Turning Towards Jerusalem

“We were taken, one by one,” so begins the December 2006 article by James Loney in Sojourner Magazine. (to see the article, go to http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4010/is_200612/ai_n17194066) “... an abductor at each arm, into a living room and pushed onto a couch. First Tom Fox, 55, American, full-time Christian Peacemaker Teams member and veteran of 14 months of project work in Iraq. Then Harmeet Singh Sooden, 33, a Canadian citizen living in New Zealand and a short-term CPT delegate. Then me, 41, Canadian, CPT Canada program coordinator and delegation leader. Finally, Norman Kember, 72, British, retired professor of physics and another short-termer.” The four men were part of a Christian Peacemaker Team living in Iraq and were kidnapped on November 26, 2005. On March 9, 2006, Tom Fox was killed and his body dumped in a residential neighborhood in western Baghdad. On March 23, 2006, Loney, Kember, and Sooden were freed in a raid on their house by British forces. Their captors had fled the house prior to the raid.
Christian Peacemakers Teams are in place throughout the world. They began in 1984 in response to a challenge for Christians to devote the same discipline and self-sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to war.
Christians, and other believers as well, have struggled throughout the ages about how best to respond to the ills, evils, and injustice of our world. Some have chosen the route of non-violence, and others have made other, authentic choices. The struggle is not new to Christianity, and our Jewish roots also point to this struggle. The text from Isaiah 50 highlights just one of these instances. Over the years, the Jewish people made different choices. Sometimes, they chose a military offense. At other times, they were limited to a military defense. Sometimes, they chose a civil-based resistance, and at other times, they chose civil obedience as a way to survival and faithfulness to God.
The 50th chapter of Isaiah was written during the time of the Israelite exile. The vast majority of the population had been deported to Babylon, and they did not know when, or if, they would be able to live in their own land again. The author of this text recalls a symbolic person for his readers. Called the “suffering servant” by later interpreters, this person is depicted in various places in Isaiah and a few other prophetic writings. As we look back at these descriptions, we see a person who does indeed suffer abuse and insult, but as all the passages are read, we also see a person who has an incredible sense of God’s presence in the midst of it all. And in the end, the servant ultimately prevails. The point of the depiction seems to be to encourage people to be faithful to God, even as things are looking hopeless and as the people themselves feel humiliated, and maybe even abandoned by God.
During this season of Lent, we have been looking both ways, looking at the text from the Old Testament and then looking at the text from the gospel and seeing their connection. As Jesus turned his face to Jerusalem, I’m sure he was also looking both ways. He was aware of his past, and was undoubtedly familiar with these passages from Isaiah and others. He understood their lessons, their predictions, and how people interpreted them in his time. But he was also looking forward to new interpretations, new perceptions, and new understandings of God. He fulfills a past prediction by the prophet Zechariah by entering Jerusalem on the colt of a donkey. But as he does that, he is aware that the whole thing is the parody of a royal parade. He is not a victorious military king riding into the capitol city on a high-spirited horse to the shouts of adulation from his people. He is a rural teacher, suspect in the eyes of religious and governmental leaders alike, riding into the city that houses the temple on the back of a donkey to the hosannas of a crowd that will melt away as soon as his troubles begin. But even on a donkey, Jesus’ response to God’s call could not be called passive. His entry into Jerusalem raises attention as well as Hosannas, and the palm branches on the ground mingle with an increased threat to his well-being.
He knew this was a dangerous move, but he entered willingly, believing that this was the next step of his ministry, even if it placed him in greater danger. His entry may have modeled humility, but it was still a bold move.
Christian Peacemaker Teams follow a practice called “getting in the way.” It is a practice of nonviolence, but not a practice of passivity. CP Teams try to “get in the way” of practices of injustice. They act non-violently, serve as public witnesses, and then tell the stories to a larger world community. Abigail Ozanne, a member at Prospect Park UMC, served on a Christian Peacemaker Team in Hebron for a year. Her team acted as human shields for Palestinian children who had to walk to school through rock-throwing crowds of Israeli settlers that had begun to build settlements in Palestinian neighborhoods. They would also stand at checkpoints, asking questions and sometimes following people who had been arrested to jail, hoping that their presence would act as a further deterrence to violence. They were invited into people’s home to hear their stories and bear witness to their lives.
People who volunteer to be part of CPT are not just thrown into these dangerous situations. First, the applicants are screened, then trained in non-violence, CPT values and principles, and they only join a team after it is clear that they are aware of the costs and have been trained appropriately. CP Teams only enter situations where they have been invited by a local authority, in Abigail’s case, the mayor of Hebron invited them, and then they live in the midst of the community. They engage with the community, but they also live with the CP Team, learning how to live as a community themselves. It isn’t easy work, and sometimes living with their team members is just as trying as the work they are doing in the community.
James Loney, the author of the article I mentioned earlier, wrote how hard it was to live with his fellow kidnapped members for those 118 days. Their annoying habits grated on his nerves, and he had to work hourly on remembering to practice Christian love for them as well as for his captors. He wrote also that Tom Fox was the one who reminded them daily to focus on the present and not to live in either the regrets of the past nor the hopes of the future. In captivity, all four men found that they had to be active peace-makers. In one of the many pantomimed conversations they had with their captors, James learned that one of the men was planning for a suicide bombing mission. He made it his goal to appeal to this man as many ways as he could to not engage in this mission. One of their last conversations was how the man had decided that suicide was not part of his belief system.

We are each called to our own Palm Sundays. It might be to join a group like the Christian Peacemakers Team. It might be that you are lead by God in some other way. But no matter where God is leading you, we need to engage some of the same principles as CPT. We need to pay attention to God’s Spirit and where it calls us. We need to do what we can to prepare ourselves for the road. We need to look to the past and look to the future, but to live in the present. We need to be prepared to live out our values and our call in a wide variety of situations.

James Loney, Norman Kember and Hermeet Singh Sooden had to make a difficult decision some time after they were released from captivity. They were told that 4 men had been arrested in connection with their kidnapping and Tom Fox’s murder. There would be a trial by the Central Criminal Court of Iraq, and they were asked to testify at that trial. The death penalty was on the table. They researched the trial process and then searched their souls, looking to both Christian and Sikh teachings. On August 12 of this last year, the three held a press conference to state that they had decided not to testify at the trial. In part, their statement read, “We unconditionally forgive our captors for abducting and holding us. We have no desire to punish them. Punishment can never restore what was taken from us. What our captors did was wrong. They caused us, our families and our friends great suffering. Yet we bear no malice towards them and have no wish for retribution. Should those who have been charged with holding us hostage be brought to trial and convicted, we ask that they be granted all possible leniency. We categorically lay aside any rights we may have over them. . . . Through the power of forgiveness, it is our hope that good deeds will come from the lives of our captors, and that we will all learn to reject the use of violence. We believe those who use violence against others are themselves harmed by the use of violence. . . . By this commitment to forgiveness, we hope to plant a seed that one day will bear the fruits of healing and reconciliation for us, our captors, the peoples of Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States, and most of all, Iraq. We look forward to the day when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is respected by all the world's people.” [To read the complete statement, go to http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/news_syndication/article_06128kember.s... ]
The men being held for the kidnapping and Tom Fox’s death were eventually released without a trial.

Turning our faces to Jerusalem is not an easy choice. We are called to act, and to act in ways that may be difficult and complicated. But when we wave our branches on Palm Sunday, we wave them for an unconventional man. One who took on humility and obedience as the characteristics of a ruler. One who understood suffering, understood power, and understood God. One who was cheered and who was jeered. We wave them for a Messiah who turned his face to Jerusalem and then beckoned to us to follow him. Amen.