No Place (St George's, Day 2)
The course name for today was “Mother’s Day,” because it was all about the Virgin Mary meeting Elizabeth and then visiting Bethlehem. And I could certainly talk about my complicated feelings about Mary, about all that she is in the Gospels and all that she has been made into since those humble beginnings. But I’d like to instead focus on the Magnificat, her famous poetic response to when Elizabeth prophesies that she is carrying the messiah (Luke 1:46-55):
My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.
Like so much of the New Testament, this speech is a brilliant recasting of Hebrew Bible words and images to find new meaning—just look at Hannah’s Prayer (1 Samuel 2:1-10). I think that the Magnificat speaks beautifully to how God works in our lives, how divine justice is so much greater than our struggles and expectations. So how can I find that to be so true to what it means to believe in the divine and not be taken back at my first real experience of the conflict in Israel? How could I not be shocked and deeply frustrated by what I saw when we entered the West Bank to visit Bethlehem? How is divine justice being satisfied in the current situation?
No, this post is not going to turn into a diatribe against Israel, because I think that is taking the easy way out of blaming one side without considering the complexity of the issue. But it is most certainly an issue, and what's more it is once that demands an answer As Rabbi Heschel describes of the prophetic message in his book, The Prophets, about those holy men of the Hebrew Bible: “Few are guilty, but all are responsible.” It is the same way with the conflict: it is not about finding blame, it is about taking responsibility. It is about finding an answer, even if there are no easy answers. As I struggle to find the holy in all that we are seeing, to reconnect with my Christianity amidst all that Israel is, I am full of a believer's sorrow and anger and what I witnessed today...
And what does it mean for the Church? What does it mean for there to be this gigantic church complex to the Nativity, only to have it surrounded by the reality of the rest of Bethlehem and the rest of the West Bank beyond that? I once heard an interesting lecture at St. John's that it is fundamentally impossible for Christianity to be a state religion, or at least successfully so--that it sacrifices something about the essential nature of the religion. The christian stat, the lecturer argued, is a fallacious idea. But does that mean that the Church should stay stuck in this same stasis? That is is any less guilty than the other parties in this conflict?