Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

John 1:29-42

Beloved in Christ,

Last weekend, it might have seemed like the regular church coffee hour, except that the coffee was thicker and had more of a kick and the cookies were from a bakery nearby, the same one that made the bread we just had for communion. Clearly, it was an occasion in the life of The Lutheran Church of Beit Sahour, a town next to Bethlehem and one of the oldest Christian towns in the world.

The name Beit Sahour may come from Jesus’ original language, Aramaic, meaning “the house of those who watch during the night,” a reference to the nearby shepherd’s fields where the angels appeared on that first Christmas night. Some say the name comes from the Arabic and means “the house of the magicians,” referencing the magi who came through the town following the star.” I wondered what that must have been like, looking out the window to see a caravan of camels plodding down the steep streets into Bethlehem, which is as close to Bethlehem as Gloria Dei is to Macalester College. Close enough to wonder if it’s maybe there that the star came to rest.

As my sister chatted with a woman whose voice sang the Gloria behind us with a strength that was an announcement in and of itself, I met a man who welcomed me with genuine warmth. We chatted politely I asked about his family. “I had a brother,’ he said, “but he was killed in Gaza while sheltering in the church.”  All I could say was, “I’m sorry,” which felt both my expression of sympathy and my confession, knowing that most of those bombs were manufactured in my own country and paid for by taxes that I paid. He went on, “You are my brother, too. You came to see. We are one in Christ Jesus.”

There it was. The Epiphany; a revelation. Maybe the star HAD stopped over Beit Sahour. Here was my witness to the presence of the divine in human flesh. One of the shepherds, one who watches in the night, one who trusts the resurrection.

Then he said, “Habibi,حبيبي, which means my friend or my brother, literally my beloved, “Where is your church?”

Now, first a confession: I lied. I answered Minneapolis because I learned that the answer St. Paul was often followed by, “Where is that?” Trying to explain The Twin Cities was usually more information that people were really interested in, so to stick with the main point, I just answered, “Minneapolis.” He paused and said, “Ah, so you are learning about our life on your streets.”

Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. A’tina a salaam. Danos tu paz. Grant us peace.

Pastor Mitri Rabeb, the president at Dar Al-Kalima University in Bethlehem said it this way. Colonization is being made great all around the world. New weapons and strategies are tested here in the West Bank and then exported to the world. If human rights mean nothing here, they mean nothing anywhere. We see this in Ukraine, Venezuela, Greenland. We see this now in Minneapolis. Your Vice President, the second in command, said, “ICE has absolute immunity.” People taken from their homes. The military is masked and is being used to terrorize brown and black people. Your neighborhoods are being colonized by the same power that created Nazi Germany. This is the moment when “Never again,” becomes “Yet again.”

There it was. Maybe not the Christmas star. But the harsh, blinding spotlight of clarity. Epiphany. Revelation. Two worlds and a choice. “Come and See,” is the invitation that says, “So what about you? Where do you stand?”

I need to be careful because I do not want to communicate that all the people of Israel, or Jews in this country, have monolithic support for the Netanyahu government or the strategy of building settlements to slowly and deliberately take Palestinian land. Our partners at Mt. Zion call for peace, as well as justice, equity, and liberation. Rabbi Spilker has regularly traveled to Israel to witness to a different peace and to protest the current government.

In John’s gospel, the people who sense that something is stirring in this person, Jesus. He was like the light that has been present from the beginning, a WORD from God, certainly someone WITH God, and perhaps WAS God. But instead of engaging in what that meant, they simply asked:

Where are you staying?

Where is it that you are dwelling?

Jesus, rabbi, where do you reside?

 

Come, come and see.

Come and spend some time residing with me.

Come to Bethlehem and see, Christ the Lord, the newborn king.

Come to Beit Sahour, really see your habaibi who peer into the darkness watching, believing, trusting despite the rubble, that there are angels on the way; there is liberation about to be born.

Come to 34^th and Portland in Minneapolis.

Come to George Floyd Square.

Come, you who celebrate the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr. yet another star, an epiphany.

Come to rooms that do not claim to be Number One but symbolize the 99 that are found.

Come to our schools, our groceries, our jails, our shame as a country.

Come to see where I reside, where I have always dwelt, where you will behold the birth of your liberation from sin, death, and the devil that turns our blood into ICE.

Come, come and see this suffering, this deep darkness, this evil that arms itself and takes away those who are beloved to the Lamb.

Today we return to the renunciations to the baptismal liturgy. A NO before we say YES. Your answer to the questions, if you choose to consider being a follower is “We renounce them.”

Come to those who renounce the devils and all their empty promises,

come to those who renounce all the forces that defy the light,

come to those who so often drawn away from their own salvation?

Dare we say to those whom God sees and loves:

Come to Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, named for the angel’s song, another community on the edge of the shepherd’s field who has witnessed the light and trusts that light will come; who are willing to reach out a hand to be the light.

Behold, the Lamb of God who stands against the sin of the world.

This our bedrock. Mitri Raheb, when he talks about revelation, says that believing in God means that we believe that there is a power that is greater than empire. It is precisely this witness that gives strength and courage, that turn anger not into bitterness but into perseverance and resistance, a witness to the kind of hope that has greater longevity than any militarized force or any worldview that freezes out the ones God loves.

The Palestinian church witnesses still to this light. And we now learn, in our own way, what it means to live their life. Maybe it’s what the faithful who live on the edges of the shepherd’s fields have always known, the ones who may live in darkness but expect and watch for the light, who become the plodding, moving, determined, and exotic in a world awash in violence, the magicians of liberation.

On this MLK weekend, let the light of the witnesses shine. The hymn for this day, Lift Every Voice and Sing is considered to be the Black National Anthem, because it contains a history that we must not forget to see. The hymn names the ongoing wound and grief carried by those descended from enslaved people and those who live in terror of the Masters. It begins, however, with “Lift EVERY Voice and Sing.” This is not the wound of one particular people, “their” history, but the history for all who bear the wounds of white supremacy, colonialism, including people of European ancestry. Those of us in this room, who must answer when asked how we’re holding up in these days, must say, “I’m privileged.”

The racial divide in the United States, the unacknowledged grief, and the societal structures that make supremacy invisible to many, hurt all of us. Singing this hymn, experiencing the poetry of James Weldon Johnson as truth, and recognizing the sacred role this hymn plays in African American life is an act of prophetic resistance, repentance, and solidarity with every part of God’s beloved community. We need to sing it intentionally, reverently, boldly, and at a pace that allows us to take in the deep experience that it represents.

God of our weary years; God of our silent tears, thou who has brought us thus far on the way; thou who hast by thy might let us into the light, keep us forever in the path we pray.