Jerusalem, My Happy Home: Part 13

WAY OF THE CROSS

We set out from the Cathedral Close this morning when the light was still fresh and the birds were singing their greetings to a new day. It is the right time to go to the Old City to pray the Stations of the Cross. Almost anything I could say would be exactly what you would expect about walking – probably not in the steps of Jesus, but – in the steps of pilgrims who have prayed at these 14 stations for so very long, etc. I was the reader at the station where Jesus fell for the second time. I fumbled my line. Seemed fitting.

Praying the Stations also reminded me of my years at St. Francis. The Stations here are Franciscan. And I was at St. Francis 14 years, one year for each station. I remembered how reverently we sang the Trisagion between each station. I also remembered the year the dog was caught in the cage trap right outside the 8^th Station just as we were praying it, how I recruited a guy from NA to help me move the cage to the porch to get it out of the rain, and had to wait until nearly 10 that night for Edwina Barnes’ minions to come for the dog and reunite her to her puppies. For those who do not know the story, it is too long to tell and would implicate too many of us in misdemeanors against the City of Macon – but it was an adventure.

ISRAEL MUSEUM

We spent the morning at the Israel Museum. It had a great exhibit on Herod the Great – particularly items from his Jericho Palace – including a sarcophagus that is probably his. Herod certainly put Israel on the map and built a lot of magnificent building when we wasn’t busy having his own family executed and warding off plots, real or imagined. If he didn’t order the slaughter of the innocents in Matthew, it isn’t because he wouldn’t have done it.

The other high point of the museum was the Dead Sea Scrolls. The exhibit featured some facsimiles of the scrolls, and one real deal part of the scrolls. I don’t know what to say about that except to say, it was a “Golleee look at that” moment.

HOLOCAUST MUSEUM

This afternoon we went to the Holocaust Museum. Again, my response is just what you would expect. It was heartbreaking, devastating, overwhelming. But it stirred me to do some reflecting on current social dynamics that smack of a similar evil. I am reading Martha Nussbaum’s book, The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming The Politics Of Fear In An Anxious Age. She discusses the neurology of fear – a primitive, reflexive, natural, essential emotion – and how fear can be focused by rhetoric and culture on particular people.

Anti-Semitism is old and Christians bear significant guilt for that. See, James Carroll, The Sword Of Constantine. But something else began to stir in modern times with two fictional works, The Rabbi’s Speech in Biarritz, an 1872 novel by Hermann Goedsche, and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a hoax purporting to be a Jewish plan for world domination, first published in Russia in 1902. Hitler distributed The Protocols to support his campaign against the Jews. But before we dismiss this as something “the Germans did,” we should note that Henry Ford paid to have 500,000 copies of the Protocols distributed in the United States in the 1920s. When we do not feel in control of the world – perhaps you have noticed United States dominion slipping away – we feel afraid and our culture finds someone to blame, some threat – preferably a hidden threat, an “enemy within.”

Nussbaum describes numerous instances of religious intolerance surging today. It is stronger in Europe than in the United States where Roger Williams is not quite forgotten. See John Barry, Roger Williams And The Creation Of The American Soul. Switzerland, for example, has amended its Constitution to ban minarets. Businesses and governments in several northern European countries are exceedingly anxious about headscarves and several countries have outlawed burqas.

But the United States is not exempt. Consider for example Gellar’s book, Stop The Islamicization Of America: A Practical Guide; the Homeland Security Committee’s hearings investigating Islam in America; or the allegations of Michelle Bachman and several other Congressional representatives that Muslim-Americans are spreading the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in our government (allegations condemned by the U. S. Catholic Bishops and other Christian leaders). It seems someone is always infiltrating the highest halls of power – Jews, Communists, Muslims – whoever the sinister “other” of the day may be. Even the President who often worships at an Episcopal Church and receives the sacrament is suspected of being a secret Muslim.

We are not exempt. Our history of racism is fraught with atrocities. Our actions against Native Americans prove our capacity for genocide. We have at times persecuted religious minorities. The reactions to Latino immigrants today even within the Church are sometimes very troubling.

The Holocaust/ Shoah was horrendous, but is not the only occasion of mass genocide. Pol Pot killed two million of his people in Cambodia from 1975 – 1979. The Tutsis killed between 500,000 and one million Hutus in Rwanda in just 100 days in 1994. (If you have not read Left to Tell by survivor Immaculee Ilibigiza, it is a must. http://www.amazon.com/Left-Tell-Discovering-RwandanHolocaust/dp/1401908977/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1363014631&sr=1-1&keywords=imaculee+ilibagiza)

If we are human we have a brain hard-wired for fear. We are therefore susceptible to the power of rhetoric and culture that can lead us to do unspeakable, unimaginable things. If we do not believe genocide is possible here, now, neither did Germans or Jews in the 1930s. The ever-present possibility makes it crucial that Christianity be a barrier to fear and hatred, not a harbinger of either. It is crucial that Christianity participate in our society as a counter-force of faith and reconciliation against fear and hatred. The best of Christians, the truest Christians, like Dietrich Bonheoffer, did that in Germany, but they were too little, too late. The Jews must not be the only ones to say “Never again.” We must say it with them. We must never again participate in, condone, or tolerate the kind of evil that metastasizes into genocide. And we must not wait until the scapegoats are being rounded up for slaughter before we take our stand. Faith and reconciliation must be our strong stance from the very beginning against fear mongering, blame shifting, prejudice, and bigotry.

Jerusalem, My Happy Home: Part 12

I want to write about Masada. Qumran and the Dead Sea were cool, but Masada was so important. I’ll just focus there, and hope to write carefully, knowing I am apt to offend deep sensibilities.

Masada is way out there in the Judean Desert, high up on a mountaintop, in view of the Dead Sea. The Hasmoenean rebels fortified it when they were fighting Antiochus IV Epiphanes in the 160s B.C.E. Then Herod the Great, a builder of edifices and a paranoid par excellence, constructed a magnificent fortified palace here between 37 and 31 B.C.E. It was a small village, but a first rate Roman getaway, defended by incredibly steep cliffs and high walls, with stores of food and a water supply, deliberately designed to withstand a siege. Herod spared no expense to make this place impregnable.

In 66 C.E. the Jewish Rebellion against Rome, beginning far to the North at Caesarea Maritima, brought a swift and devastating response from the Empire. In 70, Jerusalem was sacked and Herod’s Temple destroyed. The zealots, the second most extreme revolutionary party, had led the rebellion. The Sicarii  (perhaps a splinter party from the zealots), were more extreme, more inclined to terrorism and assassination. The Sicarii escaped Jerusalem and took refuge in the old Masada fortress. In 73, the Romans laid siege to Masada. Eventually the Romans breached the wall and were going to enter the citadel the next day. Facing certain defeat, the Jewish leader Menahem eloquently persuaded his followers to choose death over defeat. That night, the rebel soldiers slew their own wives and children. By a process of drawing lots, 10 soldiers were chosen to kill the others. One soldier drew the lot to kill the other nine then fall on his own sword. When the Romans entered Masada, they were awed by the heroic courage and honor of the rebels – 960 of them dead in one night.

Masada is a model for heroic defenses like the Mesolonghi in the Greek War for Independence (1924) and the Alamo in the Texas Revolution (1836). But here’s my problem with valorizing the rebel defenders of Masada:

Yesterday we sat on the side of the Mount of Olives at the Dominus Flavit site and read Luke 19: 41ff, where Jesus wept over Jerusalem, saying, “If you, even you, had only known what would bring you peace – but now it is hidden from your eyes.” He went on to prophesy siege and destruction. Marcus Borg, N. T. Wright, and the late Walter Wink have all portrayed Jesus as calling Israel to repent from nationalistic violence and turn to non-violent ways of finding freedom despite Roman rule.

One woman at Masada did not participate in the mass suicide. She slipped away with five children and hid them from the rebel soldiers. I say the woman who saved the children was real hero of Masada -- not those who killed their own families and themselves. The tragic death of the rebels at Masada was a classic case of those who live by the sword dying by the sword. Not long before the siege, the rebels themselves had raided the nearby Jewish village of Ein Gedi, killing 700 women and children, in order to take their food and resources to equip Masada to withstand a siege. But passing a verdict on people long dead is not the important point. Jesus’ message to us is the point. In order to explain it, I need to distinguish among three things. These are my definitions:

Patriotism – is love of one’s country, commitment to the health, happiness, and flourishing of one’s land and people. It makes patriots serve the common good.

Nationalism – is a competitive drive to make one’s nation first, to be richer, stronger, smarter, better than other nations. The need to be first makes it intolerable for a nationalist to see his nation dominated by another.

Imperialism – is nationalism on steroids. The imperialist wants his nation to prove it is the best by dominating other nations.

Masada is a case of nationalism resisting imperialism. But notice how the Romans admired the rebels. The same values, the same impulse that undergirds nationalism leads ultimately to imperialism. The nationalist and the imperialist are not so different after all. Heroic martyrs to nationalist resistance establish a country’s righteous claim to become an empire. Violence in defense of one’s own freedom evolves all to readily into the violence to deprive someone else of his or her freedom. The cause of freedom is righteous, but the means to win it can corrupt. Patriotism is good – but nationalism and imperialism are two sides of one evil coin.

None of us is exempt from using the experience of victimization as an excuse to commit the same wrong against someone else. The martyrdom of Christians during the period of persecution gave us our moral mandate to commit atrocities against pagans during the reign of Justinian and to go on committing pogroms and against Jews for centuries. See James Carroll, The Sword of Constantine. When we start in violence, ending in violence is all but certain.

Jesus prescribed a different way of responding to oppression. He said, “Do not mirror violence with violence.” Do not do unto others as they have done unto you. Resist, but non-violently, with wisdom, with intelligence, cleverly, with a godly relational power stronger than the dominating power of brute force. It is a spiritual practice. It is political aikido.

I know I say this as a white middle class American. I say it from the perspective of the imperialist. In that sense, I have no right to speak. Jesus clearly condemned the power of empire as well as the attempt to overthrow empire by empire’s own violent means. But Jesus was one of the oppressed people. So was Gandhi. So was Martin Luther King, Jr. So was Lech Walesa (despite his recent anti-gay statements he is a hero for freedom). So are Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, and Aung San Su Kyi. They all used Jesus’ way brilliantly. When we raise Jesus’ teaching about non-violence, the automatic response is, “What about Hitler? What about the holocaust?” It is a fair question and I don’t know that I have the answer. But here’s a fact to remember. The only country in Europe that simply chose not to participate in the holocaust was Denmark – and they did it through non-violent, clever, relational-power resistance. Starting with the king, the entire country wore the yellow star that labeled Jews. Solidarity, not violence, stopped the holocaust cold in Denmark.

Opposing evil is crucial. But how we oppose it is even more so. Reinhold Niebuhr said that democracy is not threatened as much by its enemies as by the power it uses to defeat its enemies. That was never more true than today.

Jerusalem, My Happy Home: Part 11

There was unrest in Jerusalem today. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/08/us-palestinians-israel-violence-idUSBRE9270GQ20130308 There may have been several things going on. I have heard different versions. But the main thing was a funeral at the Al Aqsa Mosque for a Palestinian inmate killed in prison recently. The funeral was accompanied with a major protest. That led to a confrontation involving the use of rocks and firebombs by the Palestinians and tear gas and water canons by the Israelis. We saw a lot of police on the streets, some on horseback, and there were still water canons around. The police were following Muslims in traditional dress pretty closely, checking them out. Tonight there is a big demonstration happening in Manger Square. In a way it all seems fitting for the visits we made today. But I’m glad we visited the Temple Mount yesterday instead of today!

We began this morning at the Franciscan church at Bethphage on the Mount of Olives. The Church is in the general vicinity where the village likely stood and where Jesus would have begun his Palm Sunday ride into Jerusalem. The present church is 19^th Century but is built over the ruins of a Crusader chapel.

We then went a-ways down the hill to the Church of Dominus Flavit (the tear of the Lord) where Jesus prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem because she would not follow his way of peace. It was a moving view of the City. Of course we don’t’ know exactly where this happened, but it was on the Mount of Olives. From the Mount of Olives you look across the Kidron Valley (deep but not wide) to Jerusalem, specifically to the Temple Mount. Jesus would have been looking across at the Temple when he spoke.

Next we visited Gethsemane. This has been high on my list, first and foremost because Gethsemane is not a replica. It is the very garden where Jesus prayed. But it proved even better than I expected. Not only was it the same plot of earth, some of the olive trees were the same trees! Who knew they lived so long? In fact some of these trees had been around a long time when Jesus was there. The prayer in Gethsemane was the most compelling moment in the life of Jesus that led me back to the Church so long ago now. I realized I could meditate a long time to grind away at my ego; but he did it right there by surrendering to God’s will. There is, of course, a church at Gethsemane, its art and architecture well suited to the mood of agony in the garden. “Agony,” in this story does not mean intense suffering. It means struggle.

Then we visited the Benedictine Church of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary. I’ve already expressed my skepticism about linking that story to Jerusalem. JMHH Part 10. But this Church is beautiful and has some of the most compelling Marian art I’ve ever seen. It was very special to be there.

This afternoon, we went to a Church that commemorates the Last Supper. There is a room constructed to be the sort of place such a meal might happen and where the disciples might await the coming of the Holy Spirit. It is set above a Memorial to King David.

Then we went to the Church of St. Peter in Galicantu (cock’s crow) located on the Eastern slope of Mt. Zion just outside where the wall of Jerusalem would have stood in Jesus’ day. This Church is associated with the Trial of Jesus before Caiaphas. The story is that this is the house of Caiaphas, that Jesus was tried here, that Peter denied him three times here before the crowing of the cock, that Jesus was beaten by the Temple guards here, and that he was kept in the pit until he was delivered to Pilate.

Authenticity check: this is not a house. It is a Church but it does have a real dungeon underneath. This Church was built in 1931, but it replaces a medieval Crusader church, which in turn was built over the ruins of a Byzantine Church built in 457 C.E. The Church has commemorated the trial and sufferings of Jesus here since the mid 5^th Century. The choice of this location was not arbitrary. It is believed that Caiaphas’ house was in this vicinity. And this place has a real dungeon underneath where imprisonments and scourgings happened in the 1^st Century. So it does have a decent claim to being the place of Jesus’ trial. The dungeon part may or may not have figured into Jesus’ story. Christians read Psalm 88 about being in the pit. But it’s a bit of a stretch to find that happening in the Gospel accounts. If you do imagine Jesus in the pit, or anyone else for that matter, it is really grim.