In May of this year my husband and I travelled to Israel for a three-week tour arranged through the Canadian Mennonite University. Throughout the stay, concepts of peace continually became challenged. If there were a place or a people on the planet that might be able to inform us on the concept of “waiting in peace” – it would be here and them. On the third day I looked forward to visiting Hebron – the home of our ancestors Abraham and Sarah. At least four or five times a year, I speak the Godly Play words to a circle of children, “ When Abraham was old and full of years, he was buried next to Sarah, in a cave, near the oaks.” The burial site of Abraham and Sarah is now the location of the Ibrahim Mosque and the Jewish worship site called Tomb of the Patriarchs. These places of worship were open to each other for years – Moslems and Jews intermingling in sacred space. In 1994 a Jewish settler, Dr. Baruch Goldstein, entered the mosque. He killed 29 and injured 125 worshippers who had gathered for Morning Prayer during the holy time of Ramadan.
To enter this holy site now is to walk through an armed enclave- walls erected between the mosque and the Jewish worship site, body searches by young soldiers, weapons at the ready, armed guards on rooftops. Where once a thriving economy blossomed for Palestinian shopkeepers, a few desperate men attempt to scrounge a living for their families.
In the midst of this desperation and threat of violence, our group encountered a woman from a Christian Peacemakers Team. She introduced us to the shopkeepers – inquired of their families and their businesses; she led children through the checkpoints, teasing the soldiers about their harassment; she took time with Israeli soldiers learning their names and engaging in “getting to know you conversation.” At one point a soldier on a rooftop pointed his weapon threateningly at a small group of us. She looked up at him and with a hint of laughter in her voice said, “Put that thing down!” She added as an aside to us – “I just treat them like my sons.”In a place where peace feels a long way off, where violence, the threat of violence and hatred dominate, a diminutive woman is waiting for peace by offering challenge, support, time and courage. Primarily she is testifying to another way of being. She witnesses to the way of Jesus.
This way of offering a counter story to the dominant story of violence, destruction, consumption and greed may well be part of what it means to wait in the way of advent. How can we begin to live this counter story? How do we claim, through our lives, the story of the one who comes to reconcile and make new? How do we stand against abusive power without feeding the flames of hate?
