You’ve heard that conversation. “the way the economy is today…,” or perhaps “war is the price we have to pay in this dangerous world.” Economic crisis, war, environmental exploitation: choose your poison that excuses us from being able to do anything. I, like so many of my peers, know the true woe of our times: school loans. :)
So I’ve been trying to figure out how to make sense out of my life while still making cents. I’m trying to worry a little less about making cents, because if it makes sense than maybe it’ll make sense not to make so many cents. Part of that’s led me to look into how the arts go along with community development and, well, my life. It’s also meant me meeting with (awesome) professors and friends, though there’s many more I ought to see (hit me up!). Doing that led me to learn about a guy called Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb.
He’s a Palestinian Christian. Cool. He’s the founder of the International Center of Bethlehem, whose initiatives include an academy and a college. Awesome. The Center has a focus on the arts, both in its schools and as community-creation, especially as a way to have “co-existence.” Epic. He’s also the pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church. Jesus Christ.
No, seriously. He talks about him. A lot. Jesus Christ, that is. He gave a sermon stateside in 2003 about 1 Corinthians 1:18-25: “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” I really agree with and appreciate both his message and how he shares it, but I can’t help imagining how his rhetoric and examples might not go over well with others. I had to hold back from cutting out “controversial” sections to get to “the main point,” but I held back (mostly) so you could decide for yourself. Torrey people, would Torrey be pleased? ICS people, is his gospel-culture focus good? Art people…idk, but isn’t it awesome how art interprets gospel? Politics people, what power plays should Christians be game for, do you think? All people…what do you like, what don’t you, how has or hasn’t it changed how you look at Christ/the cross/Israel/Palestine/Muslims/the verse? Read well and give your opinion. Pretty please.
His project is about how we take this dialectic of us versus them (us finding message of power of God, them finding message of foolishness). His question, if I can paraphrase, asks if we don’t wrongly find in the cross simply a message of us being right and so powerful, and them being wrong, instead of the power of God, which is, to put it colloquially, like, way better. But now I’ll let him speak for himself, in his second anecdote and point:
The second experience which shed a new light on us and them in relation to the message of the cross was totally different in nature. From November until February this year a 24-hour curfew was imposed on Bethlehem by the Israeli occupation. …. No one is allowed to leave his or her home, neither children to go to school, nor workers to go to work, and not even to go shopping except for few hours a week. Imagine entire families, millions of people sitting at home, doing nothing. So as center, we developed the idea to challenge some of the artists during this time. … so as to overcome their depression and imprisonment. We announced on the local radio and TV stations a painting competition on the topic of “Christ in the Palestinian Context”. In February this year 16 artists submitted their paintings. After reviewing all the paintings we couldn’t believe our eyes. 60% of all artists who submitted their paintings were Muslims. … It was interesting to see that so many Muslim artists dared to paint a biblical figure, something actually forbidden in Islamic theology and spirituality. More amazing was that all of the Muslim artists except one submitted a painting of the crucified Christ. None of the Christian artists had the cross as the theme of their paintings. … Isn’t it interesting? We know that in the teaching of Islam, Christ was not crucified. For Christ to be crucified means really nothing else than for God to be on the losing end, and that is impossible in Islam. God is greater than to be a loser. We can say with Paul that for Muslims the message of the cross is nothing but foolishness. But why did these Muslim artists paint Christ, the crucified? They took the risk to betray their religion; they took many risks upon themselves since all the paintings were exhibited in our Gallery publicly for a period of one month. I couldn’t but think of one answer: When they thought in their suffering what the most meaningful message is for them in that context, they couldn’t but think of Christ, the crucified. The message of the cross was for them so powerful, that they were ready to take the risk to paint the crucified Christ. In that moment they discovered that that message of the cross is more powerful that any wisdom or religious teaching they were taught. In God sharing their bitter destiny they find strength, comfort and power. It captured them, it captured their imagination and their minds. Also this experience taught me that the distinctive line between us Christian and them Muslims is not as clear as we think. Sometimes they see the power of the message of the cross clearer than us, who can easily get used to it.
Okay, time out for a second. Partly because I want you to fully digest that, and partly because this little interruption mirrors an interruption I had at the same place while reading. Just a sentence or two after the paragraph above I heard the voices of my mom and our little 6-year-old neighbor friend singing Hillsong in the other room… “My God is mighty to save, he is mighty to save, Forever, author of salvation, He rose and conquered the grave, Jesus conquered the grave.”
Nice timing, huh?
Well, I kept reading after that, so you should too, if the timing is right, as he goes to his next point:
The dividing line between us and them is not one related to faith only, but to power as well. The message of the cross has always to be related to the context of power relations. The powerless interpret it differently from the powerful. It is for those marginalized, weak and powerless within the Corinthian congregation and within our times that the apostle proclaims the message of the cross as the power of God. “Them” here refers to those who think they are wise and strong. For those strong the cross is nothing but a nice decoration, or even sometimes a cover for their ideologies. For a frightened Christians in the catacombs making the sign of the cross on their bodies is a sign of faith in the crucified Lord. But for Byzantine soldiers to engrave the cross on their helmets is a sign of a triumphant ideology. The last two and a half years were very, if not the most, difficult years in our lives. We never felt so powerless like when the F16 airplanes where roaming over our cities and striking our neighborhoods. We know how the people in Iraq now feel. Never did we feel so powerless as when the Israeli tanks invaded our populated towns and cities, approached our houses and started firing. Several tanks were stationed around our compound. For 13 hours without much interruption. One was stationed in the front of the house, another on the other side. When the tank in the front would fire, we as family would run to the backside of the house. When the one in the backside would fire we would all run to the front of the house. When both were firing at the same time, we thought the end is near. My mother was praying, my wife screaming, my children crying. Our neighbors were killed by the soldiers, a mother and her son. For 37 hours the other son was holding the hands of his mother and brother, crying, “my brother and my mother have forsaken me.” You feel so forsaken, not only from the World but even from God himself. We know how the Iraqi civilians are feeling these days. We know what conflict does to the souls, bodies and spirit of people. Yet never did I feel the power of the resurrection as in the last two years. This is not to glorify the suffering, it’s a curse, it’s harmful, it’s ugly, and the psalmist portrays his experience of exile as a refugee as feeling the wrath of God. It is this experience which Christ on the cross had when he cried, “my God, my God why has you forsaken me?” But the power of God manifests itself in such a context. It was when we felt left alone, abandoned, helpless and powerless that we were granted new power. The Israeli military forces destroyed our compound, yet God gave us the determination to rebuild it. The mighty forces of destruction lost their power over us. Wasn’t this your experience in the US also? Wasn’t it that on 9/11 when the two towers fall, when your country was so vulnerable, that you experienced something from the power of the resurrection as well as the solidarity of the world? What a difference to the context now. Isn’t it that when we strive to dominate and when we think we are powerful, that we will prevail, that we stumble and become foolish? The power of God can’t be found outside the cross. The resurrected Lord is the one who still carry on his body the wounds of the cross.
This is already quite lengthy. Thanks, friends, for those of you who read. As curious as I am know about what you think of his rhetoric or politics or artistics, honestly I’d most love to hear about Christ on the cross, and what you have going on in your head about that. Because my head’s a bit dizzy trying to sort out Christ from culture and God’s power from politics, as well as also then seeing where those things actually really do intersect. Oh yeah, and while we’re at it, of course there’s the application of how they intersect, and how then they should intersect in our lives while we’re trying to make sense and make cents.
How epicly overwhelming.
But chin up, at least we don’t have to worry about vampires and werewolves…
------
Full-text of the sermon
http://www.mitriraheb.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=252:1-cor-1-18-25&catid=27:ensermons&Itemid=28
Good third-hand description of the center and its college
http://www.globalministries.org/mee/projects/international-center-of-bethlehe.html
Movie being screened September 30th that you can attend in L.A. with Biola peeps
http://littletownofbethlehem.org/
No comments:
Post a Comment