue of National Geographic had an article on “The Christian Exodus from the Holy Land” by Don Belt. Since part of the experience on the tour is meeting and worshiping with Palestinian Christians, this article will introduce you to their current reality. You can read the article by clicking here. On the left side of the page is a link to an excellent short video (or click here) by Ed Kashi on the Christians in the region. For a printer friendly version of the article (all on one page) click here.