Olympics viewed from Jerusalem

http://walkinjerusalem.blogspot.com/
by Fred & Gloria Strickert

We must begin with a confession.  We missed the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Olympics.  Even though London is only an hour time zone away, the festivities were televised here around midnight and in primetime in the USA.

Israel is being represented by 38 athletes led by windsurfer Shahar Zubari as flagbearer.  The Haaretz news website this morning also noted that he had dyed his hair blue and shaved an Israeli flag on top of his head.  The jubilation of the opening ceremonies is somewhat restrained in memory of the tragedy forty years ago at the Summer games in Munich in 1972.  Yet 2012 marks the opportunity for this new generation of athletes to shine.

Also among the parade of nations were five athletes representing Palestine with Judo hopeful Maher Abu Rmaileh from East Jerusalem carrying the Palestinian flag (although missing from the photo on the left).

Palestine does not get a whole lot of attention during the Olympics.  Let's face it, the media are concerned about the medal winners, and that has yet to be.  Maybe this year, inshallah.

 

For those who paid close attention, there were 204 countries represented in the parade of flags during this year's opening ceremony.  That's eleven more countries than are officially recognized by the United Nations.  So although Palestine still has only observer status at the UN, it has participant status in the Olympics.  (The Olympic committee does not give veto power to a handful of world leaders).

Actually Palestine was already recognized by the Olympic Council of Asia in 1986, and by the International Olympic Committee in 1995, and sent their first team to Atlanta in 1996, and to every Olympics since.

This Sports Illustrated Photo shows flag-bearer Maher Abu Rmaileh working out at the al-Quds sports club in East Jerusalem. He qualified for the Olympics competing in Japan.  His first Olympic competition will take place on Monday, 30 July.

Already on Saturday, July 28, Ahmed Jibril will compete in Men's 50-meter freestyle swimming.  On Saturday, August 4, Baha al-Farah will compete in 400-meter track.

The Palestinian team also includes two women: one a Muslim, one a Christian.

Woroud Sawahla grew up near Nablus and trains at a local school.  She will compete in the 800 meter run on Wednesday, August 8.

                                                                                               She was quoted in a local news source as saying                “My dream is to change the reality of veiled women and to be a part of all sports. . .  Religion encourages sport, not vice versa.”

This brings back memories of the 1981 film Chariots of Fire when religion played a role in the competition between Harold Abrams and Eric Liddell in the 1924 Paris Olympics--Harold, a Jew facing anti-Semitic prejudice, and Eric, a Christian who chose not to compete on Sunday.    (photo on right)

Not only will Woroud compete wearing the Hejab, but she and all Muslim athletes will be observing Ramadan, neither eating nor drinking water during the daylight hours of the summer-heat. 

On Friday, August 3, Sabine Hazboun, a Christian from Bethlehem, will be seeking to medal in the Women’s 50-meter freestyle swimming competition.

 Sabine's father, Issa Hazboun, is the Director of the Catholic Center in Bethlehem.  Already at age 13, Sabine had made her mark as the national champion and has participated on the International stage in the 2010 Youth Junior Olympics and the 2011 FINA Championships.  Unfortunately, there are no 50-meter swimming pools in Palestine, so training is difficult.  At 17, Sabine has delayed her final year at St. Joseph's School in Bethlehem to spend this past year in full-time training in Barcelona at a training facility especially for athletes from countries with limited resources.

Sports are extremely popular in Palestine, but not official-sized sports facilities.  See our previous blog about our dear friend Honey Taljieh, former Palestinian women's soccer star and now coach.  Click here for June 9, 2011

We are pleased to report that in recent months--after years of patient waiting for proper permits--our LWF dirt football (soccer) field here on the Mount of Olives has been upgraded with an artificial grass surface into a competition-level facility where local teams can compete on a regular basis.

In Bethlehem, thanks to a million-dollar gift from an Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Church, our Lutheran Dar Alkalima School will soon have a gymnasium. 









One of our spring highlights already is to attend the Dar Alkalima School sports day.

And for fun, we will leave you with several photos from last fall's Lutheran-Church sponsored  fun run where boys and girls, young and old, participated in races through the hills of Beit Sahour.

. . . all with dreams of what it might be to participate in a future Olympics.

by Fred & Gloria Strickert

http://walkinjerusalem.blogspot.com/



Sunday Morning

http://walkinjerusalem.blogspot.com/
by Fred & Gloria Strickert

It is 9:00 Sunday morning in Old City Jerusalem

Church bells are ringing

The sun is shining

People are gathering

It is time for welcoming

View our new video about the English-speaking Congregation at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer.  Click here.

Thanks to YAGM Laurin-Whitney Gottbrath, Video producer extraordinaire.

Fred & Gloria Strickert

http://walkinjerusalem.blogspot.com/

Cremisan

http://walkinjerusalem.blogspot.com/
Fred & Gloria Strickert

Last week after church we accidentally broke our favorite communion chalice.  It fell to the floor with pieces of broken glass and drops of red wine scattered everywhere.  Every Sunday we hear the words broken for you in relation to the bread that we share as a symbol of Christ’s broken body for our broken world. Now I can say it in relation to the cup and the wine, Christ’s blood broken and shed for you in the brokenness of our lives and for our whole broken world.


Here our favorite clear glass chalice sits in the center of the altar next to a bottle of Crem-isan wine-- during a first communion class at the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer.


We really liked that old clear glass chalice because we could see the rich deep red color of the wine, the port wine that we always buy from the Cremisan Monastery on the northern slopes of Beit Jala just next to Bethlehem.

Back in 1995-96 when Gloria and I lived in Beth- lehem, we would take Sunday after- noon walks out to Cremisan, a full five-kilometer walk up the steep Beit Jala hills, and, of course, another five kilometers back. Yet it was worth it to experience this idyllic setting with terraced vineyards and olive groves sloping down the hillside and down the valley heading west.

This idyllic scene has existed throughout the generations since the Salesian Brothers had come from Italy in 1885 to build this monastery with its school and winery on the ruins of an ancient sixth century monastery. Each Sunday there would be Palestinian families enjoying the shaded monastery grounds for picnics, and young boys playing basketball on the playgrounds and people like us coming to taste the red Cremisan wine.


Today things have changed.  The idyllic picture is disappearing.  Late each Friday afternoon Father Ibrihim Shomali from Beit Jala's Catholic Church of the Annunciation holds an outdoor mass among the olive trees as a reminder of the brokenness of this world and of Christ's presence in situations like these.

In the background is the Israeli settlement of Gilo now encroaching on Cremisan lands.

A few weeks ago when we gathered prior to the commemoration of al-Nakba, several participants wore tee-shirts with 1948 as a remembrance that two-thirds of the Christians in this land lost their homes and their land in that catastrophe fleeing as refugees.

 

Our own Bishop Younan was invited to give the homily, describing how both his parents lost their homes and all their possessions at that time, finding refuge in another monastery, the Monastery of John the Baptist in the Old City of Jerusalem.  The bishop witnessed how the Holy Communion always has assured him of Christ's presence in such situations of brokenness.


The Cremisan story is a reminder that al-Nakba is not just an event of the past but it is a description of the ongoing catastrophe for the Palestinian people. The maps below are taken from a recent BBC report about Cremisan--marked in the lower left-hand corner of the map. The dotted white line shows the boundaries up until the 1967 war--commonly called the Green Line, officially recognized by the United States, every other country of the world, and the United Nations as the limit of Israeli territory and the starting point for peace negotions.  However, beginning in the early 1970s two Jewish- only settlements, Gilo and Har Gilo, were established on land conviscated from the residents of Beit Jala.  Cremisan became sandwiched in between.  The dark blue areas show other settlements clearly designed to take more and more land from Arabs surrounding Jerusalem--many of them Christians.

The next step came with the building of the Separation Wall--the route marked with red on the map--deep within Palestinian Territory and clearly designed to offer no room for further growth of cities like Beit Jala, Bethlehem, and Beit Sahour, and cutting off the Cremisan monastery, as well as Christian and Muslim families living in the surrounding area..


Today that idyllic picture has been replaced by the brokenness of the separation wall that climbs the hill from the Bethlehem check point. Fortunately, construction on the wall came to a halt when the Cremisan sisters appealed to Israeli courts on the grounds that the wall would separate their school from the students.  The court ruled in the sisters' favor, but the wall was then rerouted to cut straight through monastery property to divide the sisters of Cremisan and their school from the brothers of Cremisan and the rest of the monastery. 

This aerial photo (from BBC) shows the route of the existing wall and the proposed route cutting Cremisan in two.  It seems obvious that its purpose is to provide room for the illegal settlement of Har Homa to expand toward Gilo--squeezing out Cremisan along the way, as well as homes of many Palestinian families.



This is the continuing al-Nakba.

On this weekend of Trinity Sunday when we wonder how it can be that "the whole earth is filled with God's glory" and the holiness of God raised to the third power (Isaiah 6:3), we are reminded of a story about Karl Rahner, one of the most prominent Roman Catholic Theologians of the 20th century whose crowning work was a systematic treatment of faith The Foundations of the Christian Faith. One day a university student told him that he had lost his faith and could Professor Rahner suggest a couple of books for him to read. Rahner’s response: You don’t need books. Go to Munich and work among the poor for a year and then we’ll talk.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer talked about this from his prison cell in Nazi Germany, “We have for once learnt to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled – in short, from the perspective of those who suffer.”

Seeing world history from below was one of the great lessons learned by Archbishop Oscar Romero as he ministered to the oppressed in El Salvador--even though it was a long and difficult lesson for him to learn.  In the film Romero there is a scene where he is walking in accompaniment with the poor people of the land when they are accosted by Salvadoran soldiers.  When the soliders humiliate him and strip him to his underwear, he makes the announcement, "Now we will begin to say the Mass."  They looked surprised.  Is this the place where Christ belongs?  Is this the place for a Eucharistic celebration?  There amidst the squalor and the suffering, in this place of brokenness he brings the message of "Christ's body broken for you."  (View a six-minute clip from the film Romero here.  )

And so every Friday afternoon, Father Ibrihim Shomali celebrates the Mass in the olive groves of Cremisan where the separation wall is scheduled to break this already broken land even more.   




At 4:25 promptly, he drives up hauling a small table in the trunk of his car, which is set up in the olive orchard as a make-shift altar.

There he puts on his chasuble with the appropriate color
for the season while a crowd of fifty, sixty, and sometimes over one hundred gather under the shade of the trees.

Among them people who know the experience of losing homes, and others who have learned to see life from below, sometimes diplomats of various countries and clergy from different denominations.

This week a women's choir joins us from the Catholic Church in Beit Sahour.






Click here to see a video of the Cremisan Mass.








 Michael Sabbah, retired Latin Patriarch, is the special guest.

He blesses the chalice of Cremisan wine, holds up the bread & breaks it,
Christ’s body & blood broken for a broken world.

Fred & Gloria Strickert

http://walkinjerusalem.blogspot.com/

Our Shared Witness

http://walkinjerusalem.blogspot.com/
by Fred & Gloria Strickert

Announcing a new book by
Rev. Munib A. Younan
of Jerusalem
Bishop of the ELCJHL
The President of the Lutheran World Federation

Link to Lutheran University Press

A bridge-builder.
An ambassador of reconciliation.
A prophetic voice,
speaking truth to power.
An advocate for justice,
peace, and non-violence.
A witness to the liberating
Gospel of Jesus Christ.
A servant for the suffering.

See www.Lutheranupress.org
Leonard Flachman, publisher

Table of Contents


Biographical Sketch
Foreword
Part One: The Life and Work of Lutherans in the Holy Land
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land
       Adapting to a Changing Environment while Drawing Strength
       from Deep Christian Roots
Lutheran Interest in the Middle East: A Historical Survey
Fifty Years of Living Witness and Creative Diakonia 
Word for Graduates of ELCJHL Schools
 Part Two: Messages of Reconciliation for a World of Division

Justice, Reconciliation, and Hope: United for God’s Mission
Reforming Luther: Toward a Prophetic Interfaith Dialogue
        Among Christians, Jews, and Muslims 
Give Us Today Our Daily Bread
What’s Lutheran about Health Care? Insights from Martin Luther
Ecumenism Is Reconciliation in the Middle East and in the World
Jerusalem Today and Tomorrow: Four Visions
What Does the Lord Require of Us? A Vision of Peace through Justice
The Church’s Commitment to Non-Violence
Bring Religion Back to the Front Lines of Peace
The Role of Religion in the Middle East
Why Lutherans Should Recognize Interfaith Harmony Week
A Suggestion for Christian–Muslim Dialogue

Part Three: Sermons about Love for Neighbor and Reconciliation
Fear not! (Luke 2:10)
Living Stones (1 Peter 2:5)
Reformed for Costly Discipleship and Creative Diakonia
With Eyes and Ears on Jesus (Matthew 17:1-9)
Jesus’ Strategy Session for the Early Church (John 14:1-14)
I Am the Resurrection and the Life (John 11:25)
One in the Apostles’ Teaching (Acts 2:42)
Living as the Children of Light (Ephesians 5:8)
Welcoming the Stranger (Matthew 25:31-46)
Christ–the Hope of the World (Ephesians 1:15-23)
Planting a Tree for the Future (Genesis 8:11)

Munib Andria Younan was born in the Old City of Jerusalem after his parents
sought refuge in the Monastery of John the Baptist during the war of 1948.
His parents lost everything and were never allowed to return to their homes.
As a youth in the old city, Younan began attending the Lutheran Church of
the Redeemer, where he learned the power of the Gospel.

In 1976, after studying in Finland, Younan was ordained at the Lutheran
Church of the Redeemer in Jerusalem.

In 1998 he was consecrated as bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in Jordan, later renamed the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan
and the Holy Land. -- ELCJHL.

Bishop Munib A. Younan was elected as president of The
Lutheran World Federation by its Eleventh Assembly in
Stuttgart, Germany, in July 2010.


Rev. Martin Junge, General Secretary, The Lutheran World Federation,
writes about Bishop Younan:

"This is the way I have come to know Bishop Munib Younan in his service as

LWF president. As a pastor and a church leader he cares deeply both about
his own church in the Holy Land and about the church universal. He cares
both about the well-being of his own Palestinian people and people around
the world. He cares about violations of human rights wherever they occur
and about what it takes to make for peace. He lives with passion for the
church and for the world!


"As you will read in this collection of sermons, speeches, and writings, Bishop
Younan’s theology is contextual—deeply rooted in his daily reality as a Palestinian
Christian—while at the same time being universal—offering insights and
principles that apply to other situations in vastly different parts of the world.
Given the tragic history of failed Israeli--Palestinian peace efforts, it would
be easy to become pessimistic, discouraged, and even bitter. But Bishop
Younan is full of hope, the hope that comes from a deep faith. This is the
testimony of a man liberated by God’s grace, working for a just, peaceful,
and reconciled world."



Fred & Gloria Strickert
http://walkinjerusalem.blogspot.com/

Ascension footprints

http://walkinjerusalem.blogspot.com/
by Fred & Gloria Strickert

Ascension Day on the Mount of Olives

 

 For a number of years now, the ELCA communications people have promoted a tagline that goes with the ELCA logo. God’s work. Our hands. That’s a clear way of describing our responsibility as Christians living out the resurrection in the world around us. What we do is not really our own accomplishments. It’s God’s work. Yet God chooses to employ our hands in carrying out these things on earth.



This is not a new idea. Martin Luther used this imagery in his explanation of the First Commandment, “People are the hands, the channels, the means by which God bestows all blessings.”


A few summers ago the ELCA invited congregations to submit short video that demonstrated the ways in which they were using their hands to carry out God’s work in their communities. Of the hundreds of submissions the best of the best were shown at the Churchwide assembly in Minneapolis where we were amazed at all the creative ways that highlighted the hands of congregational members. White hands, black hands, olive colored and brown. Tiny hands of a young child dwarfed by the large hands of a father. Soft dainty hands and scarred calloused hands. The hand of a newborn and the wrinkled blotched vein-protruding hands of the elderly. Dirty or clean, open or grasping an object, embracing another or lifting them up. God’s work, our hands.


I thought of this hands-on imagery this week as we have come to that part of the church year called Ascension. That point where we acknowledge an end to Jesus’ resurrected appearances on earth. A point in time that Luke calculates somewhere in the range of 40 days. It is that moment when Jesus’ healing hand recedes so that ours reaches forward. Where Jesus’ embrace of the children coming to him gives way to our own hugs and embraces, where in a sense Jesus hands over God’s work to his disciples and to us.

 Here in Jerusalem, we mark Ascension Day with an afternoon service at the Augusta Victoria Hospital Ascension Church and then recess out to the eastern ridge of the Mount of Olives (with Mount Nebo off in the distance.)


Most of the great artists depict the ascending Jesus lifting up his hands in a farewell blessing, while the disciples stand there on the same Mount of Olives gazing up into the heavens until awakened from this trance by the proclamation of angels.

This is one of the dangers of depicting the ascension with that first century cosmological world view of Jesus floating up into the sky—as it raises the visions of religious people upward and away from this world we live in. Thus the focus through much of Christianity that religion teaches how to go to heaven, as if nothing in this present life really mattered. It follows when Christians neglect the environment and show disregard for neighbor. It is exhibited when fundamentalists proclaim the end of the world, turning Israelis and Palestinians into pawns in this Armaggedon 3-D battle, and promoting a rapture theology where the earth is abandoned.


But the angels turn our heads downward to see the world around us.

(photo: http://www.emergentkiwi.org.nz/)

 If I were an artist painting the ascension, I think I would offer a change of perspective. Instead of the disciples looking up to Jesus raising his hands in blessing, it would be looking down from Jesus’ perspective. Looking down, not to focus on the hands, but on Jesus’ feet and the disciples’ feet. Yes even the footprints of Jesus there on the hillside below.

Jesus' muddy and blood-stained footprints are all over the pages of the gospels.

• Can you see Jesus' footprints in the wilderness as he faces each temptation under the strain of hunger and thirst?

• Can you see the wet footprints on the jagged rocks along the Galilean Sea as Jesus called his disciples?

• Can you see Jesus’ footprints northward across the West Bank to sit with the Samaritan woman at the well?

• Can you see Jesus’ footprints crossing to the other side of the Jericho road to bind up the wounds of the man beaten by robbers?

• Can you see Jesus’ footprints beneath the sycamore tree, where he invited Zaccheus to come down and walk over to his house together for a plate of hummus and pita?

• Can you see the dirty, muddy footprints of Jesus plastered over the floor of the upper room where he put first his own disciples in washing their feet?

• Can you see the blood-stained footprints along the Via Dolorosa and Golgotha, loving us to the end?

• Can you see the footprints on the Mount of Olives, as if Jesus were leaving behind a road map for us to follow?

From that day in the Synagogue in Nazareth, the Holy Spirit moved Jesus in certain directions, not others. He had said it would be so in his first sermon when he read from the scroll of Isaiah. "The Spirit has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of God's jubilee." When Jesus finished that reading, he said, "Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." This is my road map. This is how I will walk on the earth. Come, follow me.

The Spirit that anointed Jesus now anoints you and me. That's what Jesus tried to tell his disciples before he left them. "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses." On this earth where I left my footprints.

Maybe this is why one of the first pilgrim records describing churches on the Mount of Olives mentions a footprint in stone—Bishop Arculf mentioned it in 670 A.D. and it’s still visible in the Mosque of the Ascension, not far from our church. 

 Not so much that this stone indentation represented the extraordinary physical force necessary to launch into heaven. Not so much to mark the exact spot. But to remind us that this is where we are called. God’s work. Our feet.

I like the imagery of God’s work, our hands. But sometimes we’re too much the fix-it people, and judge things on what we accomplish with our hands, even when it is God’s work. But it’s not just doing that matters. It’s also being that’s important. Being in relationship. Being in accompaniment. God’s work. Our feet.

Teresa of Avila (1515–1582)

Christ Has No Body

Christ has no body but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks

Compassion on this world,

Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,

Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.

Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,

Yours are the eyes, you are his body.

Christ has no body now but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours

Yours are the eyes with which he looks

compassion on this world.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

by Fred & Gloria Strickert

http://walkinJerusalem.blogspot.com/



A New Pastor

http://walkinjerusalem.blogspot.com/
by Fred & Gloria Strickert

Meet our new pastor:
Ashraf Tannous




Here Ashraf addresses the congregation at the end of his ordination service on Sunday afternoon at Jerusalem’s Lutheran church of the Redeemer.   

One of the highlights of my former life as a college religion professor was the opportunity to take part in ordinations of former students—several each year.

The ELCJHL is such a small church that ordinations are few and far between— seven Palestinian pastors and a bishop.  The last ordinations were in March 2008 when Pastors Saliba Rishmawi and Imad Haddad entered the holy ministry--and so  they were given the honor of leading our procession on Sunday.

Ashraf's ordination was an occasion for great celebration and jubilation for the local church—small as it may be—with our Palestinian pastors congratulating Ashraf as he rises from the kneeler upon the declaration of ordination.

That declaration was pronounced by Bishop Munib A. Younan with the Palestinian pastors leading the Arabic liturgy.  



Yet the larger church community was present to accompany the ELCJHL on this occasion.  Jerusalem’s Anglican Bishop Suheil Dawani and the Lutheran Bishop of Oslo, Norway, Ole Christian Kvarme, assisted.

Accompanied also by representatives of Jerusalem’s churches offering their prayers.

Accompanied by representatives of the ELCJHL’s international partners sharing a word of Scripture.

Accompanied by the ELCJHL’s expatriate clergy standing in the background in a supportive role.

Accompaniment  is a key word in our understanding of today’s global mission, as we the global church walk along with the local church contextualized in theology and worship.

I  am mindful that today, as we are writing this blog, marks the 37^th anniversary of my own ordination at Messiah Lutheran Church in the small town of Wabag in the highlands of Papua New Guinea.  While ordinations are often held in a candidate’s home congregation with family and friends present, our mission agency called one day to ask if we would consider postponing ordination until after arrival in PNG where I was ordained not by a bishop of the sending church, but by the bishop in Papua New Guinea.  It would be a sign of this new understanding of the emerging local churches and the accompanying role of missionaries.  

Yes, the red stole I wore Sunday was the one Gloria handmade for me 37 years ago in the highlands of PNG where we learned to serve the local church as we walked together in mission in that particular context.

And here in the city where the Christian Church was born and from which missionaries went out to the four corners of the world, Ashraf continues an unbroken chain of two millennia of ministers of the Gospel.

This is our favorite photo from the ordination.  As a symbolic gesture of our understanding of accompaniment, we the clergy from the Global Church formed an outer circle laying our hands upon the shoulders of the pastors and bishop of the ELCJHL who form an inner circle laying hands on the kneeling Ashraf Tannous.

And now it is our privilege to serve alongside Ashraf in ministry in this place.  Ashraf grew up in the West Bank city of Ramallah where his parents came as refugees during the 1948 war. He is a graduate of the Lutheran School of Hope in Ramallah, the Near Eastern School of Theology in Beirut, Lebanon, and graduate school in Geneva, Switzerland.  We got to know Ashraf two years ago while he served as Vicar of the Arabic congregation here at Redeemer.  He spent a second year of internship this past year in Germany.  Fluent in Arabic, German, and English, Ashraf brings many gifts and lots of energy to ministry and will be an asset to the church. 

Mabruk, Ashraf.  Congratulations!

photo credit: Ryan Rodrick Beiler

by Fred & Gloria Strickert

http://walkinjerusalem.blogspot.com/