Some of you will have read the pdf on the theology behind Paul’s statement that ‘All Israel will be saved’ (available here via the menu under ‘Journals‘) and since then I have read Munther Isaac’s book ‘Christ in the Rubble’. He is a Palestinian Christian pastor (and much more!) living in the West Bank. Deeply informative of the history and sensitive to the issues but very clear. Two aspects remain with me constantly that the creation of the state of Israel by the colonial powers used the Palestinians as the atoning offering for the anti-Semitic history of those colonising powers and the history of the land prior to the modern state was one of convivencia.
Some years back Gayle and I took a year to research then travel throughout the whole of mainland Spain to pray into the years that culminated in the brutal expulsion of the Muslims (1609). With a measure of rose-tinted lenses and a significant measure of reality under the rule of the Muslims there was what was termed convivencia in Spain – those of the three Abrahamic faiths (Christian, Muslim and Jew) co-habited space. We see Spain as the ‘canary in the mine’ (not original to us – a recent history book wrote with this lens on Spain in the context of Europe) so do believe that Spain is key to lead a path back toward genuine convivencia – the vision of the New Jerusalem is that: every tribe… and no temple!
Maybe we are naive and yesterday we had two socially active people with us who do not express faith. I admire their stance and understand the huge measure of pessimism as without faith in the transcendent ‘Other’ how much faith can anyone have in humanity to bring about change. The pope recently called for a ‘Christian humanism’ to rise up. For too long we have seen a divide between a focus on humanity and a theology of God. This is why I wrote Humanising the Divine, though I don’t think the pope was one of the four readers of the widely acclaimed book (widely acclaimed in my head!).
I have at times alluded to what I consider is the most profound dream Gayle had which began with Palestine and the coming together of Jesus-aligned people with humanists in the context of Europe in close harmony and support, coinciding with the exit of Christian-Zionists. The end of the dream pushed for a new order economically. (There were many details in the dream that we have watched play out – including a phase of the appearance of pink flamingos with the question: ‘did you see that?’ Did you see what was happening in Albania???)
Palestine, Israel, convivencia, the Bible, genocide – huge questions. And in real life situations there are rarely ‘here is the answer’ but rather here is the first step… and if the steps can be followed bravely and without fear something redemptive unfolds. I think this is the way God / faith works – from glory to glory.
I read this morning an article: Israeli West Bank settler tells BBC attacks on Palestinians are justified as revenge (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g4djgdyk2o). I am lifting part of the dialogue below:
I think now, after they killed one Israeli, we need to kill all the people in Tal and Sarra, even Jit and Farata,” he said, naming the Palestinian villages closest to the outpost.
I put it to him that he was equating one Jewish life with hundreds or even thousands of Palestinian lives.
“No,” he said, “millions. One Jewish life, it’s 10 million [Palestinians].”
Challenged on the racism of his statement, he did not deny it.
“Yes, I know,” he replied. “But this is the truth, because God chose us [and] because of this you are jealous.”
‘God chose us’… there is the issue right in our face. And Paul quotes Deut. 32:21 that God would make Israel jealous by a nation that are not a people!
So over the coming days I want to reflect on Israel, Palestine with reference to what I wrote in the pdf. And hopefully taking it further, for the vision is of ‘neither Jew nor Greek’… maybe it begins with the original creational binary of ‘male and female’ shifting to be ‘no longer male and female’. The binaries that we so often love are no longer present relationally in Christ (Gal. 3:28; convivencia in its fullness).
Yes thank you Martin. Read that this morning. Im not sure how an Israeli election might change things but such ferocity in language and in actuality is frightening.