Children hold hands in Za’atri Refugee Camp in northern Jordan, caring for thousands of Syrian refugees.

Lutheran World Federation President Munib Younan, Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Land, released his Christmas message this week, urging people to think of Christmas as a time to remember the refugees among us, even as the Christ child was born to a refugee family.

We can see the faces of the Holy Family today in refugee families forced to flee from Syria into the Za’atri refugee camp in Jordan, in Somali refugee families in the Dadaab complex in northeastern Kenya, and in other refugees throughout the world. In Europe today, we see the Holy Family in the experiences of Roma communities. An ancient nomadic culture, Roma are still exposed to marginalization simply because they do not conform to dominant culture.

Many refugees are uprooted with little hope for a solution. I am one of them, a Palestinian who carries a refugee card. I know what it means to be rejected, neglected and stateless. My heart breaks for every refugee, for every family forced from their home. In this Christmas season, we know that Christ finds his manger in every person who seeks asylum, in each of the nearly 44 million refugees and internally displaced people throughout the world. Forced to escape Herod’s persecution, Christ experienced abuses of power and the effects of armed struggle.

The child of the manger continues to understand the plight of every refugee wherever they are. The duty of the church is to be a safe haven for all refugees, asylum seekers and migrants. To them we say, “Do not be afraid. A Savior is born to you and the whole world.” They must find a place in our inn.

We in the Lutheran communion continue to commit ourselves to accompanying God’s people, especially those who are marginalized and displaced. Our call is to provide refuge from violence and poverty, shelter in the storms, and shade from the heat. Today, the LWF is directly serving nearly 1.5 million refugees throughout the world. That means that each of our 143 member churches is responding to the needs of 10,500 refugees. This generous spirit reflects the strength of our communion working together to respond to God’s call to welcome the stranger.

Read the full Christmas message | Read LWF press release

httpv://youtu.be/TXMOYdNFGp4

Pastor Ashraf Tannous is the newest pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land.  He is serving the Lutheran Church in Beit Sahour.  Here he discusses his life and feelings as a Palestinian Christian from a refugee family.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bNqaZwXLVo&feature=share&list=UU9FKTVBng6XeDUEArww1S3g

Pastor Mitri Raheb of Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem shares an advent greeting from the Holy Land. Christmas Lutheran does a simulcast Christmas Service between Bethlehem and the National Cathedral in Washington DC each year.  Find out more about this year’s simulcast on Saturday, Dec. 22 at 10 am EST.   Check out the new website for Bright Stars of Bethlehem, a US organization that supports the work of DIYAR Consortium, begun by Pastor Raheb in cooperation with  the ELCJHL.

In another article, Pastor Raheb reflects on the Christmas story in his hometown of Bethlehem:

Bethlehem at the birth of Jesus was a besieged city. Today Bethlehem is again a besieged city surrounded from three sides by a 25 foot high concrete wall.  So what if Jesus were to be born today in Bethlehem? If Jesus were to be born this year, he would not be born in Bethlehem. Mary and Joseph would not be allowed to enter from the Israeli checkpoint, and so too the Magi. The shepherds would be stuck inside the walls, unable to leave their little town. Jesus might have been born at the checkpoint like so many Palestinian children while having the Magi and shepherds on both sides of the wall.

Full article

On the way to celebrate what happened in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, let us not forget the people who yearn for peace with justice now in Bethlehem and all over the Holy Land. Here are some Advent reflections by various people and organizations to help us remember:

• Kairos Palestine’s Advent Devotions
• The Israel Palestine Mission Network Advent Devotional
• Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP) Advent Reflections 2012

A recent gathering celebrated the 3rd anniversary of the original Moment of Truth document and released a new statement.

The Kairos movement began 3 years ago from Bethlehem when a group of Palestinian Christians released a document called A Moment of Truth: a Word of Faith, Hope and Love from the Heart of Palestinian Suffering.   Recently, a gathering was held to celebrate the third anniversary of the movement and produced a document:

The Palestinian Kairos document was issued at a time when the political process was facing a stalemate. Amid a diminishing hope for peace, it came to present a ray of hope which contributed to its fast and widespread reception on both the local and international level.

At the conference commemorating the third anniversary of Kairos, the church, as a group of believers, agreed that we are all suffering and that we are all on board  of the same ship. The differences we have are in form rather than content and substance. Islamic and Christian unity is based on a solid sense of belonging to Arab nationalism, citizenship, tolerance, diversity and coexistence.

1. From Despair to Hope

We heard your voices:  

The people of Gaza are living witnesses of hope in their resistance, steadfastness and aspiration for a better future. Their steadfastness is reflected in their resolute insistence to remain on their homeland. At a time when the Israeli occupation is destroying everything in Gaza, the Christian institutions are building more schools and expanding their services.

From the Galilee, we heard the voices of Palestinian youth who feel a sense of the loss of identity and the need for handling this through more contact and  communication with their Palestinian sisters and brothers in Palestine in order to restore the Palestinian memory and their sense of belonging to the Arab nations.

From the Palestinians in Diaspora and based on testimonies of young returnees: there is a need for action to encourage the young people to return to their homeland. A national plan should be put forward in order to encourage emigrants to return home and to familiarize them with Palestine, the Arabic language and the Arab Palestinian culture.

2. Kairos: A choice between negotiations and resistance

Israel is heading towards extremism and is pulling the rest of the region into continued violence.

Human beings need to break out from their religious and doctrinal isolation in order to o truly know themselves, their humanity and that of others. Only then can they emerge from this circle of violence. 

Read full document.

The original Moment of Truth document was not intended to be a balanced paper on the situation between Palestinians and Israelis, but a word from Palestinian Christians about their faith, beliefs, hope, life and reality.  On its website, Kairos Palestine says this about the original document:

A delegation from the Lutheran World Federation, including LWF President Bishop Munib Younan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land and LWF General Secretary Martin Junge visited one of the ELCJHL schools in Ramallah recently. 

Bishop Younan said that the mission of the ELCJHL schools is to prepare young Palestinian women and men to build their state.

“We teach our students to respect human rights—especially women’s rights—to respect freedom of religion and to dialogue with other religions. We emphasize peace education in our schools, and the right for each and every person to live in dignity,” said the ELCJHL bishop who had previously served as pastor of the Ramallah congregation.

The importance of Christian education was also a subject when the LWF delegation met with the Palestinian National Authority Prime Minister Dr Salam Fayyad. The premier noted that the role of Palestinian Christians in Palestinian society was indispensable, and urged encouragement for their efforts.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Hope, one of the six congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land (ELCJHL), was founded in the mid 1950s as Palestinian refugees fled to the Ramallah area after the war. The School of Hope began in 1965 as a kindergarten with ten students and two teachers, and graduated its first class of three students in 1979. The school has since been serving the greater Ramallah area and continues to grow. It is currently serving more than 450 students—comprising 20 percent Christians and 80 percent Muslims.

And the constant expansion has led the European Union (EU) to fund construction of a 4,000 square meter building that will accommodate around 500 students, who are now located in the old campus. The new school campus is expected to be ready in 2013 when it will be handed over to the church. The construction of the new campus comes as a result of the EU’s continuous support to the Palestinian education sector not only by increasing the physical capacity of school buildings but also by developing the quality of education in the occupied Palestinian territories.

During the meeting with the premier, General Secretary Martin Junge reiterated the crucial role the Christian communities play in the region through their institutions.

“The importance of the Lutheran schools in the Palestinian context became evident again in the conversation with the Palestinian Prime Minister,” Junge said after the meeting. “I was pleased that the Prime Minister brought up the issue and the importance of the Christian presence among the Palestinians, as a matter of identity for the Palestinian people,” he added.

From the LWF article – Read the full LWF article

Jane Harries, a Quaker from the United Kingdom, has recently returned from a three–month stint in the West Bank, working with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). She was based in Yanoun, a small Palestinian village near Nablus, living with its people and observing how they relate to Israelis from nearby settlement communities and the IDF.  Listen to her 10-minute podcast with journalist Roy Jenkins of the BBC about her work there as part of this ecumenical programme.

This program came under attack recently by some in the UK who described the program as biased against Israel.  Despite the controversy, the Church of England voted to support the program and others working for peace and justice in the Holy Land.  The short motion commits the Church to support: the work of EAPPI (including making “use of the experience of returning participants”), aid agencies working with Palestinians, “Israelis and Palestinians in all organisations working for justice and peace in the area” (citing Parents Circle – Family Forum specifically), and “organisations that work to ensure” the “continuing presence [of Christian Palestinians] in the Holy Land”.

The ELCA has sponsored many Ecumenical Accompaniers since the program began in 2002, when the heads of churches in Jerusalem asked the World Council of Churches and churches all over the world to support their Christian sisters and brothers in Palestine and act in the face of increasing violence and the extended occupation in Israel/Palestine. 

Find out more about the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme for Palestine and Israel in the US.

Here Palestinians Sally and MaryAn and wall team leader Lisa Jeffreys greet youth gathering participants in Palestine.

Youth at the ELCA Youth Gathering were guided through a section called The Wall, with exhibits from places in the world where there are actual or metaphorical walls between people. There were examples of how God is helping to tear down the walls between people. The Palestinian exhibit had 12-foot walls, information, maps, history and videos about the situation.  Many were detained in a prison for a short-time due to lack of proper permits and many added graffiti to the walls in paint.

Palestine youth team member Jenna Dwierzma prepares to write a letter to her member of congress to protest Palestinian home demolitions by Israelis, as a recent Action Alert from the ELCA Washington office requested.

All of the youth exited through a section called “Making us Whole,” a chance to act, reflect and pray about what they had seen.  An advocacy station allowed people to write letters to their members of congress. Here Jenna Dwierzma prepares to write a letter about ending Palestinian home demolitions by Israelis, as a recent action alert from the ELCA Washington office requested.

httpv://youtu.be/m4oCyZjMZOw

If you’ve ever been to Jerusalem and wanted to worship in English, you may have been welcomed in the English-speaking congregation of the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer.  The main Lutheran Church of the Redeemer is an Arabic Lutheran  congregation, and also hosts a German-speaking congregation as well.  It is one of the 6 churches of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land, a small but vibrant and vocal force for justice and peace in the Holy Land.  It’s Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Munib Younan, is also the president of the Lutheran World Federation.

Each Sunday, this is the worship home for many internationals of all denominations who work for justice and peace in the area, as well as countless pilgrim groups just visiting.  If you’ve ever been there, you’ll know what a gift it is for the community, as this video by Laurin Whitnet-Gottbrath shows. Laurin is a Young Adult in Global Mission in Jerusalem finishing up her mission year.  Learn more about the program here.

The Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb has edited a new book called The Biblical Text in the Context of Occupation: Towards a new hermeneutics of liberation.  A wide variety of scholars write on the importance and meaning of the biblical narrative in the midst of occupation and the need for liberation in the Palestinian context.  Read more about it and find it soon on Amazon.com.

Here is the table of contents:

1. Toward a New Hermeneutics of Liberation : A Palestinian Christian Perspective    Mitri Raheb

2. Engaging the Palestinian Theological-Critical Project of Liberation: A Critical Dialogue   Fernando F. Segovia

3. Palestinian Theology: Between Construction and Identification: A Comparative Analysis of the Theology of Naim Stifan Ateek and Mitri Raheb      Peter Lodberg

4. Toward an Emancipatory Palestinian Theology: Hermeneutical Paradigms and Horizons   Luis N. Rivera-Pagán

5. (Home)Land, Diaspora, Identity, and the Bible in Imperial Geopolitics:   What does the Asia-Pacific Region have to do with Israel-Palestine?    Eleazar S. Fernandez

6. Interpreting the Bible, Interpreting the World:  Anglo-American Christian Zionism and Palestinian Christian Concerns Robert O. Smith

7. The Hermeneutical Predicament: Why We Do Not Read the Bible in the Same Way and Why it Matters for Palestinian Advocacy    Julia M. O’Brien

8. Talmudic Terrorism in Bethlehem   Santiago E. Slabodsky

9. One Text, Many Meanings: Reading a non-Zionist Judaism from the Hebrew Bible   Steven Friedman

10. The Contribution of Hermeneutics to Peace and Reconciliation     J.H. (Hans) de Wit

11. Arab Christian Fundamentalist Reading of the Book of Daniel:  A Critique     Munther Isaac

12. Biblical Hermeneutics in the Kairos Palestine Document     Jamal Khader

13. The Context of the Christians of the Arab World as a Key to Biblical Interpretation according to the Six First Pastoral Letters of the Eastern Catholic Patriarchs      Rafiq Khoury

14. I Am a Presbyterian Christian: Toward a Dialogical Contextual Hermeneutics   Patricia K. Tull

15. What has the Bible to do with us?   Erik Aurelius

16. The Theological and Historical David: Contextual Reading     Samuel Pagán

17. The Ambiguity of Identity and Responsibility toward the Other       Dexter Callender, Jr

18. “Contact Zone”: Exploring Land, Liberation, and Life      Yak-Hwee Tan

19. The Dignity of Resistance in Solidarity:   The Story of Rizpah   Allan Boesak