‘Come closer’

The Rev Dr Stewart Gillan reflects on life in Israel/Palestine as Christmas approaches.

AT the door to the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem – not the original door, not the original church – you must bow down to get under its four-foot lintel.

Like most people, I thought it fitting to be made to slow down, lower my body, and take thought as I entered the place of worship that marks the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. It was only later that I learned the entrance had been made lower and narrower over the centuries to stop looters getting their carts in. Never mind, the physical action, including any resistance to it we might feel in our bodies, any difficulty we might experience as we negotiate the space, serves to remind us that bodily actions from the neck down have much to do with life lived in the Spirit.

Acts of welcome and hospitality, for example, and of accompaniment and healing, serve to illustrate the point. As, indeed, do acts of birth.

You will have seen the images, I expect, of wise men looking up from their camels at the separation barrier towering over them, or of the Magi digging a tunnel under the wall, so to follow the star to the Christ child and present their gifts in wonder and worship.

You might also have seen Banksy’s art piece, ‘The Scar of Bethlehem,’ unveiled days before Christmas three years ago in the lobby of the Walled Off Hotel in Bethlehem. It features a nativity scene, with Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus at the foot of the wall constructed by Israel in 2002. The ‘star’ is a hole in the wall, which appears to have been made by a bullet.

One of our ecumenical associates at St Andrew’s Jerusalem and Tiberias, Doug Dicks from the PC(USA), who lives in Bethlehem, writes: “It is a powerful statement and a testament to the world around us.”

In the hills southwest of Bethlehem, you will find the Tent of Nations farm. Daoud Nassar, his family, and an ever-changing cast of international friends live and work on land that has belonged to his family since Ottoman times. Meeting him is a great privilege, conversing with him a spiritual exercise. Sitting outside his farmhouse, having just said farewell to three hundred visitors from the Taizé community, he says: “My family first lived in a cave. They got deeds from the Ottomans, and then the British. We have had title all along, which the Supreme Court of Israel has upheld. But the court cases drag on and on, and we have had repeated physical attacks from settlers.” In the face of such attacks Daoud affirms the necessity of the farm having international friends. Introducing a stunning example, he speaks of an attack that damaged two hundred olive trees, and of a new Jewish centre in America that then gave the Tent of Nations over 250 trees.

“We must keep our hope,” he says, “but how do we encourage our people?”. At a time of intense pressure, he adds: “We gathered everyone together and said what are our options? React violently? Sit down and cry? Give up and leave? We said no to all three. We decided to stay and keep working. A minority, Palestinian and Christian, staying here to carry on our mission. We saw another option: resistance without violence. We said: ‘We refuse to be victims. We refuse to be enemies. We refuse to hate.’”

“We began to think creatively,” he explained. “To use solar energy and the old caves as part of a water solution. This message we began to give people. Not by telling them, by showing. We are now organising events to bring people together. Invite children. We can create something out of nothing. Stand up and do something.” It is a costly and invigorating discipleship of Christ, Mary’s son, born over the hills in Bethlehem.

Daoud thanks the Church of Scotland but also challenges us to work out a practical way for people to come and stay at the farm, to be part of the international volunteering effort so vital now to its success. He encourages us to resume Communion Services in the Olive Grove Chapel, and to seek to bring local and international Christian young people together. Preaching inside doors about justice is not enough. We must get outside.

Further south, in the old market in Hebron, I was introduced to Leila, a pioneering business person and the only woman fairtrade shop owner in Hebron.

Leila said she tells the story of herself and her people in her shop. “When I opened the shop, I was afraid of the soldiers. They tried to stop me. I said I must open the shop, you can never stop me. The soldier said I don’t care about you. He pushed me. I said I will open my shop. Come with me and see how I do it.”

She says: “It is hard to walk, hard to feel free even for a minute under this occupation.

“But no one can feel ashamed because of their skin,’ she adds. “Only the heart. A person can only feel ashamed because of their heart.”

Leila has six children and eighteen grandchildren, at the age of sixty. “I am a woman, a mother. It’s hard. Men see a woman as a womb, not as a business person. But I have shown a woman can run a business.”

With a smile born of experience, she says: “Women can do everything, men can do some things.” The Palestinian women who make the purses Leila sells embroider this in the purses.

And then it was time for the makloubeh to be flipped, the wonderful dish of rice, chicken and cauliflower that must be turned upside down before it is served. A parable in itself, much loved for its radical reversal and for being flat out.

In his Christmas Message just before Covid-19 struck, Bishop Sani Ibrahim Azar, leader of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, implored Christians from around the world to “come closer.” With Covid restrictions eased, it is good to hear his call anew:

Come closer to us, to the ‘living stones’ of the Holy Land, who, despite the struggle of a precarious life, still carry the message of love, liberation, justice, and peace. Come and be in solidarity with your Christian brothers and sisters in the Holy Land and to spread the news that Palestinian Christians exist, that we carry the message of the Baby of the Manger, and that we strive to achieve a just peace for all the people of this land. We may be small in number, but God is with us, and because God is with us the Holy Spirit is doing powerful things through this church today.

The Rev Dr Stewart Gillan is the Church of Scotland’s Mission Partner in Jerusalem.