The Eliot Church of Newton

The other morning I awoke, startled.
I looked at Liz, who was looking at me.
I said, “Did I say that out loud?”
She said, “Yes, you woke me up and yourself up.” 
I said, “Uhhh. Yes. I was dreaming.”
And went back to sleep. 

Later she told me what I said, VERY LOUDLY.
“I have stood on SO MUCH HOLY GROUND,
That my feet have WINGS!”

I remembered, then, that I was preaching, about the three ways I was transformed by my trip to Israel-Palestine. As most dreams go, it was weirdly configured, and time warped. I wasn’t at Eliot, but Laura Seaone and I were going to sing a duet, but she didn’t have the music and people were restless (including people from my trip, from my childhood church, from the street and even Detroit). So, I decided to improvise while Laura searched for the music by talking about my trip.

I said that I loved being with a group that said Amen and Alleluia all the time. Can I have an Amen? Amen, all the people chorused back at me. Alleluia, Alleluia they shouted back.

Let’s do that now.

In my dream I was so revved by the energy that I became a full gospel preacher, delivering the Word in my sleep!

“I have stood on so much Holy Ground, my feet have wings!”

Thank goodness I woke up, because I have no idea where I would have gone with that concept. 

The fact is, obviously, I came away from Israel with deep impressions that continue to be carved in the caverns of my subconscious life, making about as much sense as standing on holy ground with winged feet.

Yet, one of the definitions of “impression” according to Miriam Webster Online is “an often indistinct or imprecise notion or remembrance”[1] and we know how gorgeous, nebulous, and full of questions a hazy painting of Bonnard or Monet can be.

So, in real time, and not dream time, and certainly not with winged feet, I offer lingering impressions from my time in the Holy Land.

1.

The psalmist today speaks of the strength and restoration and leading that God the Shepherd offers. In Israel I saw so many witnesses to strength, but no other so powerful as this event, that my colleague, Jep Strait, Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral on the Boston Common, relates in his sermon of last week: [2]

“ The last day there we left VERY EARLY to catch our flight home. We boarded the bus to the airport 2 a.m. The bus ride took about an hour, a few of us slept a bit, then roused ourselves to go through the extensive security and check in procedures.  Finally we made our way to our departure gate for the first leg of our flight to Madrid. It was about 4:30 by this time. I had volunteered to bring up the rear, making sure none of our flock got lost, and so I arrived at the gate later than the rest, to discover about half our group huddled around a short, plump, middle-aged woman, their hands on her head and shoulders, praying. 

She was weeping, tears coursing down her face.

I walked closer, curious. I listened, and heard people praying for God to be with her, to help her not feel alone, to sustain and console her. The prayers continued for some time, different voices expressing these same basic petitions. It was powerful, but also strange, such holy intensity here at this gate, in this foreign place, at this ungodly hour. I wondered what had happened? Was she afraid to fly, had she been overcome with fear or anxiety?

Shortly after the prayers and hugs with her ended, I learned her story. 

She was Hispanic, visiting from New York, and quite poor. It had been her lifelong dream to visit the Holy Land, to come to the place of Jesus, of Mary, of Joseph, but the cost of such a trip was daunting, seemingly impossible, but she saved what she could over the course of many years, scrimping in every way possible to put aside money for this trip.

Finally she had saved enough. She made arrangements and embarked, finally realizing her dream. The trip of a lifetime. How grateful, how thrilled she was to be able to finally experience her dream.

Then, her first day in Israel, she got a call from home. It was a call that all parents dread. Her 23 year old son was dead. He had been shot and killed. 

Making arrangements to return was difficult, it took a couple of days to secure a return flight, but it eventually happened, and so she was there, utterly alone in the Tel Aviv airport at 4:30 a.m., waiting to fly to Madrid and then New York, her dream trip suddenly a nightmare, but not a nightmare that would ever go away when she awoke.

One of our group was a Latino clergyman, and it was apparently he who first saw her distress, went over and talked with her and learned her story, and then invited the others to join with him to pray with her, to be with her.

She said after the prayers ended that she felt as though God had sent angels to her, to be with her and sustain her...

I was struck by her sense of us as angels. I was feeling tired and groggy, not at all angelic, but…I understood what she meant. What were the chances that a group of clergy would arrive at her gate at 4:30 in the morning, and that in this distant place, so far from her home, one of the clergy would be a native Spanish speaker, with decades of experience of ministering in the inner city and therefore gifted and experienced in being with people at moments like this?   There is no question she felt helped, supported, sustained. It was evident not just from her words but from her face, her eyes, her smile of gratitude.

But I wondered. If God was sending angels to her now, here in Tel Aviv, where were the angels in New York when her son was shot? What was wrong with a little angelic help there?

I resist any easy answers or solutions, they all feel inadequate if not unfaithful. I could not begin to explain to the heartbroken mother from New York why her son was killed, not would I try.

….But I could join with others praying with her, with people being as tender and present as we could, not recoiling or flinching from her pain. Suddenly, miraculously, from her standpoint, she was no longer alone. God had sent angels…

And for me, I understood what it means when the Psalmist writes, “The Lord is my shepherd, who leads…”

2.

Our gospel story today captures a portion of the ministry of Jesus that happens in Galilee. The disciples are returning from the being on the road of ministry by themselves. They are tired. They want to talk, to share stories.  Jesus invites them to come and rest. But the need of the people is great--needing food, healing, a good word in the midst of the oppression and poverty they live. 

Jesus has compassion, deep compassion. For his disciples and the people.   They all need refuge, rest, and safety.

Standing at the Church of the Beatitudes, overlooking the shores of Galilee, or in the church of the Feeding of the Five Thousand,   you can feel the sense of refuge the land offers, in spite of tensions living there. There is comfort in its ancient history, the imprints of thousands of people through eons of ages who have called the Galilee home. Indeed there are valleys, and wild places that are rocky and barren, and yet, you can see how one might hide in those craggy places for refuge.

I don’t know if it is the physicality of the land,

or the memory of the stories that it evokes, but pausing there, you can understand why people could believe in the refuge that Jesus offered, the love he promised, and that how they could trust that even touching the hem of his garment they might be healed.

It’s in the air you breathe as you stand in those holy sites.  

 3.

The Psalmist writes “I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long. Goodness and mercy shall follow me. “
There is a question of belonging in this land called Israel-Palestine.
Who gets to live in God’s house?
Who belongs in God’s holy land?
The Israelis?
The Palestinians?

The current living conditions for the Palestinian people living in the West Bank and Gaza are horrendous and brutal. Unemployment in many places is close to 50%, clean water is scarce. Families are cut off from families, virtually unable to travel, virtually imprisoned by the security fence that Israel has erected. The fence has vastly reduced the number of suicide bombers but also exponentially rachetted up the suffering of Palestinians, the vast majority of whom have nothing to do with violence or attacks. There is so much suffering and resentment on the part of the Palestinians, and so much fear, insecurity and anger on the part of Israel.[3] 

The solution is easy, one of our speakers, said: “A Two State Solution”,    70% of Israelis and 70% of Palestinian Israelis support a two state solution.   Yet there are those who believe Israel has no right to exist. And Israel is scared. 
Who belongs? 
All,
All we know are God’s children.
Why can’t they dwell together in unity? 

The area, I feel is held hostage. Hostage by a few extremists that…work more in self interest that in the people of a land whom agree, all belong in God’s house.
Where is the goodness?
Where is the mercy? 
Where is the answer?

The problem with impressions, they create more questions than answers. Such as today—I have offered you a hazy, textured, blurry word painting of a land, a place of strength, refuge, and belonging[4]. 

In that painting there is war, there is strife, there is beauty, there is a sense that there is so much more that meets the eye on first glance.

That’s the way it is with impressions—those experiences that strike us on so many levels. They take time to unpack, they demand our attention in our dreams and in our waking….and if we sit with them long enough, they may not only reveal unfinished questions,
But also the truth they contain.  
They might even put wings on your feet!

What has impressed on your thoughts and experiences lately?

May God be faithful, and may we be faithful,
To paying attention to the lasting impressions present in our lives.

Amen.