The tantur ecumenical institute is situated on a hilltop overlooking Bethlehem, the road to Jerusalem, the Arab village Beit Safafa and the Jewish settlement Gilo. From its roof the security barrier being constructed by the Israeli government can be traced winding in and out around Bethlehem. Tantur is an ideal spot for Christians to come to learn about this land that is holy for Christians, Jews and Muslims alike. Tantur sponsors such ecumenical and inter faith studies, and I attended a panel discussion there in June where a Jew, a Christian and a Muslim together discussed current efforts for peace in the Middle East.
I had travelled to Jerusalem with members of the Board of the Canadian Friends of the Ecole Biblique, a very lively and scholarly group of Catholic and Protestant clergy and laity. This Board has demonstrated its own commitment to Christians in Jerusalem by raising the funds necessary to restore and renovate the aging library at the Ecole. The question on all our minds was: how can we as Christians living abroad support the diverse Christian communities here in the Holy Land?
At Tantur the Christian member of the inter faith panel, Rev. Alex Awad, the Jerusalem-born president of a Baptist College there, told us job creation for their young people, so they would stay in Palestine, was of the greatest import. A similar response was given by Dr. Petra Heldt, a Lutheran minister and Executive Secretary of the Ecumenical Theological Research Fraternity in Israel. The local Christian communities, she told us, are all struggling because their young people are choosing not to stay, but rather to immigrate to Western countries that offer more economic opportunities. Petra went on to caution us against following the example being discussed by some churches, to divest or adopt other economic sanctions to support or oppose particular positions in the current political situation in the Middle East. Churches abroad taking such positions may be well-intentioned but the impact on the Christian communities there, she was quite sure, would be negative. She commended the model of the Orthodox communities in Jerusalem who faithfully pray for Orthodox communities throughout the world, and said it would be far better for churches abroad to reverse their example and pray for the Christian communities in Palestine and in Israel.
The World Council of Churches has started a program under the supervision of Dr. Chris Ferguson of the United Church of Canada, sending volunteers to live with and accompany Palestinian Christians. Chris also told us about Pentecostal groups that are similarly supporting, both financially and spiritually, the Israeli settlers in their efforts to move on to more and more of the West Bank. These are all well-intentioned efforts, but clearly in the name of their Christian faith, working at cross-purposes.
How can Christians be helpful in this situation, I asked myself as I stood beneath that very high security barrier in Bethlehem. Intended to shut out terrorists, it also excludes West Bank Palestinians from the vibrant Israeli economy and interferes significantly in their own local life. As I stood there, feeling the isolation and desperation of the Palestinians living behind the high barrier, I looked along the wall and saw to my surprise, astonishing paintings on the wall — of a girl, being carried aloft by a bunch of balloons, of children playing at the seashore, ocean waves crashing through a painted hole in the wall, and further on, heroic messages written in Spanish. What an opportunity — this barrier between peoples could be painted and covered with beautiful representations of the best in the human spirit — love for our children, hopes and dreams that they might live in a peaceful world. Is this a project artists abroad might sponsor?
We find Christians taking very different sides, from encouraging the settlers to condemning the current Israeli government policies in the West Bank (as if there were only one policy being debated today in Israel). Maybe it is inevitable that Christians with different backgrounds would instinctively align themselves with Jews or Arabs, depending on whose story they know, whose voices they are more attuned to.
But is choosing sides in an already polarized context helpful in any way? How can pronouncements that trigger either judgmentalism or defensiveness lead to reconciliation between peoples? Contrast such actions with the work of the international charity Aid to the Church in Need that is helping Christian families in Bethlehem market their olive wood devotional carvings to the World Youth Day pilgrims, giving the Bethlehem carvers a glimmer of hope that the church has not forgotten about them.
The wonderful thing about visiting Jerusalem is the beauty of the Old City, arising as much from its religious roots as from the golden sunlight on the Jerusalem stone. In our prayers for peace in Jerusalem, let us look for ways to creatively bring hope to all who live there and trust that through our prayers the good will between diverse peoples that is nurtured in places like Tantur may prevail over the barriers so prevalent today.
