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The Holy Land I
Monday 11th September 2017 @ 12:35 pm
I made a confession on the sea of Galilee to my traveling band of peace lovers and enthusiasts. I might as well write it here too.
I think I have found the thing that challenges my personal faith the most. The thing that more than anything else pushes me to question the loving intentions of a loving God.
And it’s not the LGBTQ community & how the church talks or doesn’t talk – about sexuality.
It’s not the too often too dreary nature of the worship my tribe exhibits.
It’s not the judgemental attitude to life and everything I hear from people I minister with and amongst.
It’s not even the predominately exclusivist theology that dominates the island I live on, which ironically aims to bring people to God without recognising Gods existence already present.
It’s the Holy Land.
It is this beautiful and bounteous land, filled with kindness generosity and welcome. This land where the most Holy site through all Christendom lies a matter of yards from the most Holy site in Judaism, which lies a matter of meters from the third most Holy site in Islam.
It’s a big world. And yet, within one square mile lie the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Western Wall and the Dome of the Rock / Alaqsa mosque. It’s nothing if not remarkable.
I can’t explain the sense of walking those old Jerusalem streets – shared by traders with thousands of years of deep religious history. Meaning.
Purpose.
Generative stories to give life light.
Streets shared with history.
And violence.
And suffering.
And religious indignation.
And petty squabbling.
All from three religions that share Abraham as founding father, share a call to love & serve your neighbour, and share a celebration of the dignity and beauty of humanity.
I just don’t get it. And I’m an ordained minister of the Christian gospel.
Mahar, an Israeli Arab we talked to the other day was saying something similar.
His response?
‘There is no God – how could there be – look at this place – how can religions that speak of God act in such horrible ways to other humans.’
It’s hard not to have some sympathy.
And so I’m only left to choose my response.
I too can decry the behaviour of those who use the claim to faith as a controlling destructive force.
Or, I can explain it away. Ignore it. Come up with a palatable theology that makes me correct and ‘them’ wrong.
Or, I can choose to believe something else.
Which I do.
I can choose to hope that God feels the same pain as I do here.
And in doing so, hope that what is actually happening, is not then about me at all – or my own observations and feelings. But is rather an insight into the depth of divine presence in the world, sharing itself and making itself known.
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