Sunday in Bethlehem

Sunday in Bethlehem
[June 18, 2006]

We started our day this morning by joining the Latin Church in Beit Sahour for worship. Beit Sahour is a largely Christian town in the Bethlehem area. Though the service was in Arabic and most of our team members couldn't understand the words, many of us felt deeply connected to this community, despite our denominational and linguistic barriers, and worshipping there brought us a profound sense of solidarity with the Palestinian Christians who gather there every Sunday. For me (as an Arabic speaker, or at least sort of), singing the hymns with the congregation created a bond between us that distance cannot break.

Today also carried our group to Shepherd's Field and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. The church sits over the site believed to be the place where Jesus was born. Shepherd's Field, in Beit Sahour, commemorates the angel's visit to the shepherds announcing Jesus' birth. Both places echo life itself; each was filled with the cacophony of tour groups clicking their cameras, singing, and chatting in many of the world's languages. Even in "the Holy Land," our faith cannot always be peaceful, serene, removed. All of the noise of humanity penetrates even into the spaces we would like to carve out and reserve for "church," "spirituality," and "God." But if we listen, we may just find those things in the midst of the clamor around us. This place reminds us of that.

Perhaps the most moving part of our day, however, came right after church, when we were invited, in small groups, to the homes of individual families from the congregation. All of the families greeted us with hospitality and fed us much more food than we thought it possible to eat. Anne and Karen's family told them that "We are so excited that you are here, so today is a celebration." For the remainder of the afternoon, they said, there would be no talk of anything negative. Katie, Susan, and Paul encountered a father who worked for the UN and whose standard of living illustrated the difference access to international resources can make to a family. Pat, Beverly and Lindsey played with a baby while his father asked them to educate their American friends about peace in Palestine and Israel. Geoff and I, however, visited a family with quite a story to tell.

Our family lives at the far end of Beit Sahour, the last house before a large open field. At the other side of the field is an old Jordanian outpost ( a remnant from the days when Jordan controlled the West Bank) that was occupied by the Israeli army in 2000, at the beginning of the second Intifada. That year, for reasons unknown to the family, the army began shooting at their house. It began with the water tanks on top of the house. When the father of the family plugged the holes with corks, the army fired more holes. Then, the shooting moved downward and the windows of the top floor were shot out. Artillery fire followed, blasting out most of the top floor and southeasternmost side. Over the course of a few weeks, the house was gradually destroyed. Further tank shelling ignited a fire that burned the entire back half of the building, resulting in the collapse of the roof and top floor. The family had to move to the front of the building (a family compound comprised of several houses built beside and on top of each other) and then finally disperse, temporarily, into Bethlehem in apartments. That Christmas, the father collected all the shell casings he found around the outpost whenever the Israeli troops would temporarily vacate it. He made Christmas ornaments out of the smaller ones (from machine guns) and set the larger ones (and shrapnel) around the base of the tree like presents. This was Bethlehem 2000.

As the family told us, "hayat sa'aba" - life is hard. With few jobs and limited services, "the situation" - as it is called - is leading many people to emigrate. "The situation" is still difficult. But in the midst of this storm, people endure, and with gestures of hope, refuse to allow "the situation" to kill their souls. Now the house has been rebuilt, with the help of the Belgian government, and the family has returned. The situation is still difficult, and peace may be far away. But as the body of Christ, we remember the words of the prophets, "Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." As we left our hosts, they simply said, "salaitu-na" - pray for us. -Sarah