The High Altar at the Heptapegon Church, Tabgha,
traditional site of the feeding of the 5,000. Note fourth century
loves and fishes mosaic before altar.
Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message
May 13, 2015
A Pilgrim’s Preferences
I got back from my pilgrimage to the Holy Land yesterday,
full of memories, reflections, and wonder.
The untenable and highly contentious political situation in
the State of Israel and the Occupied Territories made me acutely aware of the
power of narrative. The Palestinians
tell one set of stories about the land, their place in it, and the Israelis’
role. The Israelis tell another set of
stories. Jews, Muslims, and Christians
all tell different stories as well. The
stories have the power to make us a community, and set boundaries between us
and outsiders, between friend and foe.
The stories of the holy sites were also as divisive as they were
uniting: nasty
fighting over control of
the sites and the income they represent means that a site as sacred as
the Holy
Selpulcher is constantly divided in its administration and unable to
make proper
repairs and upkeep; the Eastern Orthodox had a different site for the
Annuciation to the Blessed Virgin from that of the Roman Catholics. And we are not even talking about Jewish or
Muslim sites here…
Talking to the Palestinian Dean of St. George’s Anglican Cathedral in
Jerusalem, I heard a powerful plea: do
not pray for Palestinians or Israelis, for Arabs (Muslim or Christian) or
Jews. Rather pray for all the people of
this area, children of Abraham, as a single community: “May God help us to
listen to each other’s stories and find a common life.”
People have asked me since I came back what I found most
important: the places we visited, the people on the trip with us, or the
practices we shared (daily Morning and Evening Prayer, Compline, and daily
Mass, as well as readings and prayers at all the sites). Clearly, meeting and getting to know the
other pilgrims was the best thing, hearing their stories and anecdotes, and
listening to the cadences of their prayer books (English, Australian, and
American). The prayer practices and the
scripture readings were next: the
stories told us by the ancient writers, and the stories and prayers we read to
God. Only then did the sites acquire
significance and meaning, even with the nagging historical and theological
problems often presented by their “traditional” explanations.
When Diana Butler Bass was here in March, she talked about
faith and religion being about belonging, behaving, and believing. In my pilgrimage experience, this reads as
people, practice or prayer, and the stories about the places.
In Bethlehem, I saw a beautiful large Jerusalem Cross of
dark and light olive wood. It reminded
me of the wood inside Trinity. I brought
it back, and it is now over the Narthex entrance. The image of a single Greek Cross in the
midst of a field of four others is a symbol of gathered Christian community
from the four corners of the world. It is a symbol of expanding community.
I hope we can continue to expand the circle of those whose
stories we listen to, and the practices which we are willing to taste and
experience.
Grace and Peace, Fr. Tony+
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