Ecumenical Accompaniment in Palestine and Israel

Ecumenical Accompaniment in Palestine and Israel, Tuesday 18 July, 7.30 pm, St Andrew’s Centre (11 London Road, Wickford, Essex SS12 0AN) with Joan Neary.

Joan Neary is one of London’s Irish diaspora. Now a pensioner, she volunteers with organisations, which support migrants, asylum seekers and homeless people in London. She recently returned from Palestine where she worked for three months as a peace monitor with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme (EAPPI) in the South Hebron Hills in the Occupied West Bank. 

Joan was employed as a community development worker in the public and voluntary sectors in London. She worked from equalities and social justice perspectives with different margnialised communities. Joan likes to read, dance, walk and she really enjoys meeting and getting to know people from across the globe.

The Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme

Inaugurated in August 2002, WCC’s Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel accompanies Palestinians and Israelis in their non-violent actions and concerted advocacy efforts to end the 50-years-long Israeli occupation of Palestine.

How EAPPI began

After the second Palestinian uprising (Intifada) in September 2000 Amnesty International and Human rights Watch called for international human rights observers to be sent to Israel and Palestine. The UN Security Council (UNSC) considered and turned down three draft resolutions, which sought to provide protection to Palestinian civilians in 2000/20001.

In 20001 the Heads of Churches in Jerusalem called on the World Council of churches and the international community in general to send an international presence “for the protection of all our people and to offer solidarity for a just peace.” The Quakers in Palestine supported it. In 2001 the WC responded and in 2002 sent its first volunteers, called Ecumenical Accompaniers (EAs) to Occupied Palestine. The programme is called Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). Quaker Peace and Social Witness QPSW is the implementing partner of EAPPI in UK and Ireland and sent its firsts volunteers in January 2003. Since then, more than 1,500 volunteers from 22 different countries have participated in the programme.

What Ecumenical Accompaniers do

Provide Protection by presence: A major part of the work is offering protective presence to vulnerable Palestinian communities.

Monitor, document and report violations of human rights and international humanitarian in conjunction with UN OCHA) United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs) and local international organisations.

Cooperate with Israeli and Palestinian Peace Activists, by for example attending events like demonstrations, vigils, house demolitions.

Advocacy on returning from Palestine: EAs advocate for a just peace based on international law. We call for an end to the occupation believing that the occupation is harmful in different ways to both Israelis and Palestinians., meet with community and faith leaders, MPS etc. to seek to influence policy and to raise awareness about the situation.

https://www.quaker.org.uk/our-work/eappi

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Delirious? - Love Will Find A Way.

Start:Stop - Rising from the ruins of exile

Bible reading

These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon … It said: Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (Jeremiah 29. 1 – 7)

Meditation

The Israelite Exile had several phases. In 721 BC the Assyrians conquered the Northern Israelite kingdom. Assyrian policy was to stamp out national identities by mixing up populations. Therefore the 10 tribes of that Kingdom disappeared. The Southern kingdom, Judah, was not conquered until 597. By this time the dominant power was Babylon, whose policy was deportation. So, when Jerusalem was captured, the leading citizens were taken to Babylon. Then, in 587, Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed and all but the poorest were taken.

Walter Brueggemann writes that “Jerusalem was burned and its temple destroyed, the king was exiled, the leading citizens were deported and public life ended. For ancient Israel, it was the end of privilege, certitude, domination, viable public institutions and a sustaining social fabric. It was the end of life with God, which Israel had taken for granted. In that wrenching time, ancient Israel faced the temptation of denial—the pretence that there had been no loss—and it faced the temptation of despair—the inability to see any way out.” This was a crisis of faith, not simply defeat in war and separation from homeland, but the loss of every reference point that explained who they were as a people and the failure of their God to protect them. They had believed they were a people chosen out of all the nations to be in a special relationship with the one true God who created, sustained and controlled the cosmos. This testimony developed as God made covenants about their land, city, and kings. All were lost and this normative testimony was fundamentally threatened.

The Exile was a crisis to which the Israelites responded initially with grief and anger, but, as the Exile continued, they reacted, or were asked by God to react, in terms of reflection and reinterpretation. David Sceats has noted that “all the evidence points to the fact that the Old Testament came into existence in substantially its present form in and immediately after this period of defeat, exile and religious disintegration.” The purpose of both collating and organising older material, and of writing new material, was reflection. Those who put together the Old Testament in this way were reflecting on Israel’s past to “remind the nation of its identity, to help it understand its place in God’s purposes, and its responsibility as the covenant people, and, above all, to remember the universal claims of Yahweh, and his authority over all nations, including Babylon.” Sceats argues that the act of reflection undertaken by the Israelites was also about reinterpretation. God was, through the exile, revealing himself in a new way and therefore, in organising the religious literature of Israel, it was also necessary to reinterpret that literature “in such a way as to make religious sense of the crisis of faith it had gone through.”

As Western Christians in the twenty-first century, we have faced a crisis of exilic proportions. An increasing process of secularization has occurred within the West with Christianity being dethroned from the dominant position that it held at the end of the Medieval period. From the Reformation through the Enlightenment to Modernism, Christendom came under increasing threat and has now been gradually dismantled. Enlightenment thinking questioned the historical validity of central Christian doctrines, developed alternative ‘scientifically verifiable’ means of explaining the origins of species, positioned Government as the central means of meeting social/welfare needs, and created a consumer culture of aspiration and progress. The result is that for many in the West “God is dead”, “Man has come of age” and Christianity is dead in the water.

The theologians of the exile can help us in hearing and responding to the call of God in our day and time. Their pattern of reflection and re-interpretation based on the tradition gives a biblical means of reviving our roots and re-claiming our disputed lineage. We need to dream up what Church is and can be for future generations all over again. We should not expect to have all the answers to hand but should engage in a re-examination of our roots in order to imagine our future on a scale that is at least equal to that of the theologians of the exile. Our God is a God of new beginnings, of fresh starts. He is the resurrection God and, therefore, the one who gives hope that we can rise from the ruins.

Prayer

God of all times and all places, as we gather this day, we are mindful of the many who are in exile, living in temporary shelters as a result of war, poverty or extremes of weather. We pray for those who have been in exile for long years, those who are trying to make a life and care for their children, planting gardens and seeds of hope and survival in refugee camps with scarce resources. For all those without the comfort and safety of home, we pray rest and respite, courage and comfort. For all who are afraid and wonder if their exile will ever end, grant the peace that passes understanding. May we recount your promises, your provisions, your power and encourage hope in those longing for healing and home.

Thank you for seeing us, claiming us, healing us, making your home in us, so that no matter where we are, we are never alone. Thank you for the people on the journey with us, the ones who’ve opened their homes to us, those who have called us family, friends who have loved us, strangers who have cared for us, all who have been the hands and feet of Christ to us. Thank you for those who right this very moment are feeding the hungry, healing the sick, tending the dying, and in countless ways serving for the sake of others. May we recount your promises, your provisions, your power and encourage hope in those longing for healing and home.

(https://pres-outlook.org/2016/10/pastoral-prayer-storm-exile-hurricane-matthew/)

O God, the Creator and Preserver of all humankind: we humbly pray that it may please you to reveal your ways to all people and your saving power to all nations. In particular we pray for your church that it may be guided and governed by your Spirit in such a way that all who profess and call themselves Christians may be led into the way of truth and hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life. May we recount your promises, your provisions, your power and encourage hope in those longing for healing and home.

(http://www.churchsociety.org/publications/englishprayerbook/EPB_Prayers.asp)

The Blessing

May Christ, who makes saints of sinners, who has transformed those we remember today, raise and strengthen you that you may transform the world; and the blessing of God almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be among you and remain with you always. Amen.

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The Brilliance - Brother.

Don't quench the Spirit

The poet Malcolm Guite describes the font as ‘A wide womb floating on the breath of God’ because through baptism God is ‘calling us to the life for which we long, yearning to bring us to our birth again.’ Just as at creation when God’s Spirit or breath moved on the waters, when we are baptised the breath of God is again on the waters. Malcolm Guite writes:

Come, dip a scallop shell into the font
For birth and blessings as a child of God.
The living water rises from that fount
Whence all things come, that you may bathe and wade
And find the flow, and learn at last to follow
The course of Love upstream towards your home.
The day is done and all the fields lie fallow
One thing is needful, one voice calls your name.

Take the true compass now, be compassed round
By clouds of witness, chords of love unbound.
Turn to the Son, begin your pilgrimage,
Take time with Him to find your true direction.
He travels with you through this darkened age
And wakes you every day to resurrection.

In that poem Malcolm Guite identifies the living water of which Jesus spoke when he said: ‘Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life’ (John 4. 14) with the love of God seen in Jesus. The water of life of which Jesus spoke is his love filling us and welling up with us in order to overflow to others. Jesus said, ‘Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back’ (Luke 6. 38).

This is how God’s love comes into our lives. We drink in a never ending flow of love from God. It is like a tap which is never turned off and always running. As there is no end to God’s love it can fill us and overflow from us to others. As we give love to others, so we can be filled all over again with God’s love. Giving and receiving in God’s economy are intended to be simultaneous events; as we give out, so we receive more. This is why Paul writes in Ephesians that we should go on being filled with the Spirit (Ephesians 5. 18) by drinking in huge draughts of the Spirit of God.

Sometimes, though, we cut ourselves off from the flow of God’s love. We can do this in at least two ways. Firstly, by our attitudes if we become selfish rather than generous; this is why the Bible gives us so many lists of contrasting behaviour. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, so the reverse is hate, complaint, violence, frustration, meanness, evil, inconstancy, harshness and uncontrolled. Any or all of these will cut off the flow of God’s Spirit in our lives and church. Secondly, we can also cut off the flow of the Spirit by separating ourselves from some of the channels through which God’s love can regularly reach us – such as social action, church fellowship, Bible reading and prayer.

All this means we need to ask ourselves, what if our job as a follower of Jesus is not to try harder or run faster or get up earlier or rev up your emotions? What if God really is at work in every moment; in every place? What our job is to learn simply not do those things that close us off from the Spirit? Instead of needing to do something else, what if it’s actually about how we keep ourselves aware and submitted so that rivers of living water are flowing through our being? Paul puts it like this and, in some way, the spiritual life is that simple. Just don’t quench the Spirit. The Spirit is already at work. He is bigger than you. He is stronger than you. He is more patient than your failures. He is committed to helping you 24/7, so just don’t get in His way. Don’t quench the Spirit. Don’t grieve the Spirit. We are always either opening ourselves up — walking in the Spirit — or quenching the Spirit. (John Ortberg – ‘A river runs through it’)

If we open ourselves up to God, we can have the raw material of Jesus himself – which is love – flowing out of us. His human body and mind and spirit, alive with the Spirit of God, in us and flowing from us (Stephen Verney, ‘Water into Wine’, Fount, 1985). It might sound a bizarre image; to have a river of life flowing out of you, but it is a big deal to God. The image of a river is used about 150 times in scripture, most often as a picture of spiritual life. And there is good reason. Israel is a desert country where rivers mean one thing: life. To desert people, the river is life.

We often sing the opening words of Psalm 42, “As the deer pants for the water, so my soul pants for you, O God.” Next time you sing it, remember that Israel is desert country. The waters are dried up. This deer is going to die if it doesn’t find water — and that’s you and me. That’s every human being.

To be cut off from the Spirit of God means a life of perpetual unsatisfied desires, spiritual dryness, emotional death. Jesus is saying that receiving from God in this way and giving to others in this way is vital to our life and survival because where the river flows, life will flourish but where a river dries up, life does as well. The river is gift, the river is grace, the river is life, the river is love. It is what we need and all we need, so are you getting and giving all you can? Are you open to God or quenching the flow of his Spirit?

Remember, ‘One thing is needful, one voice calls your name.

Take the true compass now, be compassed round
By clouds of witness, chords of love unbound.
Turn to the Son, begin your pilgrimage,
Take time with Him to find your true direction.
He travels with you through this darkened age
And wakes you every day to resurrection.’

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The Byrds - The Christian Life.

Christian Aid Partnership Project sermon

Israel and Palestine are places of contrasts. Three of the world’s religions claim holy ancestry here. Christians, Jews and Muslims worship alongside one another as signposts which point to church, mosque and synagogue in Acco or Acre indicate. The view of the skyline in Nazareth shows the dome of the Greek Roman Catholic Church alongside the minaret of the White Mosque. Both claim to be built on the site of the original synagogue in Nazareth. In Hebron, at the Tombs of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, a mosque and synagogue are located within the same building.

All of this worship is centred on Jerusalem and on the Old City in particular. Jews worship at the Western Wall, the remains of the Temple built by Herod, Christians walk in the footsteps of Jesus on the Via Dolorosa to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and Muslims pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount.

All this was occurring during our recent visit to the Holy Land made as part of a tour organised by the East London Three Faiths Forum. However, as we travelled we were also inevitably aware of various signs of tensions between the faiths and tensions within the faiths such as, for example, the ladder on a ledge outside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre left where it is as it cannot be moved without the agreement of all the denominations represented in this church.

Bullet holes in street signs indicated past conflicts, as did war memorials and live mines in the Golan Heights. There were armoured vehicles outside our hotel in Jerusalem and at the Tombs of the Patriarchs in Hebron. A missile launcher was located above the Garden Tomb in Jerusalem and soldiers were on the streets in the Old City and in Hebron.

To reach Bethlehem we passed through the security wall or separation barrier which Israel began building in 2002 to cut itself off from the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This was justified as a response to violence and has stopped most of the suicide bombings which were then occurring regularly. The barrier has exacerbated the humanitarian crisis facing the Palestinian people, has annexed land and divided communities but, most of all, has come to symbolise the divide between the two peoples at the heart of the Middle East crisis.

Movement within – and in and out of – the West Bank is controlled by 540 Israeli checkpoints, roadblocks, earth mounds and gates, plus an average 100 ‘flying checkpoints’ on Palestinian roads every week. Checkpoints, roadblocks, the separation barrier, earth mounds and a Kafkaesque permit system are the daily reality for Palestinians. The Gaza Strip is largely cut off, while obstacles in the West Bank have created isolated enclaves that sever economic ties, separate communities and deny Palestinians access to some fifty per cent of the land.

In the West Bank, illegal Israeli settlements take up Palestinian land and water resources and create restrictions on movement that impede Palestinian access to education, healthcare and employment, as well as restricting the economy – all contributing to poverty.

In Acco we saw these ‘Not for Sale’ signs in an Arab area of the City. Our guide explained that the Orthodox buy homes in Arab or secular Israeli areas and then begin to impose the Mosaic Law in ways that eventually force the original occupiers of the area to move out. Arab and secular Israeli’s have, therefore, begun making agreements in their communities not to sell to Orthodox families.

At least 65 per cent of Palestinians were living below the poverty line in 2007, compared to 54 per cent in 2005 and 20 per cent in 1998. As we walked through the Old City in Hebron relative levels of poverty were clear when compared with similar markets elsewhere.

The confiscation of land, the expansion of Israeli settlements and the building of the separation barrier all create facts of the ground which exacerbate poverty and undermine the whole notion of a viable Palestinian state.

Our tour of the Holy Land ended at Yad Vashem. Established in 1953, as the world center for documentation, research, education and commemoration of the Holocaust, Yad Vashem safeguards the memory of the past and imparts its meaning for future generations.

The Holocaust was the murder by Nazi Germany of six million Jews. While the Nazi persecution of the Jews began in 1933, the mass murder was committed during World War II. It took the Germans and their accomplices four and a half years to murder six million Jews. Most of the Jews of Europe were dead by 1945. A civilization that had flourished for almost 2,000 years was no more.

The survivors, dazed, emaciated, bereaved beyond measure, gathered the remnants of their vitality and the remaining sparks of their humanity, and rebuilt. They never meted out justice to their tormentors – for what justice could ever be achieved after such a crime? Rather, they turned to rebuilding: new families forever under the shadow of those absent; new life stories, forever warped by the wounds; new communities, forever haunted by the loss. As a quote displayed at Yad Veshem states, ‘From among the horror grew another morality, another love, another compassion. These grew wild – no one gave them a name.’

So, just as we must denounce the sufferings of the Holocaust, we must also denounce the sufferings for Palestinians which have followed the political response to the Holocaust, the establishment of the state of Israel.

As a group of Christians, Jews and Muslims travelling harmoniously to tour our holy sites together, the East London Three Faiths Forum is a sign that peace and understanding across the faiths can be achieved. We pray therefore not for Arab or Jew, for Palestinian or Israeli, but pray rather for ourselves, that we might not divide them in our prayers but keep them both together in our hearts.

Christian Aid has been working with the poorest people in the region since the early 1950s, when they first provided help to Palestinian refugees. Today they are working with more than 20 Israeli and Palestinian organisations to protect human rights, access to services and resources, and to build peace based on justice for all.

This includes a project which has provided Palestinian families with video cameras, as well as surveillance cameras for those under threat from the settlers breaking into their homes and physically and verbally abusing them. To protect one family, a Christian Aid partner built a metal ‘cage’ around their home to protect them from physical abuse. The mother says; ‘The camera makes life better for us, it stops the settlers. For example, if I film them, they are more careful, or they run away.’

In Lebanon and the West Bank, there are approximately 500,000 people living with disabilities. Practical difficulties, discrimination and outdated attitudes towards people with disabilities prevent them from fully participating in society and the workplace. The Christian Aid partnership project which we have been supporting here at St John's Seven Kings, delivered in partnership with the Lebanese Physically Handicapped Union (LPHU) and the East Jerusalem YMCA, is directly benefiting 30,000 people living in Lebanon and the West Bank over its three-year lifetime. Its wider impact will improve prospects for many thousands more and continue to make a difference into the future. The money we are donating to this project helps to: provide training and careers guidance for people living with disabilities; improve job prospects for people living with disabilities; improve working conditions, including workplace adaptation; increase awareness of issues people living with disabilities face – particularly among employers; and improve the laws that protect the rights of people living with disabilities. The EU is match funding this project three times over – meaning that the £5,000 we are raising will transform into £20,000 for people living with disabilities in Lebanon and the West Bank. Today was our final opportunity at St John's Seven Kings to give towards this project.

The Palestinian-Israeli situation today shows the futility of violence, where endless repression and resistance feed off each other. As Banksy's powerful images in Bethlehem suggest, in the Middle East the dove of peace has to wear a bullet-proof vest. From this cycle of repression and violence, conflict and provocation, come the bitter fruits of poverty. Action – including the support of projects like the Christian Aid partnership project - is urgently needed to break this cycle of diminishing hope.

As Naim Ateek, director of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Centre in Jerusalem, has said: ‘Both nations must “do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God”. Once those biblical demands of justice have been satisfied, a good measure of peace will be achieved. The result will then be a new and deeper security enjoyed by all throughout the land.’ So may we pray, as Psalm 122 encourages us, for the peace of Jerusalem, recognizing its impact throughout Israel and Palestine and on all who view it as a holy city.

A prayer for justice and peace in the land of the Holy One: Living Lord, ignite in us a passion for justice and a yearning to right all wrong. Strengthen us to work for peace in the land we call Holy: for peace among Jew, Christian and Muslim, for reconciliation between communities, for harmony between faiths. Inspire us to act with the urgency of your quickening fire, for blessed are the peacemakers they shall be called the children of God. (Ramani Leathard, Trustee, Amos Trust)

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Herbert Howells - O Pray For The Peace Of Jerusalem.

Beth Grossman and Asia Katz

I found out about two interesting artists as a result of the East London Three Faiths Forum Tour of the Holy Land:

'Beth Grossman is a socio-political artist, who sees the visual as a way to create community dialog. Her art is a comfortable point of entry into the ongoing dialog about ‘correct’ history, the life-shaping force of religion and the power of social beliefs. The artist takes creative liberty with these charged topics and makes them accessible with beauty and humor. By shifting the context of familiar objects, words and images, she opens them up for fresh examinations that are by turn playful, stimulating and thought provoking.'

'In works of Asya Katz, who was born in Bulgaria in the family of handy women and needlewomen, the motives of Balkan people appear spontaneously like breathing. The most profound, genetically incorporated in the visual language of the artist, they could not be deafened by many years of life spent in Israel.

Her favourite symbols are balloons, flying umbrellas, the wind itself, motion, birds... The very tissue of her works is light and translucent. It is light, but never simple, not curt. Asya combines capabilities of dry needle, watercolour, pastel, coloured pencils and even tea. All her works are accomplished on a watercolour paper. They produce a uniquely abundant, live surface upon which all elements are light as breathing, be it ornamental structures or figurative details. Asya's works do not contain a merely smooth background. Each background is a certain space where one can notice permanent motion, where new and new worlds are born.'

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Arvo Pärt - Magnificat.

East London Three Faiths Forum trip to the Holy Land

I'm looking forward greatly to the tour of the Holy Land that has been organised by the East London Three Faiths Forum. Our itinerary includes the following:

• Muslim members of our tour will have the opportunity of joining the vast crowds for Friday noon prayers at Al ‘Aqsa Mosque. Jews and Christians will visit the synagogue at the Hadassah Hospital close to Eyn Kerem, birthplace of John the Baptist. This modern synagogue is famous for its 12 huge stained-glass windows by Marc Chagall. 
• Visiting all the most important sites - Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Western Wall and the Dome of the Rock - in the old city of Jerusalem, In the late afternoon, we shall watch Jews welcome in Shabbat at the Western Wall.
• Bethlehem (birthplace of Jesus) and Hebron (Al-Khalil), to visit the ancient mosque above the Cave of Machpelah, where we shall see the tombs of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob and Leah. 
• We leave Jerusalem to make the long and steep descent through the dramatic Judaean Desert to the Dead Sea, the lowest point on the earth’s surface. Close by the road we shall pass Qumran, beside the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. Along the shore of the Sea to Masada, King Herod’s impressive fortress and palace (Roman-era). Up by cable-car to the summit. Swim in the Dead Sea.
• A long drive north following the course of the River Jordan. We shall pass Jericho, the oldest continually-inhabited city in the world. Eventually, we shall reach Nazareth, capital of the northern Galilee region, where Jesus spent his early years and began his ministry. 
• We leave Nazareth to drive though the Galilee to reach the shore of the Sea of Galilee, visiting Capernaum, the Church of Beatitudes and other sites of Jesus’ early ministry. Then a lovely boat trip across the Sea of Galilee to Kibbutz En Gev, beneath the Golan Heights, where we shall eat a lunch of St. Peter’s Fish (talapia), caught in the Sea. Return to Nazareth via the Golan Heights and the Huleh Valley.
• Shopping and a brief tour of Nazareth, visiting the Church of the Annunciation (where Mary was told by the Angel Gabriel that she would give birth to Jesus). Drive on through the Galilee region to the hill-top town of Tsefat, visiting several beautiful 16th-century synagogues of great rabbis and Jewish mystics. 
• Return to the Mediterranean coast to visit Akko (Acre), the capital of the Crusader kingdom. We shall visit the ancient harbour, the khan (mediaeval travellers’ lodge) and the hammam (hot baths), the wonderful 17th-century Ottoman mosque and the astonishingly well-preserved remains of the great Crusader citadel.
• We will drive through the modern port city of Haifa, via the lovely gardens of the Bah’ai Temple. We will reach the top of Mount Carmel, where the prophet Elijah (Elias) challenged the prophets of Baal. The large Druze town of Isafie (the religion of the Druze is secret), then descend to the Mediterranean coast to visit the ruins of Caesarea, the Roman capital and port, mentioned several times in the New Testament. Then we continue south along the coast, to the modern city of Tel Aviv.
• We will climb back through the Judaean Hills to Yad Vashem, the very impressive and moving national memorial museum to the victims of the Holocaust. At the Arab village of Abu Ghosh, we shall see the brand-new & second largest mosque in the Holy Land, after Al ‘Aqsa. 
• Back down to the Mediterranean Sea for a quiet and relaxing afternoon in Jaffa, the ancient port, from where Jonah (Yunus) boarded a ship in order to escape from his Divine mission. We might be able to visit the beautiful 18th-century Ottoman Mahmoudiya Mosque as well as see the 17th-century St. Peter’s Church (Franciscan) – commemorating St. Peter’s raising of Tabitha from the dead (Acts 9 &10).

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Matisyahu - Jerusalem (Out Of Darkness Comes Light).

East London Three Faiths Forum guided tour to Jerusalem and the Holy Land

The fifth guided tour to Jerusalem and the Holy Land organised by the East London Three Faiths Forum will be from Wednesday 22^nd October – Wednesday 29^th October 2014 and will be led by Imam Dr. Mohammed Fahim, Rabbi David Hulbert and myself.

Don’t miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit places in the Holy Land (both Israel and Palestine) sacred to our three faiths:

• Jerusalem: Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock (including Friday prayers on the Muslim New Year 1436); Church of the Holy Sepulchre (Jesus’ tomb); Western Wall; Via Dolorosa; and Yad Vashem (Memorial to Holocaust victims).
• Dead Sea: Masada; swim in the Sea.
• Bethlehem: Jesus’ birthplace.
• Hebron: Tombs of Abraham, Sarah and other Patriarchs.
• Nazareth: Jesus’ home-town; site of the Angel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary.
• Jaffa: 16^th-century al-Bahr Mosque; St. Peter’s Church
• Golan Heights
• Caesarea
• Boat-trip across the Sea of Galilee

And many more!

COST - £1,200 per person, sharing twin room. £320 single room supplement. Fantastic value for money – price includes:

• Return coach from Woodford to Luton Airport
• Return flights
• Half-board in top-quality, modern hotels
• Travel in comfortable air-conditioned tour coach
• Qualified tour guide, with us for the whole week
• All entrance fees

If you are interested in joining us for the spiritual experience of a lifetime, please send your name, telephone number and full postal address to david.hulbert@whsmithnet.co.uk, and you will be sent the full details, itinerary and booking form, with the full terms and conditions.

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Matisyahu - Jerusalem (Out Darkness Comes Light).

Breaking Down the Barriers

This Sunday at the 10.00am service at St John's Seven Kings we will be hearing from Rosie Venner, Christian Aid's Regional Coordinator, about the Breaking Down the Barriers: Working for Peace in a Holy Land initiative.

This is because we plan to take part in Christian Aid's Middle East Partnership Scheme which will directly benefit 30,000 people in Lebanon and the West Bank and its wider impact will improve the prospects for many thousands more.

Christian Aid has recently launched an emergency appeal to help partners in Gaza and across the Middle East respond to the political instability and violence affecting the region. You can give online via www.christianaid.org.uk, by calling 08080 004 004 or by sending a cheque made payable to Christian Aid to: Christian Aid, Freepost, London, SE1 7YY.

There is also a prayer which you may wish to use over the coming weeks: http://www.christianaid.org.uk/emergencies/current/gaza-middle-east-crisis-appeal/prayers.aspx.

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The Style Council - Walls Come Tumbling Down.

The Holy City of vision and imagination

I’m starting with two things that I’ve seen this week. The first is the rather portly, ungainly and garish giant illuminated peace dove on a 10ft pole surrounded by symbols of world religions that is currently outside Seven Kings Station. The multi-faith lights have been chosen by Seven Kings and Goodmayes councillors to celebrate all the religious festivals between now and Twelfth Night, including Eid-Ul-Adha, Diwali, the birthday of Guru Nanak Dev Sahib, Christmas and Hanukkah.

The second is a painting entitled ‘Holy City’ by Brian Whelan which I saw when I was at St Martin-in-the-Fields for a meeting earlier in the week. The first of his ‘Holy City’ paintings resulted from a discussion in a community art workshop about the ‘Holy City’. One participant had been to Jerusalem but it was not her memories of the actual Jerusalem that the group used to create their ‘Holy City’ painting, instead, they created the Holy City, not as remembered, but as imagined! 

‘Freed from the encumbrance of memory they were able to create a city which was vibrant in every manner of diversity. Church nestled into the side of mosque [and synagogue], contrary shapes yielding to one another, colors bright and radiant as no building committee would have ever allowed, all flowed from [their] hands as they playfully built their city on the foundation of silver and gold candy wrappers, which are a distinctive element of Brian Whelan’s work.’

The member of the group who had been to Jerusalem said that “The Holy City she had experienced did not look anything like the artwork” the group were making. What they made was ‘a city that looks nothing like what we have ever seen, but is exactly that … which we have longed to discover.’

In Isaiah 25. 6 – 8, we read: ‘Here on Mount Zion [in other words, in the Holy City, Jerusalem] the Lord Almighty will prepare a banquet for all the nations of the world — a banquet of the richest food and the finest wine. Here he will suddenly remove the cloud of sorrow that has been hanging over all the nations. The Sovereign Lord will destroy death forever! He will wipe away the tears from everyone's eyes and take away the disgrace his people have suffered throughout the world.’

These verses are part of a series of prophecies in the Book of Isaiah setting out a vision of a time when the Holy City, Jerusalem, will be a focus for healing, reconciliation and peace. So, for example, in Isaiah 2. 2 – 4 we read:

‘In days to come

    the mountain where the Temple stands
    will be the highest one of all,
    towering above all the hills.
Many nations will come streaming to it,
     and their people will say,
“Let us go up the hill of the Lord,
    to the Temple of Israel's God.
He will teach us what he wants us to do;
    we will walk in the paths he has chosen.
For the Lord's teaching comes from Jerusalem;
    from Zion he speaks to his people.”

  He will settle disputes among great nations.
They will hammer their swords into ploughs
    and their spears into pruning knives.
Nations will never again go to war,
    never prepare for battle again.’

These visions then connect with the final book of our Bible, the vision given to St John, which we call Revelation. There we read (in Revelation 21 and 22):

‘Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. The first heaven and the first earth disappeared, and the sea vanished. And I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared and ready, like a bride dressed to meet her husband. I heard a loud voice speaking from the throne: “Now God's home is with people! He will live with them, and they shall be his people. God himself will be with them, and he will be their God. He will wipe away all tears from their eyes. There will be no more death, no more grief or crying or pain. The old things have disappeared.”

Then the one who sits on the throne said, “And now I make all things new!” …

The angel also showed me the river of the water of life, sparkling like crystal, and coming from the throne of God and of the Lamb

and flowing down the middle of the city's street. On each side of the river was the tree of life, which bears fruit twelve times a year, once each month; and its leaves are for the healing of the nations.’

In these visions the Holy City, Jerusalem, is the place where disputes are settled between the nations, where swords and spears are reshaped and reused as tools for growth instead of death, where even the leaves of the trees bring healing to nations, where there is no more death, no more grief or crying or pain, where reconciled peoples of all nations sit together the richest of banquets.

The person who had been to Jerusalem in that community art workshop said that the picture of a diverse and harmonious Holy City was nothing like the Jerusalem she had visited. She was right! ‘During its long history, Jerusalem has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and captured and recaptured 44 times.’ It is central to both Israeli and Palestinian nationalism yet, while both the Jews and Arabs of this region clearly have painful histories (and histories which have often made more painful by the actions of Christians), history cannot and should not be used as an excuse to sustain the conflict. For the situation to change there must be justice, reconciliation and forgiveness. In other words, the Holy City of Whelan’s painting and of Isaiah’s vision is needed, in place of the conflict between peoples, nations and religions that has characterized the history of Jerusalem.

We will hear more of this at the end of the month when at St John's Seven Kings we welcome a speaker from Christian Aid to talk about their Breaking Down The Barriers project which is all about working for peace in a Holy Land.

In his teaching, Jesus told many stories of banquets. Through his ministry he invited all around him to taste and share the banquet of the richest food and the finest wine for all the nations of the world. On the night before he was betrayed he initiated a shared meal of bread and wine for all who follow in his way of healing, reconciliation and peace. The bread and wine that we share together whenever we celebrate this meal is a reminder that Jesus lay down his life, as his body was broken and his blood was shed, to bring forgiveness, healing, reconciliation and peace to all. He died that all people everywhere might live.

When we come together as people from many nations – Barbados, England, Ghana, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, St Kitts and Wales, among others – to share the special meal that Jesus gave us, we are not simply looking back to all he did for us on the cross. We are also looking forward to the vision of the New Jerusalem, the diverse and harmonious Holy City, where justice, reconciliation and forgiveness are found. What we experience as we share together is a little foretaste of the Kingdom of God come in full on earth as it is in heaven. 

With that vision in mind, we go from this place to bring little foretastes of the Kingdom of God to others by the respect and tolerance and understanding and love that we can show in our everyday lives to those who are from another nation, part of a different culture, or believers in a different faith. That is also why, although it is ungainly and garish and replaces the Christmas Tree that we have had in previous years, it is a good thing to have festival lights celebrating all religious festivals between now and Twelfth Night in the form of a Dove of Peace.  

As a little known hymn by Joseph Swain says: 

How sweet, how heavenly is the sight,
When those that love the Lord
In one another’s peace delight,
And so fulfill His Word!

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Elvis Presley - Peace In The Valley.

Present & Engaged

Archbishop Rowan Williams preached and presided at a Eucharist to launch the Presence and Engagement Network (PEN) on June 1st. PEN brings together those ministering in multi faith contexts, and those who train and equip them, in the Church of England dioceses covering Greater London.

The launch event, which included Bishops from each of the participating dioceses, was part of a day of reflection, prayer and celebration on the witness of Christian congregations in multi faith contexts. The Archbishop also gave the keynote address at this study day, organised at the Contextual Study Centre, which looked at the characteristic practices of Christian congregations - and the distinctive opportunities and challenges of multi Faith contexts. Materials from the day will be posted online shortly and I will include a link to them when they are.

I was part of the day as one of CTC's tutors and the author of the 'Living with other faiths' resource pack which was promoted as part of the PEN launch and a copy of which will be sent to every parish in Greater London. My particular part to play was to response to a excellent paper on Reading scripture in Presence & Engagement contexts which was given by Michael Ipgrave, Archdeacon of Southwark.

Michael's paper, which will be included in the materials to be posted online and is well worth reading, considered the four themes of ‘handling’, ‘opening’, ‘revisiting’, and ‘engaging scripture’. In my response I affirmed what he said by adding some stories from my own experience:

I have just finished using the PEN ‘Living with other faiths’ resource materials in one of two courses looking at these issues as part of the Chelmsford Diocese’s Lent & Eastertide courses.
As in previous years it was the realisation by the course participants that the contexts in which Israel, Jesus and the Early Church lived and ministered were multi-faith which really opened up the issue to them. There is a palpable change in the group and their understanding when they see, for example, that, by commending the Good Samaritan, Jesus is challenging people of one faith to receive from someone of another faith.

When that realisation comes, the course participants recognise, as Michael expressed, “that the people of God have already known and grappled with the challenges of living amid religious plurality.”

I recently led a project, through a network called Faiths in London’s Economy, which developed a ‘Shared Faiths response to the credit crunch’; a document that now features on the Faiths debate page of the G20 London Summit website. What was fascinating about that process was the way in which dialoguing with people of other faiths sharpened my understanding of my faith.
One particular debate was with a Muslim member of the group over a statement that in some faith traditions human beings are seen as co-creators with God. Initially, this appeared arrogant in the extreme to him but over email exchanges and telephone conversations we found common ground in the idea of human beings as representatives of the divine on earth. Michael said that these kinds of encounters sharpen our “awareness of the way in which churches handle the Bible.” And that was certainly my experience in this instance.

Finally, in the ‘Living with other faiths’ pack we give several scenarios in which people are asked to think of basic information about other faiths that it would be useful for them to have before making initial contact. One of these scenarios involves an approach from a Muslim group to use Church accommodation for an Islamic Study Circle. Most people’s initial reaction is that Churches should not get involved. That is until we give them a case study of one church that has engaged with such a group. Allowing the group to use their premises led to the building of friendship which led to shared study of their respective scriptures.

While that church was not formally engaged in a Scriptural Reasoning process they also found their Scriptures speaking to them when they were brought alongside the sacred texts of other religions and that experience developed considerably the building of friendship, trust and understanding in their local community.

Michael ended by saying that when we engage with one another’s scriptures “we can sense our human interactions with one another being caught up in, and transformed by … dialogue with God.” The centrality of dialogue to interfaith engagement can, I think, be an entry point for us into understanding the way in which dialogue informs Christian faith. The idea that the form of scripture sets texts in dialogue with each other; that dialogue or exchange is at the heart of the Trinity; and that God seeks to draw us into that dialogue and that Jesus is the self-communication of God.

As one paraphrase of John 1 puts it: “It all arose out of a conversation, conversation within God, in fact the conversation was God. So God started the discussion, and everything came out of this, and nothing happened without consultation. This was the life, life that was the light of men, shining in the darkness, a darkness which neither understood nor quenched its creativity.” If, as that paraphrase would have it, interfaith dialogue is an aspect of that broader dialogue with God then my motivation for getting engaged is all the greater.

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Van Morrison - And The Healing Has Begun.