Affirming public service

This morning I preached at the Civic Service in Bradford Cathedral to mark the end on the Lord Mayor’s year in office. This enabled the Lord Mayor, Naveeda Ikram – the first Muslim woman Lord Mayor in the country – to reflect publicly on her year. It was a long service…

I wanted to take the opportunity to thank those who take up public office in any way and recognise the human cost of doing so (for some, at least). Here are the main bits, based on Matthew 5 and minus the jibes at Chelsea and questions arising from David Beckham’s haircut…):

The so-called Sermon on the Mount is often misheard and misinterpreted. It looks and sounds so simple, but is fraught with challenge and demand. In Matthew’s Gospel – which was not written in a moment of boredom as a twee way of telling stories about nice Jesus – this ‘sermon’ comes at the beginning of Jesus’s public ministry and serves as a summary of his teaching. In one sense, the rest of the Gospel puts flesh and blood onto what he says here. And it is gripping stuff that allows the comfort-seeker only one recourse: that is, to ignore it and walk away.

In this passage Jesus is not offering lots of self-help advice for people who want to live a fulfilled life. He is not suggesting ways of improving your happiness quota. He is saying very clearly that if you want to take God seriously – which means taking other people, wider society and the world seriously… and taking responsibility in and for them – there will be a cost. A cost to your prejudices (the meek will inherit the earth, not the powermongers after all), to your values (the hungry will be filled) and your expectations of comfort or satisfaction (people may revile and persecute you).

But, this passage does give us windows on the nature of public service which lies at the heart of this service and today’s celebrations. Let’s look at a few of them before we return to the point.

‘When Jesus saw the crowds’ he went away from them. He didn’t run after popularity or populism. There are dangers in seeking approval all the time. Yet, those who wish – for whatever reason – to serve on local councils must seek a popular mandate and canvas the votes of those who have the power to entrust it to you. In reality, whatever the benefits of public engagement, you get a pile of public exposure in which your personality, motives, dress sense, values, priorities and appearance will all be subject to popular critique – which is a nice way of saying that you open yourself up to being taken apart by people who carry no responsibility other than to pillory people who do. So, you can understand why Jesus didn’t run towards the crowds, but went up a mountain to do some serious thinking about what really matters when you come down again and can’t avoid the crowds or their demands.

‘Blessed are the poor in spirit…’: yet many people can go though life avoiding contact with the poor, the humble and the publicly insignificant. One of the things that mayors – Lords or otherwise – often remark on is that until they began their demanding schedule of visits, they had no idea just how much amazing and self-sacrificial work and service was going on in their area. Naveeda has been to places she probably never knew existed and met people who, without any hope of reward, serve those in a variety of places of need. That is to be ‘poor in spirit’ – often unnoticed and unrewarded – serving those who are poor in spirit and just about every other way, too. Public service exposes you to things you might otherwise not see or encounter. (Which is why Anglican clergy live on the job – part of the community they serve and never being able to worship God without that worship being rooted in the realities of the community life around them.)

‘Blessed are those who hunger and search for righteousness’: Righteousness is not a pious notion… something to do with being a goody-goody. Righteousness has to do with being passionate about social justice, about recognising the inherent dignity and humanity of every person (made in the image of God, as Genesis puts it), and about committing oneself in body, mind and spirit to furthering the goals of that passion. At whatever personal cost.

And the personal cost can be great. Ask the family of those who serve voluntarily or in public service as councillors. ‘Blessed are the merciful’, says Jesus, but mercy is not something you will always find at the hands of a media seeking the sensational or the conflictual. Mercy is for the feeble and the sentimental in a society that speaks all the time of ‘fighting’ for causes. But, as Jesus says and we find so hard to believe or work out, ‘it is the merciful who will find mercy.

Can you imagine what it might look like to give our public servants the space to be merciful and to receive mercy for those they seek to serve?

(As an aside, I was listening to the Archbishop of York preaching at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Service here in this cathedral last Sunday afternoon and thinking about how we take for granted the culture and polity we enjoy in this country. For sixty years – whatever your particular views on monarchy itself as a feature of the polity – the Queen has presided over remarkable stability… and, as she reminded us in a speech last month, over a country whose democracy developed over a thousand years, rooted in a Christian theology and world view that is all-too-frequently disregarded or derided today. Our judicial system was not invented from thin air. The freedoms we take for granted did not just happen. These and other features of our assumed common life arose from an understanding of who we are as human beings, what matters in human living, why morality matters and where moral values derive from, how society should be shaped and on what moral and spiritual foundations it should be built. We take it all for granted as if ‘common goodness’ were a given in any human society. And we are in danger of giving some of this away without a moment’s thought about why we think what we think matters in human living and dying.)

Yet, as Her Majesty pointed out, we need to recall that our society has been shaped by a theology that enjoins self-giving, service, humility, justice exercised with mercy, a passion for ‘righteousness’. These things are written into the fabric of English life and law and into our assumptions about public service.

For this reason, then, I want, on your behalf, to thank those who serve our Metropolitan District of Bradford: those who stand for election and are rejected by the voters; those who, once elected, have to do the hard work of shaping the common good with the limited resources available to them – setting priorities that will always be deemed to be wrong by someone -, and giving their time to serve our wider community; those who are paid to make the whole thing work – the Chief Executive and all those who work at City Hall, carrying public responsibility and often seeing themselves kicked around in the public discourse.

In this context I think it right to note the service of the former Leader of Bradford Council, Ian Greenwood, who served this place for seventeen years and lost his seat at the last election. Many may disagree with his politics, but we would do well to recognise his service along with that of others who have been rejected by the electorate.

As we thank Naveeda and look to pray for the incoming Lord Mayor, Councillor Dale Smith, we conclude by remembering those demanding words of Jesus to his friends on the mountain when he went away from the crowds. Here he pulls us back to check the integrity of our own motivations and the focus of our own priorities and behaviours. Who, we might ask ourselves and each other, will be blessed by our particular form of public service? Who will find earth to inherit, who will be comforted, who will receive mercy, who will be filled, who will discover the freedom of the kingdom of God, who will ‘see God’ in and through us? And, the hardest question of all: when judgement is reached by future generations on our stewardship of our community, will we be seen to have been a blessing or a curse?

May God bless all those who serve in public office, in building civic society, and for the common good.

This service was followed two hours later by a Service of Thanksgiving for the Church Urban Fund. in the last 25 years the CUF has invested about £2 million through 159 grants to projects in the Diocese of Bradford. From January 2007 to December 2011 CUF provided 51 grants totalling £305,554.11 ( and that 11p matters!). The CUF-sponsored Near Neighbours scheme has provided 50 grants totalling £166,887.95 to the Bradford district – £243,390.85 in 71 grants across West Yorkshire. Churches in the metropolitan district run more than 125 community projects, supported by around 3,000 volunteers. According to the figures, the churches now support more youth workers than the statutory services do. Projects include work with some of the most vulnerable people and communities: asylum seekers, refugees, street workers, people who are homeless, single parents, elderly, disabled, unemployed, youth and children, parents and toddlers, parenting classes, education, sport and community relations, environmental and English language (ESOL) learning.

Impressive or what?

 

When words burn

I have just been to speak to representatives of many faiths who are all involved in education in Bradford. I was offered two themes to choose from, but addressed both of them (fairly superficially) ahead of a discussion time. The first theme related to ‘religious pluralism in the lives of young people in Bradford’, the second to ‘the role of faith schools in promoting a cohesive and just society’. The following is a bit of a nit-picky skeleton of the matters we addressed, but I began with the observation that some interfaith work at international level resembles a BT commercial: ‘It’s good to talk.’ Of course, what we mean is that it is good to talk (phenomenon) as long as we don’t talk about anything (content). Fear of ‘division’ drives an agenda of ‘least potential disagreement’. However, if there is no real discussion of difference, there can be no honest relationship anyway and the whole thing is really either a farce or a fraud.

First things first: ‘religious pluralism’ simply describes a fact, a reality, a phenomenon. It is not a virtue – something to be honoured and revered and never questioned. Different people live alongside and with each other, seeing the world and living in it in different ways. ‘Pluralism’ is the word that describes this. It is essentially neutral.

Therefore, we need to go on to distinguish between two sorts of questions: (a) those about truth and how claims for any world view of way of living actually stand up, and (b) given the acknowledged differences, how we then should live together in a single society or on a single planet. In relation to our children this means we need to grow a generation that experiences life within a particular understanding of its meaning, is informed about its own (and others’) world view and how it can be lived in and with, and is acquainted with the world view, lived experience and practices of others. This assumes that we give our children an informed reference point from which to look at the world and those who see it and live in it differently.

The problem here is that our children – I really mean those who do not belong to a strong faith community – are too often assumed to know Christianity and know where they stand as a base line from which to look outwards. They are more likely to be shaped by (a) the myth of neutrality – the assumption by many in the media and academia that a secular humanist world view is neutral (and therefore privileged in public discourse) while a religious one is a bit loony (and should be kept private); (b) a pride in ignorance or scepticism – see Richard Dawkins’ pride in never having read any theology (or philosophy?); (c) an assumption that materialism is a given and that salvation comes by having stuff; (d) an assumption that we can live in the ‘now’ and take no account of a future arising from the past that has shaped the present – because there is no inherent meaning to life anyway. See the studies of last year’s rioters and how some of them see the world.

This brought us to the role of faith schools in promoting a cohesive and just society. (I refer to a piece I wrote for the Guardian in July 2011 in whcih I draw a sharp distinction between ‘faith’ schools and ‘church’ schools as the Church of England understands them.) My main point here is that (a) ‘cohesion’ is one of those words that too often describes a lowest common denominator ‘absence of tension’ in a community – a bit like ‘peace being the absence of war’ or ‘a good football season being one in which Manchester United gets relegated; and (b) justice is inadequate as a goal for human beings in society.

Now, this latter point might well be contentious if misunderstood. Experience (and history) tells us that justice by itself can easily become just ice. Fragmentation and conflict in the Balkans came about precisely because communities could not let go of historic injustices – but they saw justice for themselves as the priority over against justice for their neighbour. I maintain that we need to teach our children (with a massive dose of actual hypocrisy) that justice needs to be transcended by mercy. Mercy goes further and is much harder than justice; it recognises the injustice and the pain and refuses to be consumed by them. Too often the demand for justice simply creates a vicious circle of just ice.

That’s a brief and unillustrated summary of my address which was aimed at stimulating discussion and debate in a particular context. However, it also falls in a context of wider concern: events in Sudan.

The Diocese of Bradford is linked with the Anglican dioceses of Sudan where communal violence is flaring up – not as an intellectual notion, but in the burning of Christian buildings, the destruction of books and Bibles, and attacks on people. Here’s a link to this week’s events and here is a statement by the World Council of Churches that goes to the heart of the matter.

Words spoken by politicians and, sometimes, religious leaders are taken up by those more inclined to violence as sanction for action. When such words burn in the wrong people’s hearts and minds, the burning of buildings, books and people follows. Some politicians and Muslim leaders in Sudan have expressed anger at the recent attacks; we need to hear this echoed not only in Sudan, but also by religious leaders around the world – and especially by those who sit around the table at conferences saying how good it is to talk.

 

To lead or be led? (Winnipeg 3)

The G8 Religious Leaders Summit began this morning, but with three introductory addresses.

Dr Lloyd Axworthy runs the University of Winnipeg, but is a former Foreign Minister of Canada. He spoke about the need for religious leaders to have a common witness in matters of human concern (I think).

Justice Murray Sinclair has been chairing the recent Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission which wrestled with the historic abuse and injustices instigated against the indigenous (aboriginal) communities of Canada. He rooted our thinking in the more local (Canadian) experience of (a) state legal oppression of indigenous people and (b) the loss of credibility of churches for most indigenous people. Interestingly (and contentiously, given the language involved), he observed that the greatest oppressors of the indigenous communities are now what he called ‘fundamentalist aborigines’ – those who ‘converted’ away from their indigenous roots and now evangelise their fellows.

However, the third speaker was the most powerful and arresting. Senator Lt. General Romeo Dallaire (Retd) is famous for having been given command of UN forces in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. In a serious, passionate and informed presentation, he questioned whether politicians are now offering leadership in the world or merely reacting to crises. He stated that leadership by crisis management does not offer leadership in shaping the future.

He cited George Bush’s ‘New World Order’ and changed it to a ‘New World Disorder’ in which the sheer complexity of a world undergoing technological (and other) revolution is being reacted to by politicians who are overwhelmed by panic and finding it difficult to live with ambiguity. For example, he wanted to know what were the criteria for deciding to send 400 UN troops to Rwanda in 1994 while allocating 67,000 to the former Yugoslavia: who set the priorities and according to which criteria?

The lack of an answer to that question represents the most serious challenge to the ability of politicians to lead: which world view (rooted in which assumptions and according to which moral base?) will be thought through and owned by those making decisions to shape the future rather than simply keep reacting to events/crises? Dallaire thinks that our political masters are waiting for citizens to give them the authority to lead.

This raises the most fundamental questions facing us all. It is not enough to make policy without doing the hard work of working through and owning the philosophical (or theological) assumptions/world view that will subsequently and consequently direct and shape specific policies that take a long-term view of the future and are not simply shaped to ensure electoral success in the short term.

Dallaire put it bluntly: are all human beings human or are others more human than others?

This was a very humane articulation of Justice Murray Sinclair’s conclusion that four fundamental questions need to be addressed by all peoples and communities:

1. Where have we come from?
2. Where do we go after here (that is, after death)?
3. Why are we here (ethics)?
4. Who am I / are we? (identity)

The implication offered here is that religious leaders might have to drive this sort of thinking in order to hold political leaders to a more informed account in a complex world that allows those political leaders little time for thinking, learning or reflecting before either reacting … or shaping the future.

These speakers were followed by Dr Andre Karamaga (General Secretary of the All Africa Conference of Churches) – who asked for Africa to be partners in alleviation of poverty rather than simply recipients of others’ aid:

Don’t speak of doing it for us, but with us.

He was followed by Jim Wallis from Washington who stressed the need for a vision to drive politics and the rest of us. He noted that our faith traditions began not as institutions, but as movements – and that the difference is in the capacity of the latter for sacrifice. He called for religious leaders to “announce the impossible and then work to make it happen”.

And here lies the fundamental problem for conferences such as this one: despite the challenges by Dallaire and Wallis, responses from the delegates resorted to “telling the politicians that poverty is unacceptable”. I will be arguing later that statements like that need to be read through the eyes of those who will receive them – and I can’t see any politician responding with anything constructive. It is like being told that we must support human beings in staying alive: no one will disagree with the sentiment, but it doesn’t help the decision-makers to know any more clearly how this should be done in a complex world of competing priorities and expectations.

Sitting here, it is hard not to hear successive contributions as worthy recitations of what we all already know (for example, about environmental disasters, the power of capital and the global problems of blind materialism). If we are to make any impact, we will have to be sharper and more savvy than this about the intended audience and the language of our discourse.

 

Religion and football: being heard (Winnipeg 2)

Winnipeg is mosquito heaven. One problem that comes with losing your hair is that is gives the mozzies a more expansive feeding ground. My head now looks like I’ve done five rounds with Mike Tyson. Yesterday it rained and now the sun has come out – which will bring the little bugs out in force. I’m trying not to take it personally, but, today I think I’m going to stick my head in a bucket of chemicals…

The summit of religious leaders began yesterday afternoon with a welcoming ceremony by some indigenous (First Nation) Anishnabe Nation people who lit a fire in a tent, spoke, sang and used drums to ‘send the word out’. This was preceded by two introductory speeches, the clearest coming from a man with authority.

Dr Alberto Quattrucci is here from the St Egidio Community in Rome. This is a remarkable communitywhich cares for poor, disabled and marginalised people – a visit there while we were in Rome last year for a communications conference made a huge impression on our group. Alberto is not only impressive, but is also a very nice man. He spoke quietly, firmly and with humility. He made the point simply that

the struggle against poverty means solidarity with poor people… Transformed structures do not change hearts; transformed hearts change structures.

This raises an important question about conferences such as this: what do we want/expect to achieve? Yes, we can add a voice and make a case for a different way of living in the world and running the world’s economies; but how is the making of that case likely to impact on the politicians who will gather for the G8/G20?

This question is one I will need to push at this gathering over the next two days. If we are to follow the process through France in 2011, the USA in 2012 and host a similar conference in 2013 in the UK, we will have to have a better and clearer idea of how we might achieve what we want to achieve (or think is worth achieving). Simply to make a statement – however powerful or worthy – is redundant unless it is heard and understood by the intended audience.

Given that the G8/G20 summit is always a photo-opportunity for the political leaders – the work has already been done and dusted long before they get there – it feels a bit late delivering a statement to a charade when the business was completed before we got there.

This means that we have to face the challenge in future: do we want profile concurrent with the politicians’ event or do we want to influence the agreements they come to before they get here? I side with the wish for effectiveness in influencing the content and process (by doing our work earlier, pulling together fewer people, keeping statements tight and light, getting effective media traction and maximising the impact whilst minimising the work involved).

Today we get down to business with a focus on ‘Extreme Poverty’ in relation to economics, peace & security and climate change. Some impressive speakers will focus our thoughts. I’ll report later on content and process.

Back to the other world, yesterday saw an interview with CBC about the World Cup. I gather the press in the UK and elsewhere have picked up on my latest World Cup prayers – some even recognising humour where they spot it. One Slovenian website has picked it up and made a comment which looks funny, but I can only work out a little of what it says (not the crucial bits).

Today France will probably get their flight tickets back to Paris. England will prepare for tomorrow’s showdown in the light of the severest UK budget cuts since the Second World War. If anyone can tell me what the Slovenian piece says (even if it is rude – I am getting used to that), I would be grateful!

 

Memory recall (Winnipeg 1)

I’m beginning to get superstitious. A soon as I leave the country the goals start going in in South Africa. Portugal have just banged seven past North Korea who will now have to go home and face the pleasure of their unenlightened dictator. I’ll still be away for England’s decider against Slovenia, so will just have to keep praying my latest prayers from Canada.

I can’t remember the last time I woke up to see seven goals go in during a World Cup. But there are lots of things I can’t remember. And I am clearly not alone in having rather limited powers of recall. Governments clearly have the same experience.

I arrived in Winnipeg with a colleague yesterday (or is it today?) afternoon and we got straight down to work. A tradition has grown up during the last five years whereby religious (usually Christian) leaders in the host country of the G8 summit also arrange a prior summit of world religious leaders. The purpose is basically (a) to bring the religious traditions together and offer a united voice in favour of the poor people of the world, (b) to offer a deeper/wider moral perspective on political, economic and social decisions by our political leaders, and (c) to remind the same leaders of the commitments they have made in the past.

The G8/G20 are meeting in Toronto, but the religious leaders are meeting in Winnipeg. Why not in the same place? Have you tried moving around the city where the G8/G20 meet? Anyway, Winnipeg has a history of religious diversity (and struggle) that makes it the right place to be – apart from the mosquitoes, that is…

On 9 June the Guardian reported that the draft G8 Summit communique had dropped any reference to the Gleneagles pledge to Africa – to double aid to the poorest countries by 2010. That would have amounted to an extra £17 billion ($25bn) each year as part of a £50bn increase in financial assistance. Last year’s summit in Italy concluded:

G8 countries reiterated their commitments, including those made at Gleneagles and more recently at the G20 London summit, to support African efforts towards promoting development good governance and achieving the millennium development goals [the UN targets for addressing world poverty by 2015].

At the Winnipeg summit, starting this evening, global religious leaders (with me representing the Archbishop of Canterbury) will be doing three things and working to make their voice heard by the politicians:

• uniting their voices in favour of the world’s poor by working on a statement to be presented to the Muskoka summit on Thursday
• reminding the politicians of the commitments they have already made and holding them to account
• articulating the moral conscience of the politicians’ summit, thus putting political and economic debates/decisions in a wider moral and spiritual context against which their value can be weighed.

Of course, people are going to argue that this is whistling in the wind – that the financial crash and the fragile predicament of some leading economies have changed everything, thus rendering earlier ‘altruistic’ redundant. It is an understandable argument and carries some practical, realistic force.

But, it ignores the fact that in a global recession it is the poorest who always suffer the most (and not just relatively). The poorest, believing in many cases that they have been lied to or unjustly ignored, do not tend to stick to democratic niceties in trying to change their circumstances. The ‘rich’ countries will pay an even heavier long-term price if they do not continue to stick to their pledges to help end poverty.

As is often the case, the moral argument is often supported by what appears to be a purely pragmatic one: it continues to make good economic and political sense to do everything possible to meet previous G8 commitments and serve a longer-term economic, social and security end.

In a few hours we will start to debate these issues from diverse perspectives at the University of Winnipeg. No doubt the final statement (which is too wordy and worthy) will be edited to give it more punch and purchase; but the Canadians have done a superb job in pulling it all together and giving us a good start in combining our words and convictions.

 

Justice negotiable?

You have to stand around Jerusalem to see the offence of the settlements. The word ‘settlement’ sounds like a few houses clustered together – isolated and defenceless. But then you look over the valley and see hundreds of solid buildings, home to thousands of people who are occupying land that does not belong to them.

The problem is, however, that the settlers and their backers believe all the land is theirs, regardless of international agreements, legal ownership and humanitarian concern. Rights transcend justice, mercy is trumped by power.

When even the American Vice-President is complaining openly about Israeli behaviour, you know the patience is running thin. No doubt he will now incur the wrath of those who accuse of anti-semitism anyone who dares to question Israeli policy. But the provocative permission for the building of 1,600 homes on Palestinian land, agreed while Joe Biden is visiting the country and in the face of tentative moves towards talks about ‘peace’, looks like a deliberate gesture of power.

I have had several conversations with people recently who believe that God has given Israel the land – all of it – and that, therefore, the notion of ‘illegality’ in relation to occupation is a semantic nonsense. If the Israelis build a settlement in Palestinian territory, then this is their right and no one can complain without complaining about God himself.

So, what of God and justice and humility and the vocation of God’s people?

The complaint of the Hebrew Bible’s prophets against the people was that they took God for granted. They compromised their vocation to be the people who ‘look like’ God by looking nothing like the God they claimed to worship. Read Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Micah, Amos. ‘You can’t claim God’s name in your worship and then trample on the heads of the poor; you can’t pretend to love God and then treat justice as a product to be bought and owned; you can’t claim the favour of God and at the same time show none of the mercy that characterises your God.’

The warning of the prophets is clear: empires come and go. God will not be taken for granted. Justice will be brought against those who deny justice to others. Those who bear God’s name must reflect the character of God – who claims to be the liberator of those who suffer injustice. And judgement (not just charity) begins at home.

The tragedy of all this is that the legitimate case for Israeli integrity and security is undermined by the injustices to which they subject their neighbours. But, it seems that even their friends are too afraid to warn them and defiance of world opinion continues brazenly – apparently without fear of challenge.

Maybe Joe Biden is about to change that?

 

“God does not kill” (Israel 5)

The last couple of days here have been full and intriguing. Visits to many of the places associated with the life and ministry of Jesus have been ameliorated by the relative absence of crowds of other tourists. Frustration with the weak wi-fi signal at the place we are staying (Beatitudes) is minor – especially when realising that this is one problem Jesus didn’t have to address.

Our last full day began in Nazareth and Cana, but from there we drove to Haifa to meet Archbishop Elias Chacour, top man of the Melkite Church. The last time we came here we met him in Ibillin – this time we went to his home where the welcome was very warm.

Chacour’s story is well known through his books – particularly Blood Brothers. He is powerful, charismatic, but totally humane. He began by asking why we had come to the Holy Land in the first place. He wondered aloud why anyone goes to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Resurrection) in Jerusalem: “He is not there!” He listened to our questions and then told his story.

This is where political opinion about Israel-Palestine from a safe distance begins to look thin and inappropriate. This is not a man who speaks in terms of ideology or rights, but has lived through dispossession, witnessed murder, suffered injustice, fought against the dehumanising powers of authority and become more resolutely Christian through it all. His observations include:

• If ‘a thousand years are as a day’ to God, then Jesus was here the day before yesterday. We need a sense of perspective about time: Israel is a tiny baby in terms of time – and the story is not yet finished; indeed, it has barely begun.
• No one is born a Muslim, a Jew or a Christian: we are all born the same – as a baby made in the image of God. That’s the bit we forget first when our ideologies feed our raison d’etre.
• The Beatitudes tell us not to be passive, but rather to ‘straighten yourself up’, get out and get your hands dirty for the sake of the Kingdom of God. You can’t say to his ‘children of Gaza’, “Be happy because you mourn!”
• If you want peace and security, you have to pursue justice and integrity. And there is no justice where some are privileged over others. (Arab Israelis pay the same taxes as others, but get hugely reduced service by comparison – too many examples to cite here).
• Why is Chacour known in his passport as an ‘Arab National’ when no other people is known by their language? He is a Palestinian Arab Christian citizen of Israel, but his official papers say he is nobody and belongs nowhere.
• Christians in Israel-Palestine are united in their differences/denominations – not divided by them. So, whatever Rome or Canterbury or any of the Patriarchs might say, many of these Christians share worship and Eucharist together. Pressure strips away the rubbish and leaves us with what really matters.
• Violence only creates more violence: if you use violence, you will become the victim of violence.
• Justice is not partial: the Jew must have justice and security as well as the Palestinian – but not at the expense of the Palestinian who seems to be paying the price for other peoples’ persecution of the Jews. (Chacour’s childhood village welcomed the Israeli soldiers, housed them and fed them… only to see their promises abandoned and find themselves as refugees from their own homes and villages.)
• If friendship with Palestinians means hatred of Jews, then we don’t want your friendship. Love cannot come at the expense of hate.
• We should not waste time trying to pull down the wall that divides and imprisons in Israel – rather, we should build bridges until there are so many bridges over it that the wall will disappear.

More could be said, but I have to get on the bus. Maybe I’ll edit later and put the pictures in when I get home. In the meantime, Chacour leaves us with a serious challenge to Christian commitment as a way through the conflict that rends this wonderful place.

 

Suffer the little children (Israel 2)

Empires come and go. That’s what history teaches us. It also teaches us that those empires that focus on their longevity as their primary goal eventually implode. This is why the repeated and resounding message of the Old Testament is that the people who call themselves ‘God’s people’ must focus on justice, mercy and faithfulness – longevity might or might not be the result, but that is not important.

Empires that make their own security their primary goal will usually compromise justice, mercy and faithfulness and the empire will find its days numbered – however strong and powerful it looks to be at the moment. Hubris carries within its womb the seed of its own destruction.

This is one of the conversations running today as our group of visitors to Israel-Palestine continues to explore the land of Abraham, Moses, David, Jeremiah, Amos and Jesus. But there are also encouragements to be found in sometimes surprising places and for sometimes surprising reasons.

The Princess Basma Hospital sits on top of the Mount of Olives in territory that is indisputably Palestinian. The hospital (which also comprises a school) does brilliant work with disabled children and their families. Children are admitted with their mother for anything between two weeks to two months. The mothers are taught to reject the shame of bearing a ‘not-perfect’ child, while also being given programmes and routines for the caring and nurturing of their child once back at home. They do particularly good work with hearing-impaired children, but they also have a workshop for making artificial limbs.

The hospital is now suffering from diminished interest from Christians and the restrictions imposed by the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and the difficulty of movement. It costs $120 per day per child, but only some of the money comes from the Palestinian Authority and insurance.

The encouragement comes from the fact that the Israelis and the Palestinians have to cooperate to some extent for the sake of these children. The children can’t be schooled in Israeli schools (where Hebrew is the main language), so the Israelis assist with medical procedures and enable the Palestinians to provide the schooling.

Another case of the children (the most vulnerable) forcing the adults to work together?

Today was a day of contrasts. The relative peace of Gethsemane – and the place where Jesus looked over to Jerusalem and wept at its blindness to its vocation and its fate – to the messy disordered order of the Church of the Resurrection (known in the Western churches as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre – do a theological deconstruction of that and the implications of the choice of emphasis…).

Yet, everywhere you go the paths are worn and the steps polished by the feet of people trying to connect somehow with the God who in Jesus entered the mess of it all, walking and weeping in these places. As long as this earth continues, people will still come here, treading the dust, feeling rocks and living with the mystery of the Incarnation in a place of occupation and ambiguous justice.

Our conversations are, however, haunted by the injustice of Israeli ‘creep’ in land that they know is not theirs. The Jewish graves are taking land up the side of the Mount of Olives – land that will not readily be ceded in any future ‘peace’ process: you don’t surrender the places where your dead are buried (unless, like the Palestinians, you have no choice). Secondly, Israeli settlements are being established in places that are clearly not Israeli – a claim to place that will be hard to dislodge, whatever is agreed on high.

The settlement below is just a bit further down the road from Princess Basma Hospital – firmly in Palestinian territory. Its flag can be seen from everywhere in Jerusalem.

The weeping over Jerusalem is set to continue where justice and mercy and faithfulness are made subservient to the craving for longevity.

 

Both sides now (Israel 1)

Sometimes it is hard to be impartial, hard to listen to two sides of an argument. But being in Bethlehem and Jerusalem today makes the apparent intractability of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict depressingly real.

I am leading a group of 37 people from England on a visit to Israel-Palestine. I last brought a group just over two years ago and this time we are putting more effort into listening to those trying to live in this small land peacefully.

This morning we visited Bethlehem. These pictures are of the wall you have to go through to get in to the town.

Most residents of Bethlehem cannot get permits to leave the town. This wall is more than twice the height of the Berlin Wall.

In Bethlehem we listened to stories of hope. One project (located right up against the wall) we visited was absolutely clear on several points:

• Don’t just curse the darkness – light a candle. Being bitter about the ‘imprisonment’ will not change the situation, but will do damage to those who are bitter as well as their enemies.
• Create spaces for children to play and for olive trees to grow – speaking of a fertile future.
• These Palestinian Christians (who also work among Muslims) wish to live alongside Jews in Israel, sharing the land. They are not against Israel, but they are against the occupation of their land.
• There should be no hierarchies of pain or victimhood – these create only a vicious circle of hate and resentment and the circle must be broken.
• It is vital to work with young people and women, helping them cope with trauma and work for a dignified future.

Claiming, “we have an incurable malady called ‘hope’”, these people had one major complaint about the ‘west’:

Your media ignore the hundreds of constructive, positive and hopeful projects being run in difficult conditions, but a single molotov cocktail thrown by a young man will bring blanket coverage in your media. Why?

In the afternoon we visited the archaeaological sites at the City of David. This is run by Zionists. It was great to see Warren’s Shaft and Hezekiah’s Tunnel (which I realise sound like medical complaints) and see the work done to uncover these ancient ruins. But the preceding 3-D film presentation and accompanying guide narrative were shocking to many in our group who had come here with sympathetic and open minds.

We were given a perfect example of teleological story telling: start with your conclusion (the land belongs to the Jews and Jerusalem was, is and always shall be the ‘eternal capital city’), then fit the story to justify your end point. Not only was history re-written, the Bible selectively appropriated and political assumptions dripped in throughout, but there was a startling blindness to the inconsistencies in front of our eyes.

Jerusalem is a city of peace and a city of justice, we were repeatedly told. Yet, in all the hours we were there, not one mention was made of the Palestinians on the other side of the valley, those who had been removed from their homes in order to allow the excavations to be done or the injustices being done to Palestinians in relation to their land

If the people do not live justly, they will lose their city, said our guide – without either a hint of irony or any awareness of what was obvious to us observers.

This is just the first day and we are encouraging the group not to make too many judgements until we have seen, heard and experienced more. But, as we looked out over Bethlehem and saw the city-sized settlements (‘new facts on the ground’) dominating the lands, many in our group wondered why this is allowed to happen, why international agreements can be simply ignored and why people who have suffered grievously can be so willing to inflict suffering on others.

We had a de-brief session this evening to begin to process some of these questions and reactions. But, there is a long way still to go.

‘Pray for the peace of Jerusalem’ (Psalm 122) has taken on new meaning and urgency for many in our group.

 

Kick at the darkness…

There’s a lyric buzzing round my head these days and I can’t shake it off. It comes from a song by the brilliant Bruce Cockburn and expresses the fragile wonder that comes from living on the edge – something Cockburn returns to again and again. In this case he muses about the fragile vulnerability of human existence – life that could be snuffed out in a second because we are all mortal – and introduces a violent and striking image. In the last verse of Lovers in a dangerous time (originally on the Stealing Fire album of 1984) he sings:

When you’re lovers in a dangerous time
Sometimes you’re made to feel as if your love’s a crime –
But nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight –
Got to kick at the darkness ’til it bleeds daylight
When you’re lovers in a dangerous time

I think it’s buzzing round my head because of some of the other stuff buzzing round the ether in the last few days.

How, for instance, do we react to the sheer lies and shameless disinformation about the propagated about the NHS on the other side of the Atlantic – and revealed today to be backed by a number of Tory MPs? Should we simply let it go on the grounds that ‘truth will out’ eventually? Or should we just offer David Cameron sympathy for having been unfortunate enough to end up leading the Tories in the first place and get off his back?

In the starkly arresting image introduced by the pacifist Cockburn in this song written in the context of 1980s Central America (remember the Contras and all that?), we are exhorted not to lie back and think of our own comfort, but to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight. It’s a tough and uncomfortable image. But it is also what the Old Testament prophets did and it’s what ultimately got Jesus nailed to a cross.

So, I guess there’s no way out. Where injustice rules or mortality (and its consequences) are ignored, we have no option but to keep kicking until the daylight seeps out.

A different take on a similar theme would, of course, be Michelangelo’s famous block of stone. He looked at it and saw an angel waiting to emerge from it. Unfortunately, it took an awful lot of sweat and angst to chip away at the stone till the angel ‘emerged’.

On a more trivial matter, we might as well stop kicking at Chelsea. The new Premier League football season finished yesterday where it left off in May with Chelsea being given enough extra time to score their lucky winning goal. Do they use voodoo or something else to get these favours? (But, at least Everton’s 1-6 defeat to Arsenal was indisputable… and I am writing this before Liverpool kick off their season against Spurs, just in case…)

Anyway, here’s a live version of Lovers in a dangerous time, sung with Steven Page of the Barenaked Ladies at a 9/11 benefit concert.