Читать книгу You Have Heard It Said - Jonathan McRay - Страница 6

Once a month, Musalaha’s staff and participants gather at the Talitha Qumi School in Beit Jala, northwest of Bethlehem for curriculum teaching. The German-operated school is the best location for such meetings: it’s in the West Bank, so Palestinians can attend, but it’s accessible by Israelis because the main road down the hill leads to settlements in Area C. Musalaha’s curriculum teaching seminars deal with important topics related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, endeavoring to find the tense place for shared-faith reconciliation within that conflict.

In the middle of October, everyone gathered in a corner room on the top floor of the school’s guesthouse. We sat around a wide table that filled up the center of the room and papers for note-taking were passed around the table’s edge. Even in October, the heat in the room, fueled by large numbers crowded in a small space, was enough to make people squirm uncomfortably in their seats. The windows were opened and the cool air came in with a faint scent of pines from the courtyard.

Evan Thomas unbuttoned the top button of his short-sleeve shirt; the heat still lingered even with all the windows wide open. Evan, the Chairman of the Board of Musalaha, continued his presentation from the previous month of a study on Israeli Messianic Jewish identity, attempting to unpack the intricate layers involved in such a label. Beads of sweat dripped beneath the rim of his glasses, perched on the edge of his nose as he read slowly from a thick packet of papers. He used his hands frequently when he spoke, and his gestures were smooth, like sign language, inviting the listener to relax and become part of the conversation. And the listeners did join. Throughout his lecture, he was interrupted by enthusiastic affirmations and perplexed questions, and he would softly set the packet of papers down and lean forward toward the speaker. He seemed to have an incredible gift for making the other person in a conversation feel valued, like their opinion was really worth listening to. At times, the discussions turned into arguments and brows furrowed and words were sharpened, but Evan’s large hands started moving and he gently interceded and quelled the rising storm. The man was a natural mediator.

After the lecture, everyone migrated downstairs to a buffet meal and sat in close huddles around long tables, consuming pita and consumed by conversations of identity. Evan and I moved to a circle of couches and chairs on the other side of the room from the tables. He tried to stifle a yawn and he scratched his buzzed hair, thinning near the back of his head. Aside from his role as Chairman of Musalaha’s Board, Evan is also the Chairman of the National Evangelism Committee of Israel and is on the Board of Directors of the Israel College of the Bible. Not to mention that he is one of three pastoral elders for Beit Asaph, a Messianic congregation based in Netanya. Despite his busy schedule, he had excitedly agreed to meet with me and afterwards to take me to Jerusalem’s central bus station; I would be spending the weekend hiking and camping around the Sea of Galilee with my housemates. His pleasant Kiwi accent easily gave away his country of origin. Herschel and Esther, his grandparents, were originally from Jerusalem, but left at the start of the twentieth century, settling down in the green hills and white mountains of New Zealand. In university, I spent a semester studying in Australia and hopped over to New Zealand, although all of my time was spent on the south island and Evan was from the north island. He was born in Whakatane, a fishing town on the Eastern Bay of Plenty, which, on a map, actually looks more North.

“I have a great love for the sea,” he said with a smile, leaning back with his right arm stretched comfortably on the top of the couch. “The outdoors were a large part of my education. I still have a boat, a small boat, because my wife Maala’s and my home in Netanya is very near the Mediterranean. It’s only about a ten minute drive from our home.”

The seat cushions suddenly began sliding out from under him, so he sat forward as we talked, thoughtfully rubbing his large hands together. Unfortunately, we had limited time together: Evan had to make his way west to Netanya and I needed to catch a bus to Tiberias. So, Evan provided a brief summary of his earlier years and conversion, but promised to send me a story he had written which detailed both at greater length.

Evan grew up in a secular Jewish home. His grandparents were deeply devoted to their religious faith and spoke with fervent longing for “the Land,” but his parents decided to allow their children to make their own spiritual decisions, when they were older. And for the early part of his life, Evan was content, and he studied and married and began a career in his native New Zealand. But things began to change in 1977, two years after his marriage, when Evan was twenty-four years old.

Maala, now a teacher and guidance counselor, gave “her life to Yeshua (Jesus).” And, Evan says, a radical change occurred in their life together. In the story he sent me, Evan writes that “[s]uddenly I had an ‘angel’ for a wife.” The tensions that had so far infused their marriage vanished, or at least were resolved more calmly.

“As a result,” he writes, “rather than object to her faith I proceeded to encourage her, inviting a local Christian Pastor to teach a weekly Bible study in our home (which I didn’t attend), insisting she regularly attend services, to which I would often take her.”

But Evan didn’t immediately follow in his wife’s footsteps, and his enthusiasm for his wife’s transformation grew from the absence of conflict and her newfound service-oriented heart.

“To this day I am ashamed of my selfishness.”

Almost a year later, while Evan was studying at Massey Uni-versity, he impulsively popped into a movie theater in order to escape his intense studies for a few hours. The film was The Hiding Place, based on Corrie Ten Boom’s account of her family’s life-threatening sacrifice to save Jews from the Nazis in Holland. As he sat in the darkness, Evan felt something changing, like his hardened heart was being kneaded and leavened by the story he encountered. His academic explorations of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures slowly became more personal “as I quietly gave my life to Yeshua and knew His forgiveness.”

In the midst of familial concern, Evan’s commitment to Yeshua caused him to return to his Jewish roots. And for him, as for many others, this newfound belief that Yeshua was the Messiah of the Jews, and the Gentiles, coincided with an instantaneous desire for “the Land.” That faraway place of his grandparent’s stories emerged in his thoughts. Then, one morning in 1979, he woke Maala up and dictated words that were running through his mind: “Prepare, for I will take you to the Land and there I will teach you much.” Evan interpreted these biblical words as a direct message and he and Maala immediately packed their bags and set off for a kibbutz in Israel’s Sharon Valley, where they worked for the next fourteen months.

“This period was to be the ‘honeymoon’ of our walk with the Lord and the formation of our relationship with Israel.”

The plan was always to return to New Zealand, but Evan slowly began to feel differently, that perhaps Israel should be their home. Evan became convinced that “the ingathering of the Jewish people” to Israel was necessary. He and Maala returned to New Zealand in December of 1980 and began preparing for aliyah, their permanent immigration as Jews to the State of Israel. In 1983, they went back to Israel.

Evan and Maala came to Netyana; they had loved the Sharon Valley during their time on the kibbutz, and so decided to make the coastal city their home. The sea still called to Evan, even if it was a different one. For six months they studied Hebrew in their crammed apartment and attempted to integrate into their new culture. They found jobs and reconnected with a group of local Messianic Jews that they had known several years before. Evan was soon asked to serve as an elder and his desire to step more fully into ministry began to grow. After four years, he devoted himself full-time to the congregation of Beit Asaph, the House of the Convener. Begun in the 1970s by David and Lisa Loden (who is also on Musalaha’s Board), Beit Asaph originated as a consolidation of two house groups, and this grassroots foundation, along with its encompassing name, has led to a more inclusive vision. Beit Asaph is comprised of more than two-hundred members from various ethnic backgrounds, including immigrants from Russia, Ethiopia, and South America. The congregation is also marked by a deep commitment to helping the severely disabled in their community.

Evan shifted as the seat cushions began to slide again. Two German volunteers were carrying the dirty dishes and empty food platters back to the kitchen. I turned the conversation to Palestinians.

“In first coming to Israel,” Evan said, running both hands through his whitening beard, “I had little or no interaction with Palestinian Christians. And my interaction with Palestinian communities was with my military service in Gaza and areas of the West Bank, like Hebron, Qalqiliya, and Tulkarem. I was sent all over during the first intifada in the early 1980s.”

He spoke slowly and carefully, choosing each word.

“My perception of Palestinians was as a soldier seeing them as a hostile environment to my own. I didn’t have any personal enmity to Palestinians. It came as military-based, as a result of my training. I just saw them as an enemy to my own people. In a civilian setting I had no negative interactions. The word ‘Palestinian’ didn’t come up at that point. Reconciliation, as far as I knew, was not discussed as an important issue in the believing communities.”

Evan seemed unaware of a wider, deeper conflict between the two peoples until a large prayer conference, which included both Jewish and Palestinian Christians, in the mid-1980s.

“I don’t remember much about the content, but I do remember the conference turned into a total debacle when Gazan Palestinian Christians began to hand out fliers, what about I don’t recall, and that infuriated the Israelis and all was disbanded. My recollection is imperfect, but it seems to me now that the conflict with our larger communities was suppressed because people said we are one with Christ and that there is no conflict.”

Apparently that wasn’t entirely true.

Evan finished military training after his first four months in Israel in 1983, but reserve duty was required for the following fifteen years, and he was called up in 1987 when the first intifada broke out. In 1988, Evan was on combat duty in Gaza City. He was stationed at the entrance to the city and performed body searches on Palestinian men passing through the gates, most of whom were attempting to obtain permits to visit families in the West Bank.

“We had been trained not to look into the faces of the people we were searching,” Evan said, holding his hand over his eyes, “so as not to become acquainted or familiar with anyone.”

But one particular day, he did look up, and even though he had been taught that there weren’t any faces to look at, he found the face of a young man looking back into his. And they recognized each other.

“From that conference!” Evan declared.

An Israeli soldier and a Palestinian recognizing one another in Gaza City made for an awkward situation, but Evan quickly realized that they were faced with a much larger dilemma.

“If my superior had seen me I would have been severely reprimanded, and for him to greet an Israeli soldier would not look good in the eyes of his people either. The interaction between us was a true example of facing your enemy as a brother. This was the same year, and not long before, Musalaha was forming and Salim approached me to help form this important ministry.”

His large hands were folded in front of him and he looked at the tiled floor.

“This memory has stayed with me so vividly, that I believe, John, the Lord ordained it in order to soften my heart. But each successive tour of duty in the West Bank challenged me enormously, as did becoming aware of the pain of the second-class status of Palestinian citizens in Israel. Not so much my politics,” he added rather quickly, “but my theology was sharpened.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant. Were his politics not changed because his presuppositions, whatever they were, were reinforced, or because his politics were not formed enough beforehand? He thought for a moment and affirmed the latter.

“I come from New Zealand, and politics there are just not that important. So at the time I was pretty much an open book. Most of my theology that developed as a result of my early training in New Zealand no longer seemed as relevant after two years of being here in the Land. I was, however, left with a deep relationship with Yeshua, a connection to the land, and wonderment in discovering my Jewish identity. As I said, my theology was sharpened in these tours, especially things such as 1 John 4, especially verse 20.”

I couldn’t remember the words offhand and had to look the verse up later: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.”

Evan took a class on biblical counseling and ministry skills among indigenous church leaders at a study center in Tel Aviv. There he met Salim Munayer, an energetic Israeli Palestinian from Lod who was both a student and director at the center. Through the intensive course, the two got to know one another intimately and discovered they shared an intense desire for reconciliation, for musalaha and ritzui, between Israelis and Palestinians. And visionary Salim’s candid personality worked well with pastoral Evan’s diplomatic nature.

“Salim shared with me one of those visions, about forming an organization that sought to bring about that reconciliation by first bringing together people from the Israeli community”—and his right hand swept in like a broom—“and people from the Palestinian community”—and his left hand swept in and clasped with the other—“through the commonality of a shared faith.”

This was certainly a huge undertaking. I wondered if he felt apprehensive at all, but Evan cut in before I finished the question.

“I had absolutely no hesitation, because I believe the Lord prepared my heart. I say that deliberately, not as superficial God-talk that so many use. I am too down-to-earth practical to get overly enthusiastic, as Salim always is, but I was never hesitant.”

Not long after, Musalaha began to take shape, with Salim as the Director and a Board of Oversight equally divided between leaders from the Palestinian Christian and Messianic Jewish communities. This structure, which allows decisions to be made by both sides, has become a major element in Musalaha’s endeavor for conversational equality. Evan was fully engaged since the beginning, helping develop the organizational infrastructure and participating in desert encounters. At first, the desert trips consisted only of young adults, Palestinians and Israelis.

“The first desert encounter in 1990 was highly successful, even with fifty people,” Evan said. “The desert as a classroom was the great leveler.”

Soon, the three-to-five day trips began to include well-established religious leaders, men and women, from both sides. As deeper and more challenging issues arose, the desert became a place where people learned to listen. The wilderness stripped everyone of their comforts and familiarity, creating the safe space where the stranger could be given a name and a story. And those that committed to the emptying process began to form intimate relationships with the people they once called “enemy.” The desert was where possibility was present for dried bones to be filled with new breath.

Then Salim began to form a theology of reconciliation influenced by Eph 2:14–16: “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility . . . His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.” Musalaha became recognized as an expert in reconciliation in some areas of the country, and the recognition spread overseas until study groups began coming to learn from Musalaha and to raise awareness of the fiery conflict. Evan and Salim began traveling and speaking together. After Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994, the two brothers crossed the Jordan River to meet with Christian communities, many of which were Palestinian refugees. Evan and Salim still work closely together, communicating any time major decisions arise.

Evan looked at his watch and decided it was best to be on the move. We stuffed our papers in our bags and drove down the hill to the main road. We passed too easily through the checkpoint and drove into Jerusalem. We soon arrived in West Jerusalem, busy with traffic and pedestrians. We talked about other things, about the sea and about gardening, but before I exited the car I remarked that Beit Asaph certainly sounded like a very inclusive congregation. I wondered if Evan ever had problems with racism stemming from the conflict.

“Fortunately,” he said, checking and adjusting his rearview mirror, “I have not had to confront overt racism toward Palestinians in my own community but I have had to confront racism in general. Some of the strongest was toward Germans or ethnic groups in my own community. Or between Jews and Gentiles. A lot of it was based in racist or elitist thinking. So the things I was learning in the field with Musalaha made me highly sensitized to such views and growing tools to confront it. Large numbers of my congregation have had interactions with Palestinians through Musalaha. Several of my colleagues have gone to be leaders in inter-community movements. There’s no doubt that at times our positions, or rather agendas, have been viewed with some disdain and suspicion, both theologically and sociologically. But meeting with our Palestinian brothers and sisters is part of our basic vision. It is necessary.”