Ninth
Sunday after Pentecost
Deuteronomy 8:1-10, Psalm 34; Ephesians 4:30-5:2; John 6:37-51
August 10, 2003
The Rev. Mary Blessing
St. Jude the Apostle Episcopal Church, Cupertino,
CA
"Go in and occupy the land that the LORD promised on oath to your ancestors. (Deut. 8:1)
These words are placed on the lips of Moses, as a kind of "death bed speech."
Moses, the Hebrew born slave, raised in Pharaoh's court, led his Hebrew brothers and sisters out of bondage in Egypt. For 40 long years he led them through a wilderness filled with plagues and disappointments, and near starvation. Finally, as the Hebrews are about to arrive in the Promise Land, we hear Moses encouraging his people to press on without him. (The Deuteronomy text written about the 7th C. BC, about 400 years after the event). He offers a testament of faith; he reminds them of the Covenant God made, to grant them land abundant with good things. Moses never makes it to this land abundant with milk and honey--a land flowing with streams, a land filled with wheat and barley, of vines, fig trees, olives and pomegranates; a land rich in iron ore and copper--fabulous land, which God grants to the Hebrew people because God loves these people. God loves them and they are to love God. Do you remember why Abraham's descendants, Jacob and his family, left the Promise Land to enter Egypt in the first place? Because they were starving. The land went fallow-it no longer produced the promised "milk and honey." Hebrews were driven to seek food, and became subject to Egyptian slavery. Deep in Hebrew tradition is the belief that God loves the Hebrew people in a special way. The proof of that love is abundant, fruitful land. From time to time, the land fails to produce its abundant food. At these times of loss of the land, the Hebrews believe they are being disciplined by God. Moses warns his people not to lose sight of their love of God, for then they will cease to be allowed to occupy the land.
Modern day Hebrew people continue to struggle over whether or not they may "occupy the land that the LORD promised." Each week we pray for "peace in the Middle East", with special intentions for peace in Israel. I believe we must continue to pray for such peace. Yet it is also clear that the way we achieve peace is complex. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict is a web of confusion that cannot be sorted out by decree of politicians wearing suits and ties, signing peace treaties with fancy pens. If there is to be any hope for a Palestinian/Israeli peace accord, it will have to come in the form of community transformation, person by person, relationship by relationship. Each party must come to understand the other as a person--a person valued as one of God's own, loved by God. Loved by the One who creates the land.
There is a modern day story of such transformation I would like to share with you. Have you heard of a book called: Revenge: A Story of Hope? [Simon & Schuster, 2002] It is a remarkable story, written by Laura Blumenfeld, a Washington Post journalist. It is a true story, but it reads like a spy novel.
Laura's father, David Blumenfeld, is an American Jewish Rabbi. In 1986 he took a tourist trip to the Holy Land. He visited the Arab marketplace in Jerusalem, and got shot in the head by a militant Palestinian. The assassin was a poor shot; he shot a half inch too high, injuring Mr. Blumenfeld's skull, but missing his brain. Injured, but not fatally wounded. 10 years after her father's attack, Laura went after the assailant seeking revenge. She was funded as a foreign correspondent, and went to work in the Middle East for a year. She did research on social/religious/political systems of revenge-interviewing Prime Minister Rabin's assassin; members of the Albanian Blood Feud Committee, the chief of the Iranian judiciary, the mayor of Palermo, Sicily, and an Egyptian heroin smuggler. She explored the mechanics and psychology of vengeance, while infiltrating right in to the home of her father's shooter. The man who shot her father was an intelligent, university educated young man. He belonged to a militant Palestinian Liberation Organization group called Abu Musa Death Gang-whose radical leader mutinied against Yasir Arafat for being too moderate. The summer of '86 they attacked tourists to gain world-wide attention. Laura's father had no interest in land occupied by Jews. He simply was a Jew, an obvious tourist, and that made him a target.
10 years later, when Laura met the shooter's brother in their humble home on the West Bank, she told him she was an American journalist doing research on revenge. She did not tell him her last name, or that she was the daughter of the victim. She said she wanted to understand the gang members' cause, why they sought revenge upon foreign tourists. Some victims were Christian tourists, others not even religious, none were seeking to occupy the land that the Palestinians claimed as their own-why were they attacked, she wondered?
She managed to infiltrate into the shooter's family to interview his parents, siblings, cousins, nieces and nephews. Little did they know that she herself was planning revenge against their loved one, the shooter. Even though her father was not killed, Laura felt she needed to avenge her father's name. "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." Her religious roots taught her that much. But her rabbi father, the one who was the victim, did not seek revenge. He was more of a "turn the other cheek" survivor, saying it was revenge enough that he survived the shooting and was able to keep returning to Jerusalem. Mr. Blumenfeld didn't condemn his assailant for wanting the land, for wanting Palestine-but killing wasn't the answer. Nonetheless, Laura Blumenfeld continued her quest to reach the shooter. She at least wanted to grab him by the scruff of the neck and yell at him---"Why did you shoot my father!" Over many months of meeting with his family, receiving tea from his mother, sitting on the couch with his nieces playing on her lap, Laura grew to know his family personally. At one point the shooter's sister-in-law announced she was pregnant. She said if the baby was a girl, they were going to name her "Laura." Laura Blumenfeld gained the trust of this family so much they risked smuggling her letters to the shooter in prison, and they smuggled letters back to her. Through correspondence she and her father's assailant formed a relationship in which he explained why he needed to awaken the world to his struggle to regain Palestinian land. Over time she was able to help him see that shooting an innocent tourist was not a way to gain political sympathy.
In the end, Laura came to realize that what was needed was TRANSFORMATION. Transformation, not only for the shooter, but for herself, as well. She realized it was possible for the shooter to transform his thinking, to admit his error, to be released from prison without a threat to others. Laura came to the shooter's hearing asking for release from prison. She had never met him before, but she wanted to go speak with him, to see if he was sorry. He did not know she was David Blumenfeld's daughter. No one in the Israeli courtroom knew; they merely thought she was an American journalist. She got a moment to look him in the eye and ask, are you sorry? He hesitated, but said, Yes. When his case came up, Laura insisted she be able to speak on his behalf. The Israeli judge did not want her to speak, but after much debate she was allowed to speak on his behalf. She spoke in Hebrew. Her flawless Hebrew showed the Palestinian family that she was not a Christian American, as they thought. The Israeli court was confused. She was finally able to stand there and tell the court that enough punishment had occurred; Omar Khatib, the shooter, had suffered enough with 13 years in jail, and his health was failing. Omar was sorry for what he had done. The victim, David Blumenfeld, was grateful for his life and believed the shooter should be set free. The judge said, no, Omar had intended to kill, and he needed to be punished. The judge said Laura had no right to speak. But she protested, saying, yes, she did have the right to speak, because she was David Blumenfled's daughter. An audible gasp went rolling through the courtroom like a wind. All 3 judges fell back in their chairs. Omar's lawyer broke down in tears, as did his family. Men and women throughout the courtroom cried as the power of her words sunk in. She told the chief justice about how she got to know the family personally, as an individual, and in the process each of them came to realize what Omar, the shooter, wrote in one of his letters: "People are different when you know them up close." If you judge them as a group-Jew or Palestinian-with no personal background, you may judge them wrongly.
Both sides of this feud over the land would stop their killing if they took the time and effort to get to know one another personally--to see each other as loved by God. Laura Blumendfeld says that in the end, this was her revenge: "Neither an eye for an eye, nor turn the other cheek, but [she] found a third way: Transformation. Revenge does not have to be about destroying your enemy, it can mean transforming him, or yourself." (p. 348, Revenge)
Yesterday, about 140 people of differing races and cultures, occupying the land of Cupertino, met here at St. Jude's to discuss our changing demography. We met here, at our "spiritual oasis where lives are transformed", to get to know one another "up close and personal", so that we may learn how we will occupy this abundant, beautiful land, living in harmony, not in hate. We gathered to discover how we might transform our thinking, our behavior, to be more understanding of new immigrants, to get to know them as persons. We gathered in hopes that people who are different from us might get to know us, and feel the invitation to transform their lives, to move from a place of fear to a place of love. I pray we continue the dialogue, asking God to show us how we might love our neighbor as ourselves, to love one another as God loves us.
AMEN
| Updated 08/11/03 |
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