by Pastor Diana Holbert
High in the foothills of the Mount of Olives is a little, white chapel, shaped like a teardrop and built in the 1950’s over Byzantine ruins. The sky was bright blue when we made our way on down the steep, dusty slope with a small group of religious journalists and pastors from across the United States.
We walked in and went straight to the window. Please join us. Looking through the wrought iron screen, with its center point being a chalice with a wafer of bread just above it, your eyes immediately go past it to focus on the Temple Mount, across the Kidron Valley of Death, and up the mountain of white stones to the immense, golden dome – the 7th century Dome of the Rock.
The walls of this distant mosque are covered in deep, blue mosaic. They’re lovely. Inside is a massive stone: one of the holiest sites for Islam, for they believe that it is where Muhammad took his last step before ascending into heaven. And for the Jews, along with the Wailing Wall, this is also a holy site, where Abraham was purported to have been willing to sacrifice his son Isaac. Christians, Jews, and Muslims come to the Temple Mount to remember their heritage and to stand in reverence there.
Jerusalem, the Holy City. Holy for three major religions of the world. The dome is still standing.
And today you’re seeing it, as you stand in the little chapel. Between you and the dome is the Kidron Valley that holds the ancient, Jewish cemetery next to the Golden Gate where Jesus rode his donkey into Jerusalem on what we call Palm Sunday. When your eyes get their fill of the temple mount, you turn and look at your surroundings in this chapel.
Why is this chapel shaped like a teardrop? Why is the view of the Old City so prominent from within the chapel?
If you step back a couple of paces from the window and look down, you will find a stone altar. On it is a mosaic. As your eyes adjust from the brilliant sun on the Temple Mount to the darkness inside the chapel, you make out the subject of the mosaic. It is a chicken! What? A chicken on the side of an altar? There are so many questions here.
In Latin this chapel is called Dominus Flevit – “Jesus wept.”
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!
We had come during Advent 1999 to hear from Israelis and Palestinians about the growing conflict. It was a serious pilgrimage to the Holy Lands, not based on a walk through history only. Our journey was more of a trudge through modern day, religious politics. That morning we had heard from a Palestinian Christian as she sat on a panel discussion with a rabbi and a Palestinian Muslim. She told us that her son had wanted to come home for Christmas the year before, but it was impossible for a Palestinian with a work permit in Jerusalem to procure a pass to travel to his hometown of Bethlehem. Christmas Eve day arrived. No son, of course. The mother looked around that evening. “Where is my daughter?” she cried. Nerves have been on edge for decades. Nervous beyond belief, she searched everywhere and found nothing. That Christmas morning, her daughter walked in, bedraggled and disheveled. Accompanying her was her brother. She had walked the hills to Jerusalem to get him, and they had sneaked back at night to be together as a family. For their Christmas in Bethlehem.
You know the stories. The heartache and the fury.
Our group had witnessed some of this heartache and fury. We had traveled to Hebron the day before, barely getting in because it has been the epicenter of violence in the West Bank and it was closed to tourism. Our small bus passed dozens of Israeli soldiers carrying Uzis. But we came to see the tombs of Abraham and Sarah, and, thankfully, we were allowed to carry on. We entered the town square. A few, skinny merchants moved with their wares toward our bus. For months, no commerce had taken place in this cordoned off part of Palestine. We bought as much as we could carry, to offer our support to them.
We had come to see the Tombs of the Patriarchs, a huge, holy site for Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. All three of our monotheist religions of the world see Abraham as our ancestor. It stood like a big natatorium, the focal point of the entire city.
The building has been severely partitioned. We entered the Jewish side, and we were enthralled by the men with yarmulkes. Each one wore a tallith (or tallit) – a prayer shawl, often in black and white – like the tallith I’m wearing today in gold and white. They leaned over the Torah, rocking as they studied, rocking as Jewish scholars have been praying over the ancient texts for century upon century.
We set foot in the tiny room with the enormous tombs of Abraham and Sarah. We stood in awe of the antiquity. When we moved to the Muslim side, we had to go through a metal detector, of course. The room looked very different from the Jewish side. It was minimalist, almost barren. With only beautiful, oriental rugs on the floor. A man was on his knees in prayer, bowing down to the east. We stood in silence.
Slowly we walked out the door, entered the waiting bus, and sat down. Glancing out the windows as we began to move away from Hebron, we saw a jeep with soldiers speeding through the town, honking at the neat line of children following their teacher into their school. The children scattered in fear of the careening jeep. We closed our eyes and wept.
This has been a difficult sermon to think through and research. As I found the pictures online of the Chapel Where Jesus Wept, the Dominum Flevit, and the Tombs of the Patriarchs in Hebron, my heart was hurting, as it always does when I think about our Holy Lands and the unholy war there.
Rev. Linda Roby, from First Methodist, returned from a trip to Jerusalem just last year. She saw the destruction. She brought home several pieces of arts on consignment since making a living is now so very hard. One was this nativity set, made by a third-generation, Palestinian Christian woodcarver.
I saw it for the first time in her kitchen last week and asked to borrow it. It is made in Bethlehem, of olive wood. Here are Mary, Joseph, the baby, the shepherds. And here is a wall. Very, very tall. The wise men are trying to get to Bethlehem but they can’t. It is THE wall.
The Israeli wall is built on the Palestinian side of “the green line,” the border between Israeli and Palestinian territory agreed on in 1967. The wall winds across Palestinian farmland, which is excavated as the wall is built. Construction started in 2003. On 9 July 2004, it was declared by the International Court of Justice to be in breach of international standards, but that has not prevented construction continuing. When the wall is completed it will be 670 km long. 400 miles, in a country that is smaller than the state of New Jersey. The wall was built as an attempt to bring peace. It is bringing anger. And more fear. The Wall separates many farmers from their farmland and water sources. Is it like the Berlin Wall? The Iron Curtain?
What is going on here? Is this the way to solve problems? Is this what Jesus guides Jerusalem to do?
When the Pharisees came to Jesus, they told him to get out of there because Herod wanted to kill him. Jesus answered by calling Herod a “fox.”
You know what a fox is like: wily, sly, crafty. A fox in a henhouse is death for the hens. But what about the hen in a fox-house?
Jerusalem, Jerusalem… How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings!
A hen in a fox house?! Wow! That turns the world upside down. It sounds completely loony. Who would think that a hen could prevail over a fox? Or a slain lamb over a beast? Or a crucified man over death?
Jesus wants to gather all of the warring factions under his mother-hen wings. He does not want us to return evil for evil. He understands that the capital city – like most capital cities – trashes many dreams of justice for its people. “Jerusalem who kills the prophets.”
He doesn’t want us to use power-over but to move in humility and repentance, working for justice for all. Jesus doesn’t even want to save his life but to give it up for us and for the world.
This is not a sweet, little faith that Jesus is talking about. This is radical and counter-cultural and profound.
So how do we respond?
This I know: we are humans, and we are often looking out for ourselves, blaming and scape-goating and categorizing and mistrusting and finally, fighting.
This I also know: at the heart of these religions, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity are humility, love, repentance, justice, and mercy. These qualities have been eclipsed in all three religions through the ages by wave after wave of human-centered motivations.
Last week I received an email from my dear friend, Hind, who wants our dialogue group to help sponsor a Dallas stop for the touring of “Jerusalem Women Speak,” in which a Jewish Israeli, a Muslim Palestinian, and a Christian Palestinian come together to speak with others who want peace in the Middle East. They have already been to 32 states and now they are planning a swing through Texas, going to Rice, Baylor, and Midwestern State in Wichita Falls. We may want to help get them here.
We have to make it easier for everyone to be diverse. We have to make it easier for moderates to be moderates.
This kind of work is the work of Jesus. This kind of crazy, humble, repenting work of making peace. Of not killing the prophets. It’s making a stand for non-violence. Not launching grenades or building walls or tormenting people with the constant fear of being attacked by a suicide bomber. No. By speaking to each other. Collaborating. Cooperating.
When we see this kind of work through our Christian lens, we see: this is the Mother Hen Christ at work.
But many of us are too stubborn. Too afraid. It reminds me of family relationships. We’re too afraid we can’t trust, so we snipe at one another with our caustic words and disdaining looks. We protect our turf. We want to be right. And in the end, what do we have? What are you left with when you’ve convinced everyone that you’re right? You’re left alone. How important is it to be right for heaven’s sake? Isn’t it more important to listen and learn? To say the four hardest words humans can say to one another, “You may be right”?
On April 24, from 9-noon and on the following Monday night, I will be leading a class on couples communication. We will be using as one of our textbooks Non-Violent Communication, by Marshall Rosenberg, who has taught endless hours of this kind of peace-making with Palestinians and Israelis, with Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, with gangs in the United States and even with couples. We’ve got to find a better way to communicate. We’ve got to do better than to kill the prophets. To kill each other.
How do we respond?
Are we too stubborn to find shelter under a mother hen’s wings?
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!
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