Good Tuesday morning, good citizens of The Epiphany Season. I've spent the morning reading over the lectionary lessons for Sunday. The Gospel is from Luke 2:22-40, The Feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. I'm not preaching this Sunday but old habits die hard.
This year, this particular feast happens to arrive on Sunday but it always falls on February 2nd because it is 40 days from the birth of Jesus on December 25th. Forty days would have been the prescribed amount of time, according to the law of Moses, for this ritual to take place.
My thoughts this morning have followed the memory of my heart and my time spent, five years ago, in Israel and Palestine. Images like Polaroid pictures keep cascading before me. Bethlehem. Nazareth. The road in the desert between Jerusalem and Jerico. Eucharist at sunrise in the desert. Jerusalem. Gaza. The Wall.
These images intrude on the images of today. The release of Israeli and Palestinian hostages - each one an innocent victim of war - holding each other tightly in wild abandon of hopes realized and prayers answered. One family will return home. The other family has had their home demolished by bombs. Still, they will be where their hearts are - in Palestine.
Other images: Brown-skinned people being rounded up, torn from their families, and boarded on military cargo planes. We're told by ICE and government officials that these are "dangerous criminals" but investigation reveals that this is true for only half of the men who are being deported.
Innocent victims of another kind of war.
In the second chapter of Luke's gospel, Simon, "a righteous and devout man" who had been promised that he would not see death before he saw the Messiah, greets the parents of Jesus with these words, "This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed-- and a sword will pierce your own soul too."
I can't imagine how Mary and Joseph felt, hearing those words.
Then again, danger and death have always hovered near everything about this child. The announcement and circumstances of his conception. The odd assortment of visitors to the newborn: shepherds with their flock, the three Intellectual Asians who called him King. The visitors had no sooner left when Joseph had a dream of danger and "went home by another way," taking the new family to live for a time in Egypt for safety.
The memory of my mind's eye keeps bringing me back to the Garden of Gethsemane. This is a picture I took when I was there. I wonder if it has suffered any destruction in the war.
The Garden of Gethsemane is on the Mount of Olives, overlooking the Kidron Valley and the Temple Mount. The area is aptly named due to the abundance of olive trees on the mount.
I suddenly remember our guide telling us that "Gith Shemen" means oil press in Hebrew.
There is an ancient olive press in the Garden of Gethsemane. We had several opportunities to see how oil is pressed out of the olives. The olives are crushed, ground, and put through the pressing process more than once to extract every last bit of oil.
Thinking about the process of crushing olives and considering that this garden is where Jesus came to pray before his arrest, our guide read from Isaiah 53:5 "He was crushed for our iniquities," and Isaiah 53:10 "But the LORD was pleased to crush Him." He then left us to consider that the evening Jesus spent in the garden was a time of agonizing prayer, absolute betrayal, and ultimate desertion. And that was only the beginning of the crushing of Christ.
My mind wanders again to images on the news. "Crushing" is a good descriptive word.
The weight of xenophobia and tribalism is crushing an entire community of people who have come to this country to escape the evils and corruption that are the result of crushing years of colonialism.
Greed, fueled by a spirit of lawlessness and the removal of societal and cultural guardrails, is crushing the pillars of democracy.
The firehose of misinformation and disinformation and flat-out lies is crushing the understanding of the truth, along with the truths we have long held to be self-evident: That we are all created equal. That we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights. And that among these rights are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
The "shock and awe" attack on every facet of how we know ourselves to be Americans seems an intentional strategy, meant to distract and distress us, exhausting us and crushing our spirits and our will to push back and resist.
I think, almost forty days out, we are far from Bethlehem and Nazareth, now. We are at Gith Shemen - in the olive press. The process has just begun. Danger and death hover near.
In my mind's eye, I find myself back where I was five years ago. I see all those magnificent, ancient olive trees and the hope written in ancient rocks and stones that cry out for peace.
We are about to find out what we're really made of. We are about to discover our real worth. We are about to see, once again, the crushing tension between the desire for Liberation and the seduction of Empire. Death and danger hover near. It has ever been thus for those who follow Jesus.
The key has changed but the music is the same.
Will we rejoice like Simon that we can depart in peace, or will we dance like Anna because we know our redemption is near? Or, will we return home like Joseph and Mary, so that Jesus can grow strong and wise, and live our lives of faith until our time has come and we can take our part in the ongoing, ever-revealing Story of the Liberation and Redemption of the Human Spirit?
Or, has that time already arrived?
I hope something good happens to you today.
Bom dia.
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