Scripture: Ezekiel 37:1-10; Genesis 16 and 21 (selections)
I want to thank S.O. for being here this morning and for speaking as she has. When S. approached the worship committee with her desire to speak out as a Jewish woman in dissent against the actions of the Israeli government and in a spirit of solidarity with Palestinian sisters and brothers and Israeli dissenters, one of the things she said to us was that she felt that Sojourners is a place where she could do this, where she would be heard and respected, not necessarily that she assumed we would all necessarily agree with her views, but that she felt this is a place where she has felt at home on occasion, and where it will be safe for her to speak her conscience. Her choosing Sojourners as a place to offer her words of witness is a compliment to this community, and as a member of this community I am grateful for the compliment.
But I’m grateful to S. for another reason as well. She doesn’t just pay us a compliment; she offers me a challenge. She causes me to consider how I am going to respond to what she has said. When we agreed to extend the invitation to her, I knew I would not be able to pretend she had not said anything when it came time for the sermon. I also felt that we should not go away from here this morning without some opportunity for follow-up, thus the invitation for anyone who wants to come to our home tonight.
I should make clear that I do not feel in the least that Susan has come to us in a spirit of confrontation, with the message: “Here is a serious world issue. What are you doing about it?” Still less have I felt her to be saying to us: “There is only one way for a decent human being to think about this issue. Are you going to be a decent human being or not?” Nevertheless, when a person comes and says basically “I need to make a witness. May I do it in your presence?”, when a person makes an act of conscience in your midst, there is, for me, whether she intends it or not, a kind of a confrontation that takes place. I can hardly not let her conscience confront my own. When our consciences are confronted in this way, it is not always comfortable. I don’t necessarily feel affirmed. I am not filled with warm fuzzies. But even if I don’t always appreciate it at the time, I know from experience that in the long run I will be grateful for having had my consciousness and/or my conscience awakened. And so I want to say that I am grateful to S. for that this morning as well. Today I am able to appreciate it at the time, though we’re still not talking warm fuzzies here.
I had the opportunity to travel to Israel about 15 years ago. It was not a trip aimed at peacemaking or getting educated about the current situation. It was just one of the thousands of trips organized for people who want to visit the land of the Bible. We had a small group of people who had read the Bible together, pretty much cover to cover over a space of 3 years and we decided we needed to go. Even though it was your basic Bible tour, we could hardly go on such a trip without having something of a contemporary agenda. We all did some reading about the modern state of Israel. Some parts of the tour we planned with an eye to the current situation, such as a visit to Gaza and various West Bank towns such as Bethlehem, and an evening of conversation under cover of darkness with the leaders of a Palestinian village. Some were not planned such as firing our first guide because of uncalled for negative remarks about Palestinians and a couple of detours into less touristy Palestinian areas. I went with some feelings that there were two sides to this situation but that the Palestinian side was not sufficiently known or heard. My experiences in Israel confirmed those feelings and made them much stronger. I came home feeling I wanted to do something to support the Palestinian people and those—our second guide was one—who were part of the Israeli peace movement and sincerely sought justice for the Palestinian people.
All the good intentions I came back with pretty much evaporated over time. I occasionally over the years have found ways to express my general sentiments through prayer and preaching and political actions, but by and large I have done little, even in the way of learning things or remembering what I once knew. When S. first approached us about coming to Sojourners, her request acted as a catalyst for me. It caused me to focus again on some vivid memories of fifteen years ago, to try to recover some lost knowledge, to put some internet resources at a place on my computer where I can get to them with a couple of quick mouse clicks, and to start to ask myself some harder questions.
And to be real about this, it is not likely I would be preaching today about Israel and Palestine if S.O. had not presented herself on our doorstep. It is possible, given that there is some interest in my background, given how large and disturbing the news is currently, and how it seems to get worse every day, it is possible that I would be preaching on Israel and Palestine today—but not likely. Even though the news of the killing is relentless. Even though I am distressed by it. Even though I am not just distressed but burdened by it, as I know many others at Sojourners are, all of us probably to some degree and some to an intense degree. Even though it has been a frequent part of our prayer time on Sundays and was a part of our worship in homes on Maundy Thursday. Even though we cannot avoid the issue in our daily lives unless we are intent on shutting the world out, and even though we have not avoided it completely in our church life, still it is not likely I would be preaching about Israel and Palestine today. After all, other than what has been said in prayer, that we mourn for the loss of Israeli life and we mourn for the loss of Palestinian life and we pray for some miraculous coming of peace, what else is there to say? What to do?
That’s a question. What to say? What to do? I realized too late that I should have, but didn’t, put a question mark at the end of the sermon title. Without the question mark, it sounds like I intend to say what to do. It sounds like I intend to be definitive about it. Here’s a list of WHAT TO DO: one, two, three, four…But I didn’t feel the sermon title that way. I felt it as a question, or maybe even not so much a question as an expression of frustration as in, “what to do!”, “what is there to do?”, “what is left to do?”, “what can anyone do?”
I feel, as I suspect many of you do, overwhelmed by the situation. I identify a lot with one of the verses in the Ezekiel passage. Ezekiel was a man who lived some 2500 years ago who found himself also in the middle of a pretty overwhelming situation. An invasion of the Babylonians had resulted in the complete defeat of Judea and everywhere Ezekiel turned there would have been devastation. Temple destroyed. People carried off in slavery. Government, culture, social structure, religious life, buildings, everything in shambles. Ezekiel looks around and doesn’t know what to think. Then God gives him a vision. In the vision God takes Ezekiel and puts him in a valley that is piled high with dry bones. Not even skeletons, just bones. Everywhere you look, death. And God says, “Ezekiel, can these bones live?” And Ezekiel says, (in my own loose translation), “You know God, you’re the one who’s supposed to know these things, not me. You want to know if these bones can live? How about if you tell me?”
As I say, I identify with Ezekiel. There is in me, as there must have been in Ezekiel, this sense of a heaviness in the soul, a bewilderment and despair and helplessness. I confess that there is within me a tendency to want to be content with expressions of sadness and prayers for peace. Those are things I can do and have done, and I have a fair number of fairly decent excuses why that should be enough.
I am just a distant observer to this violence after all. I don’t know what it feels like these days to be a Palestinian living in Nablus or Ramallah or Bethlehem or East Jerusalem. I don’t know what it feels like to be a Jewish person and not be able to celebrate Passover or go to the grocery store or get on a bus to go to work without fear, or to be the person who waits in vain for someone to come home from a trip to the grocery store. Who am I to think I have earned the right to speak, or that I have anything much worthwhile to say?
Also, I am not an expert on the long and complicated history of this region. I cannot claim to speak with any authority in this sense either. I am not going to trump anyone with my command of the chain of events of the last 3,000 or 100 or 50 years and whose actions spoiled what opportunities for peace, nor am I going to impress anyone with my detailed knowledge of the Balfour Declaration, UN Resolution 242, the Camp David Accords, the Oslo Agreements or the Tenet Plan. And again I may ask myself, who am I to think that I have anything much to say here? It would be sensible and safe and reasonable to adopt Ezekiel’s basic attitude and just say, “You know, God, this really makes me sad, but I don’t know what to do about it, have nothing to say about it. I need to give this one to you. It’s too much for me.” That would be perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the Ezekiel passage…if the passage ended at that point.
But the story goes on. In the story, God doesn’t let Ezekiel get away with just saying, “O God, thou knowest.” In the story God continues to speak to Ezekiel. God says, “Prophesy. Speak. Say: Dry bones, listen to the word that comes from the heart of life. Thus speaks the Pillar of the World, the Breath of Life: I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live.” God says, in other words, don’t just put this in my lap. Let your breath become that which gives life. Use your breath—don’t just wait for mine, but use your breath—and the bones may begin to stir. And in the story, they did.
Speak. Use your breath. That’s a command to Ezekiel. I hear it as a command to me too. To me, it makes me think that there’s another side to the questions I was asking myself. I was asking myself, by way of rationalization, what right do I have to speak on this issue? Who do I think I am to do something more than pray for an end to the violence? The Ezekiel story makes me realize there’s another question, that when I ask myself what right I have to speak, God responds by asking what right do I have not to speak. Who do I think I am that I can do what is safe and comfortable, and just stop there? That’s what I am hearing in the Ezekiel story today.
To be honest, I’m not sure how I’m going to answer that question. I don’t have any rash promises to make to myself or to God. I don’t have a list of things that I am committing myself to do or that I am proposing for anyone else to do. I don’t have a plan for Sojourners, beyond a conversation later in the day. As to what to do, it will probably help if we can work on some of that together.
What I do know is that I am called by the headlines every day, by the Biblical story of Ezekiel, S. O.’s witness among us, my own conscience to something more than shaking my head, shrugging my shoulders, and saying a prayer. I don’t know right now what that something is going to be, but I pray that I may have the will to do something more than what I have done so far and perhaps breathe a little bit more life, if not into the world, at least into myself. Amen.
Jim Bundy
April 7, 2002