InterFaith Peace Builders Experience and the Good Samaritan:

Which Side of the Road are You On?

A month has passed since my intensive and emotional experience of Palestine and Israel. This Holy Land pilgrimage was a walk in the steps of the living Jesus encountered in the lives of Palestinian Christians, Jews and Muslims as well in the lives of Israeli Jewish nationals and Israeli Christian and Muslim citizens. The pain and sadness of being bombarded by new experiences has now passed. The question of how to deal with a totally new experience of violence and injustice lingers on.

            My pilgrimage to the Holy Land seventeen years ago was a traditional spiritual experience of walking in the steps of the historical Jesus.  Then the Hebrew and Greek scriptures came alive by following in his steps.  From his birth in Nazareth, through his ministry in Galilee to his suffering and death in Jerusalem, my faith took on new depth. Holy Scriptures call ever since called up the heat and glare of the desert sun, the hustle and bustle of Jerusalem, the beauty of the verdant Galilee, the little details like the multicolored lilies of the field robed in splendor. The burden laid on my soul by that pilgrimage that has stayed with me was to be faithful to the present experience of the spiritual reality Jesus.

            In Luke’s gospel the Parable of the Good Samaritan appears as Jesus’ answer to a lawyer’s question “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus tells him that to inherit eternal life, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”  In the parable a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. In 1992 and 2008 I also went down a road from Jerusalem to Jericho. In the parable the man fell into the hands of robbers who stripped him, beat him and left him on the side of the road half dead. A priest was going down the road and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise a Levite saw him and passed by on the other side. 

Was the priest in a hurry to make an important appointment? Was the Levite fearful of a foreigner in dire straits? The parable is silent. But a Samaritan, someone from a different country and religion, came near, saw him, and was moved with pity. The story relates the care given the victim by the Samaritan. Jesus concludes the parable by asking the lawyer who of these three was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers? The lawyer responds, “The one who showed him mercy.”  Jesus concludes, “Go and do likewise.”

            Why does this parable accompany my reflections upon my recent experience listening to the simple stories of Christians, Jews and Muslims both Israeli and Palestinian working through active nonviolent protest for justice in the Israeli occupied territories of the Palestinian West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza strip?  Put most simply, it seems to hold the key to discerning the responsibility laid upon me by this simple experience of being an active listener from the United States. Just as the priest and Levite passed by on the other side, so too I could go on with my life unmoved and unchanged.  There is so much to do … work, family and personal life … there is no time to add one more cause.  The Holy Land pilgrimage could remain a special experience in which the suffering of the Palestinians and the domination of the Israelis enriches my feeling for the scriptures’ story of the historical rule of the Romans over the Jews at the time of Jesus. But what am I called to do if like the Samaritan I am moved … both figuratively and literally … by this experience and this new feeling remains with me despite the passage of time?

            What does one do when totally out of the blue while busy leading one’s life, an experience that is foreign to all you know comes upon you? You have had that experience. You carry it with you forever. Is it a life changing experience or simply another personal growth moment, a vacation trip, an adult learning experience?  What if like the Samaritan, one feels moved. Are the oppressed Palestinian people who daily experience pain of the occupation my neighbors?  If so, what responsibility do I have to stop along the road? How does my compassion for suffering Palestinians, my neighbors in the parable’s telling, affect me upon my return to the United States?

            Put most simply, over and over these Holy Land interfaith peace builders called upon me to stop, listen, return to the U.S. and tell their story. Put most simply, I can ignore but cannot evade this burden laid upon my soul by meeting Jesus in the people of Palestine. How and where I tell their story is not clear.  The obligation to be faithful to the experience, telling the story is now an integral part of loving my neighbor. Just as the lawyer in the parable desired to be faithful by loving God and neighbor, my desire to live faithfully loving God and neighbor now extends to people in Holy Land places I cannot forget, ignore or rationalize away.

            Palestinian elders remembered the catastrophe of leaving home and land during the fighting of 1948 and never being allowed to return. The right of return of refugees now has a human face. The Israeli mothers and fathers whose sons and daughters are called upon to enforce the degrading occupation of Palestinian lands told painful stories of what this does to the oppressor. Israeli combatants for peace are real people. Palestinian villagers, students and entrepreneurs told how they refuse to go away, refuse to be forgotten, refuse to be powerless but will use creative nonviolent means to resist the continued ethnic cleansing and separation (dare we say apartheid?) imposed upon them daily.

Peace in the Holy Land is not black and white, no good guys and bad guys, no easy resolution to the claims of the Israeli and the Palestinian. What is clear is that I think differently of peace in the Holy Land. There is a vocabulary, geography and history that do not fit into our common understanding of this conflict in the U.S.  Just as I have been moved by simple stories of everyday life under the occupation, now I accept that being a loving neighbor requires retelling these stories to widen the circle of compassion and concern for desperate lives of oppression the occupation imposes upon our Palestinian neighbors. It is their responsibility to sort out how to live together, Israeli and Palestinian, Christian – Jew – Muslim, in the Holy Land.  It is our responsibility as U.S. citizens to require our government to work for a just peace acceptable to all.

David Lamarre-Vincent

September 8, 2008