1 Corinthians 1.18-31

God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong;

God chose what is low and despised in the world,

Things that are not

To reduce to nothing things that are. 1 Cor 1.27-28

Non-violent resistance has proven to be an effective tool for the weak—no expensive tanks or weapons are needed. And when the world sees helmeted, M-16-toting soldiers in combat boots piling out of tanks to attack unarmed marchers carrying protest banners, we are all ashamed. It worked for Gandhi and for the Civil Rights Movement.

Palestinians study Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela—some do this in prison, where the older prisoners teach the younger ones.

The non-violent movement is strong in Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank. In November, our group of Interfaith Peacebuilders visited with leaders of the weekly Bi’lin and Nabi Saleh demonstrations. We saw the wall where it is built on their olive groves and farmland. And we saw the towering apartment blocks built on their land, which the wall supposedly protects.

I like to check with local news sources to find out what is happening in Palestine. The Middle East Media Center works to present news from the point of view of Palestinians. Their report for last week:

Welcome to this Week in Palestine, a service of the International Middle East Media Center, www.imemc.org, for April 5th to the 11th, 2014. While Israeli attacks targeting the West Bank and Gaza leave four injure this week, the Palestinian President formally signed up to the Geneva Conventions this week. These stories and more, coming up, stay tuned.

The Nonviolence Report



Let’s begin our weekly report as usual with the nonviolent activities organized in the West Bank. Three civilians were injured and seven were kidnapped on Friday, as Israeli soldiers attacked the non-violent protests organized in West Bank villages. IMEMC’s Anna Ferensowicz has more:



Protests were organized on Friday in the village of Kufer Qadoum in the northern West Bank, the villages of al Nabi Saleh, Bil’in, Nil’in, both in the central West Bank, and Al Ma’ssara village in southern west Bank.
Two civilians were kidnapped and many others suffered effects of tear gas inhalation when troops attacked the weekly anti-wall and anti-settlements protest at the village of Kufer Qadoum.

Local residents said that troops attacked protesters before leaving the village and fired tear gas into nearby residents’ homes causing damage.



In the central West Bank, Israeli troops used tear gas and sound bombs as well as chemical water to attack the weekly anti-wall and anti-settlements protests at villages of Bil’in and Ni’lin, and the nearby village of al Nabi Saleh.

In Bil’in and Ni’lin, Israeli soldiers attacked the protesters as soon as they reached the gate of the wall that separates local farmers from their lands. Many protesters were treated for the effects of tear gas inhalation at both locations. Meanwhile seven residents were kidnapped and one international supporter was injured at the village of Al Nabi Saleh. Troops attacked the unarmed protesters before even leaving the village. Later soldiers stormed the village and fired tear gas into residents’ homes causing damage. Meanwhile Israeli troops attacked the villagers of al Ma’ssara and their supporters at the village entrance. The soldiers then forced them back using rifle butts and batons. No injuries were reported.

—For IMEMC News this is Anna Ferensowicz.


Read more of the report: http://imemc.org

Israeli occupation authorities hindered a Palm Sunday procession, on Sunday, led by Palestinian Christians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in Jerusalem, by failing to give all the necessary permits, depriving permit owners of full access, and knowingly distributing permits in such an order as to cause participants to miss the event.

Gracious God, in this holiest of weeks, we are reminded that you have stood firmly with the weak and with those who suffer. Help us to use our strength to stand with the weak, to end violence and bring peace, in the Middle East and wherever we find ourselves. Amen.

Processing to Jerusalem

Matthew 21.9-11

While many of us will have processions this Sunday, none will compare with the pilgrims who walk the Mount of Olives to Jerusalem, the Holy City, Zion on the hill. 

This year thousands of pilgrims will again walk Jesus’ path to Jerusalem. Pilgrims from all over the world, in brightly colored dress or black or white clerical garb, waving palm branches, accompanied by trumpets and drums and troops of Scouts, will walk the narrow, winding road from the top of the Mount of Olives, past churches commemorating the place where Jesus wept over Jerusalem (Dominus Flevit); Pater Noster (Our Father), the church of the Lord’s Prayer; the Russian Orthodox Church of Saint Mary Magdalene. At the very bottom of the hill is the Church of All Nations and the Garden of Gethsemane, with its 2000-year-old olive trees. Augusta Victoria Lutheran Hospital is at the very top of the Mount of Olives.

Today, Jesus could not even make this journey from Bethany to Jerusalem. The road is blocked by Israel’s separation wall. The wall carves out a space in East Jerusalem for the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim, which is built on Palestinian land. 

And, although pilgrims from all over the world—from Ghana, Russia, Greece, Brazil, Zimbabwe, Poland, the US—can process down the Mount of Olives, most local Christians cannot. They are Palestinian and they must get permits from the Israeli government to travel from the West Bank, even though the Mount of Olives and East Jerusalem are also in the West Bank. 

Bethlehem, Beit Sahour, Beit Jala—these are the largest Christian towns in the West Bank and these Palestinian Christians must get permits to participate in the ritual processions. 

Israeli authorities grant very few permits, so the people who are left behind march through Bethlehem, with a donkey and palms, to the checkpoint, where they will again be stopped by Israeli soldiers. And they pray that next year it will be different. 

In the photo, the procession is stopped at the wall by Israeli soldiers at the Bethlehem checkpoint in 2010.

Gracious God, we long to follow in the footsteps of your son. On this Sunday of the Palms, help us remember those who are denied the freedom to walk. Amen.

Blessed is the one….

Sunday of the Passion/Palm Sunday

Matthew 21.1-11

“Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” Matt 21.9

In their book, The Last Week, Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan explore what the gospels tell us about Jesus’ final days. This Sunday we will hear the story or maybe even reenact the biblical procession—Jesus riding on a donkey, the shouting crowds, the waving palms—the procession from Bethany, down the Mount of Olives to Jerusalem. This is the beginning of the week of Passover, when Judeans travel to Jerusalem to celebrate and thank God for their deliverance from Pharaoh. 

Borg and Crossan also describe a second procession—the one with Pilate and his Roman legions, traveling from their home base in Caesarea Maritima to Jerusalem. Not to worship in the temple, but to ensure that the crowds do not get out of hand, with this freedom celebration—for the Judeans are once again under domination.

So this second procession—the army with the horses and chariots, the armor, the weapons on display—is planned to show the Judeans who is in charge, to showcase the massive power of the Rome….just in case a new Moses is in Jerusalem for Passover.

Showing off weapons and armies is a time-honored way of discouraging dissenters. Think of those film clips of May Day parades in the Soviet Union—hundreds of thousands of soldiers with thousands of tanks and big guns—or think of July 4th parades with Air Force flyovers.

Empires must constantly remind us who is in charge. If you are in the ruling majority, these displays make you feel safe. If you want to challenge the empire, these displays are designed to make you think twice about staging your protest.

Reading about these processions makes me think about Eran Eftati’s visit to Denver, when he told us that as an Israeli soldier in Hebron, he was ordered to raid the homes of Palestinians in the middle of the night—not because there was a dangerous suspect to apprehend—but, in the words of his commander, to show who is in charge.

And I think of Eyad Burnat, one of the leaders in the non-violent protests in Bil’in—weekly processions to the wall Israel has built on their olive groves and sheep grazing land to protect the settlement that is also built on their land.

Mazin Qumsiyeh being arrested in Al-Walaja, 2011- he was later released

And I think of Mazin Qumsiyeh, who protests with the villagers in Al-Walaja, near Bethlehem, where the wall is being finished so that it forms a noose around the village, totally cutting it off from the rest of the West Bank, so that now every time anyone wants to leave the village—to see a doctor, to go to the market, to visit children or grandparents, or  friends, to transact business with the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah……..—they must go through a checkpoint, with maybe a long line. So every Friday they process from their village to where the bulldozers are working to finish the wall. They shout, wave flags, protesting the occupation. Watch one of their processions (Mazin is the one in the black and red baseball cap).

Gracious God, show us the Palm Sunday processions that are happening today, not the ones in our churches this coming Sunday, but the ones in the streets of our own towns and cities where people are protesting injustice. Give us courage to pick up a palm branch, a banner or a poster and join them. Amen.

Lent 5, John—Peacemaking is Dangerous Work

John 11.1-45

The disciples said to him, 
“Rabbi, the Judeans were just now trying to stone you,

And are you going there again?” John 11.8

The more time I spend in Palestine, or listening to Israelis and Palestinians who are working bring peace to the land, the more I hear familiar bible stories in a new way. We hear these same texts every three years, but today, the words that struck me were words I’d never paid attention to before.

People who work to bring peace always put themselves in great danger, because the powerful do not want peace. They want power/money/land. Jesus, the peacemaker, was crucified because he was a greater threat to the Roman Empire and their Judean collaborators than armed terrorists like Barabbas.

Every Friday in the West Bank village of Bil’in, after noontime prayers, the residents—fathers, mothers, children, babies, young men and women, old men and women—take to the streets to protest the Israeli wall that is still being built around their homes, a wall built on their farmland.

They carry Palestinian flags and chant, “Free, free, Palestine!” and other rallying cries. They wear keffiyehs, as a sign of solidarity with all the Palestinians who have lost their lands. They also wear the keffiyeh to protect themselves from the tear gas. 

Children protesting the wall, Bi'lin, 2014

Tree-planting on Land Day, 2014, Bi'lin

The Israeli soldiers are always patrolling the wall—day and night, every day. But on Fridays, the soldiers drive into the village in their armored jeeps, AK-47s in hand. They set off percussion bombs, which make a powerful, ear-splitting noise, designed to disperse crowds. They throw tear gas canisters, or shoot them from launchers/guns. They fire live ammunition, killing and wounding protesters.

Almost five years ago, on April 17, 2009, Bassem Abu Rahma was killed by a tear gas canister projectile, which hit him in the chest. The tear gas canister was manufactured in Pennsylvania.

Bassem, age 30 when he died, was a kind and gentle man, beloved by his friends and family. He knew the danger of joining in the demonstrations every week, but he was not deterred. He flew kites and participated in theater that showed the absurdity of the wall. He marched in the weekly protests, knowing that the soldiers would try to injure or maybe arrest and torture him. But he went anyway.

Read a memorial tribute to Bassem.

Gracious God, your son taught us the way of peace, a path fraught with danger. Give us courage to be your peacemakers wherever we find ourselves today. Amen.

Lent 5, Romans—The Spirit of God dwells in us

Lent 5, Romans—The Spirit of God dwelling in you

Romans 8.6-11

You are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you…

Rom 8.9

As Christians, we naturally wonder what God would want from us in a given situation. What would be pleasing to God? We often think we have to create something new, but sometimes it’s important to look around us and see where God is already at work in the world and join in. Pause—Where have you seen

God’s spirit alive in your own world today?

One of the sure signs of God’s spirit at work is where people seek reconciliation.

In Palestine/Israel, in the midst of such troubles and suffering, mighty acts of reconciliation are happening every day. Suffering people—Jews, Muslims, Christians, Israelis and Palestinians—are building bridges, listening to one another’s stories, and forging deep bonds of understanding, symbolically tearing down the wall that is being built to divide them.

One such family lost their daughter, granddaughter, niece, in a suicide attack in Jerusalem in 1997. This family had long been peace activists, from the early days of the country, when the mother refused to live in a Palestinian home that was offered to them. The Peled family has along history of Zionist commitment and sacrifice for the building up of Israel, and also a strong tradition of getting to know the Arabs who lived on the land before them.  

Miko and Nurit

When Nurit Peled-Elhanan lost her daughter Smadar to the suicide bomber, she consoled herself by speaking out against the occupation and the violence it creates. She and her husband Rami reached out to Palestinians who had also lost loved ones. Her brother Miko, living in California, saw their devotion to reconciliation had helped to heal their wounded hearts, and he began his own journey of getting to know Palestinians.

His book, The Generals Son, tells their family’s story and his own transformation into a peace activist.

Miko Peled will be in Denver this weekend:

• Sunday, April 6, 3:30 pm
• at Augustana Lutheran Church, 5000 E Alameda, Denver

Come hear his story and witness the Spirit of God at work, transforming grief into reconciliation, peace and hope. http://sabeelcolorado.org 

Watch Nurit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBkWmeebn2w

And Miko: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI9-dEs9HIM

Gracious God, we thank you for your son, who showed us the world you desire for us. Lead us to those places where you are at work in the world, bringing peace and reconciliation. Give us the courage to join in and the strength to endure. Amen.