John 3:14-21
Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”
High overlooking the Jordan River, the city of Jericho, and the Dead Sea, in present-day Jordan, is Mount Nebo. It has been a pilgrimage site since the mid-4th century, identified by Emperor Constantine’s mother, Helena, as the traditional site where God granted Moses the view of the Promised Land in which he would not dwell and the traditional site of Moses’ death. A Franciscan chapel is there today, built on the ruins of the 4th century church commissioned by Helena, preserving beautiful mosaics from different periods.
My first visit to Mount Nebo was in September 1998, the year I was living in Amman. I would rent a car every three to four weeks, drive up for the day, sit on a bench outside the church, and work on my dissertation, read, translate some medieval texts, or actually do some writing – the last chapter of my dissertation was written there. And I attended Easter Sunrise service there in April 1999. Mount Nebo is a special place to me.
Its crowning glory is a wire sculpture bringing together today’s Bible readings – the fiery serpent held aloft by Moses to heal those griping children of Israel bitten by vipers, and, from the Gospel of John, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so also must the Son of Man be lifted up.” It’s the strangest of analogies, Jesus identifies himself with the serpent. Like the children of Israel 1200 years before, he tells Nicodemus, he can only find life by facing the source of his death. You can only find healing by facing, by integrating the source of your suffering.
You’ve seen images – we’ve talked about it here – Bethlehem’s Christmas Church Nativity display, “Christ Under the Rubble.” Our friend, Munther Isaac, their pastor, asked me to give some remarks last Sunday on behalf of our delegation. As I stood in the front of the sanctuary next to the rubble, this is part of what I said, some of which I’ve spoken here:
If Immanuel, “God with us,” means anything at all during these catastrophic days, it’s that Christ is dodging bombs, Christ is in every refugee, in every suffering child, Christ is on every operating table, Christ is “under the rubble.”
It is our shared faith that the cross of this same Christ will peek its head over the horizon, the dawning of a new day, where it will – hope against all hope – rise up and claim its hard-won victory over the powers of empire, evil, and death;
We know that checkpoints are not the last word, humiliations aren’t the last word, settlers aren’t the last word, apartheid is not the last word, that Nakba will not be the last word for Palestine, because our God has the last word, a new creation of human dignity, self-determination, and freedom emerging “out of the rubble.”
A cross rising out of the rubble. Gaza on a cross.
The 23 members Stones Cry Out Delegation has returned from Palestine, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Ramallah, Hebron, 17 meetings, 4½ days. While our eyes are rightly focused on Gaza, our West Bank friends told us there is a “slow genocide” there, too, an insidious 76-year-long ethnic cleansing project now ramped up under the radar, not covered in the Western media. 1000’s of hotels, businesses, restaurants closed. We heard in their voices, saw in their eyes a disbelief at a world that knows but lacks the will, a world that knows but remains silent. The trauma of the moment enough to deal with, yet the courage to hold life together, resist. Many have been targeted, three said they didn’t know if they’d live to see tomorrow.
I learned a haunting new acronym on the trip, WCNSF (Wounded Child No Surviving Family). It took our collective breath away when they reported in addition to 13,000 children killed, 22,000 orphaned children roaming the bombed-out buildings of Gaza, often sick, no food, no home, no mom, no dad. A Christian activist-friend in Jerusalem told me in private, “In both Gaza and the West Bank, too, there is a slow-motion death machine at work. Blood! Blood! Blood! There is death all around.”
You can only find healing by facing the source of your suffering, so we returned directly to Washington DC. I left Bethlehem on Sunday night, flew through the night, landed in DC on Monday. Tuesday and Wednesday, in the halls of Congress, held a demonstration in front of the White House. The contrast was stark – Washington DC, tall buildings, monuments, shrines, temples of political, economic, military power, America’s “civil religion,” capital of empire. “This is a US war,” we heard again and again in Palestine. US money, US weapons, US ceasefire vetoes at the UN. “A US war.”
I’ve been told that “things are complicated,” that “I’ve lost my objectivity.” Tell one of the hundreds and hundreds of Gazans who’ve had multiple members of their families killed that it’s complicated. Tell the 22,000 orphaned children that it’s complicated. In the face of 13,000 dead children murdered by US weapons, in the face of genocide, objectivity is a cop-out, a grave sin; saying “it’s complicated” is an excuse for denying our complicity. Like all issues of justice, this one, too, one of the most important weapons Israel has is when people of privilege say “it’s too complicated.”
“A US war.” It doesn’t have to be this way. This could be stopped tomorrow. We gotta hold the President accountable, We’re guided by a higher set of values, Jesus values, otherwise we’ve simply become the religious arm of the Democrat party, no different than Christian Nationalists for the Republicans. I get that this isn’t popular, I get the political calculus in a two-party system, that we don’t want the other guy. That doesn’t mean we don’t hold the President’s feet to the fire. It shouldn’t matter if he’s “our guy,” that doesn’t give him a pass, place him beyond criticism. I’m not playing the political game, not playing the political odds anymore. We gotta stand for something. Our faith has to mean something “out there.” Who’s gonna speak for the children if not us?
A week ago as I looked out over Jerusalem, a few days later, as I walked the halls of Congress, “I Stand With Israel” signs outside their doors, as I stood in front of the White House, the whole time I thought of Jesus words in Matthew 24. In their Jerusalem capital, the disciples, impressed with the buildings, monuments, the imposing Temple, Jesus says, “All these, not one stone will be left standing; they’ll all end up in a pile of rubble. Deceivers will come claiming they’ll save you. Don’t be fooled. Those who remain steadfast, they’ll be saved.” Washington DC’s temples of power, Bethlehem’s baby. You’d have to be a fool to place your bet on that baby. I prayed these last two weeks I’d be such a fool. There’s power, then there’s power.
The lesson of Mount Nebo again echoes, You can only find healing by facing, then integrating the source of your suffering. Or as Jung put it, “Embrace your grief for there your soul will grow.” We’ve been taught to suck it up, don’t admit our weakness, bury, suppress anything that discomforts, disquiets, that brings us pain. Yet pain and trauma buried find their way to the surface. America’s rugged individualism, “they’re-out-to-get-me-conspiracy-theories, gotta-get-mine-before-they-get-theirs, bullying and other forms of violence, a militarized gun culture, even the macho Jesus of white Christian Nationalism – all deep-seated deflections designed to avoid dealing with our own vulnerability.
And here’s how it works.
+ We find a scapegoat, usually a marginalized group – throughout history, think Jews, think women, Black and Brown and other people of color, LGBTQ+ folks, think Muslims, think Palestinians, and others – scapegoats onto whom we project our own fears;
+ Then we devise strategies of discrimination, dehumanization, and hate to prevent our own darkness from returning, we lock the door to our hearts;
+ Which in turn ratchets up our discrimination and hate even more.
+ Integral to this strategy is blaming the victim, “they deserve it.”
+ And the piece-de-resistance? We find justification in our holy books, to say it’s all God’s will.
A vicious spiral of projected-fear-now-turned-to-hate. All this so we don’t have to face those things within us that scare us about ourselves, so we don’t have to face our own pain within. Protection by projection.
The leader of our DC delegation, our friend, Doug Thorpe, shared a story about Ash Wednesday. You know the tradition, the pastor places a cross of ashes on your forehead and speaks the words, “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Doug shared the story of a pastor approached by one of her members asking that since this year Ash Wednesday fell on Valentine’s Day, if, instead of a cross, would she draw a heart with ashes on his forehead.
We didn’t learn what the pastor decided but I’ve been thinking about Doug’s story ever since. You can look at it one of two ways, both true: The first, a heart made of ashes, “Remember you are dust,” a sign of our mortality. Or the second, ashes formed into a heart, “God so loved the world,” a sign of hope and possibility.
A heart made of ashes. Ashes transformed into a heart. Our work is clear. No longer silent. Our faith gives us courage.
Gaza on a cross. Jesus on a cross. A serpent coiled into a cross of love.
Out of the ashes, a heart.