In January of 2016, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to travel to the Holy Land with a group from my seminary. For two weeks, we stayed at St. George’s College, Jerusalem, an “Anglican center for pilgrimage, education, hospitality, and reconciliation.” The trip was both a January-term course, which included a significant educational component, as well as a prayerful pilgrimage. We traced the steps of our Lord, from Bethlehem to Nazareth, even venturing as far afield as the Golan Heights. Needless to say, the experience was a profound one for me.
Since that trip, I have never read Scripture in the same way. Once I visited Jerusalem, I truly understood why someone in Syria could go “up” to Jerusalem. “Up” had nothing to do with cardinal directions and everything to do with the topography of Jerusalem, which is situated on a large hill. I still get chills thinking about walking on the remaining stones of the Temple, where Jesus’s feet trod, or kissing the stone on the spot believed to be the place of Jesus’s birth.
In preparation for that trip to the Holy Land, I and other seminarians were required to take a class on Christian mission, and through that class, my eyes were opened to the complexities of the historic and present tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. I learned that the seemingly intractable problems in the relationship between Israelis and Palestinians could largely be traced back to the Balfour Declaration of 1917, which ambiguously attempted to parcel out land between Israelis and Palestinians but was, in reality, heavily colored by British national interests. I was reminded that fighting over land, which, ultimately, is God’s land, has been a stain on the integrity of humanity since Biblical times. We see that stain currently in the Middle East, and in the past history of the oppression of Indigenous Peoples in the Americas, and in the way in which modern powers have assumed control over land to the detriment of the weak.
The point of that seminary class I took was to prepare seminarians who were to engage in study abroad classes, mission trips, or a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The underlying agenda of the class—and rightly so—was to challenge our easy assumptions about engaging with other cultures, especially when journeying from a first world country to a country that is not first world, or to a nation whose identity has been heavily formed by colonialism. I learned that church mission trips are fraught with power dynamics: the rich church seeks to “help” a less wealthy church, out of good motives, for sure, but in a way that could be patronizing and perhaps less than helpful, or even harmful.
Back in 2016, as I reflected on my upcoming trip to the Holy Land, I was excited and also a bit frightened. We were told that, although the State Department usually discouraged Americans from visiting Israel/Palestine, St. George’s College, Jerusalem, was experienced in providing safe pilgrimages in the midst of tense political and religious situations. And indeed, I felt safe on my pilgrimage to the Holy Land. It was a wonderful trip. But I will never forget seeing machine-gun wielding soldiers in the various quarters of Jerusalem, or passing through tense checkpoints, or being cautioned about existing landmines in the Jordan River.
Despite all the wonderful memories of that trip, I left the Holy Land confused and troubled. I realized that it was, in many ways, very difficult to judge the situation there. There was so much pain, so much twisted history and interference by outside nations, that it was impossible to make sense of it all. But my takeaway from the trip was that the land was steeped in holiness. It’s hard to describe the palpable sense of prayer at the Wailing Wall or at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem or on the Mount of Olives. Undoubtedly, passions run high in that land because everything comes down to religion. In that Holy City, three Abrahamic faiths struggle for their “own” territory. They struggle for the truth in which they believe. In the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, at the site of Jesus’s crucifixion, I saw both some of the most pious behavior and most deplorable behavior.
With regard to the ongoing war between Hamas and Israel, I have no words. I know enough to know what I don’t know. If I learned anything at all from visiting the Holy Land, perhaps I learned some humility about assuming who’s right and who’s wrong in the decades-old conflict, having seen the dangers of devaluing the mystery of the other. I certainly know that any acts of violence and murder, no matter how invested one is in a cause, is wrong. We long for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, but perhaps we despair of seeing it realized. And it reminds me that we should never take lightly the peace of God. At every Mass, we share Christ’s peace with each other. It’s the peace that passes all understanding. We can’t create this peace ourselves. We can only receive it and pass it on to others. The peace of God is ultimately what we must desire for the Holy Land. When humans try to enforce it or make it happen, it will fail. True peace will only be God’s doing.
The picture included here, which I took on that trip to the Holy Land, is looking out of a window from inside the Church of Dominus Flevit on the Mount of Olives. “Dominus flevit” means “the Lord wept” in Latin. It commemorates the site where Jesus looked out over Jerusalem and wept over its future (Luke 19:37-42). This particular window is moving because it is placed behind the altar and includes the outward signs of the Christian sacrament of unity, the Eucharist. Right now, we can only weep for the land where Palestinians and Israelis live. And as Christians, we are compelled to see the prospect of unity given by God through his sacrament given to his Church in which we find our deepest communion with God and one another. Bread, broken and blessed, is shared so that our own broken world might be put back together by God.
We are to believe that by God’s almighty power, peace and reconciliation are actually possible. At Good Shepherd, we are praying daily for this peace, for those affected, injured, and killed in the ongoing devastating tragedy. We pray for our Jewish brothers and sisters, and for our Palestinian brothers and sisters. We pray for the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem. We pray for pilgrims at St. George’s College. We pray for an end to terrorism of any kind. The words of Psalm 122 say it best:
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: *
"May they prosper who love you.
Peace be within your walls *
and quietness within your towers.
For my brethren and companions' sake, *
I pray for your prosperity.
Because of the house of the LORD our God, *
I will seek to do you good."
May God give his peace to that holiest of lands, where he deigned to come among us in human flesh.
Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle