Sermon: A Song in the Morning

McCormick Seminary Community Worship 

21 September 2011

Sharing God’s Word

Isaiah 35:1-10 (Common English Bible), Read by: Ted Hiebert
Philippians 2:1-13 (Common English Bible), Read by: Robert Cathey

"A Song in the Morning"

Poem by Amir Gilboa (1949, 1950); translation by Marcos Roca

Hebrew & English read by Prof. Sarah Tanzer:

Suddenly a man wakes up in the morning
he feels he is a nation and begins to walk
and to all he meets on his way he calls out ‘Shalom!’
In front of his face wheat rising between the cracks in the pavement
and lilac trees shower down rich fragrance on his head

The dew drops are sparkling and the hills are a myriad of rays
They will give birth to a canopy of sunlight for his wedding
And he laughs with the strength of generations in the mountains,
and the shamed wars bow down to the ground,
to the glory of a thousand years flowing concealed.

A thousand young years in front of him
like a cold brook,
like a shepherd’s song,
like a branch.

Suddenly a man wakes up in the morning
He feels he is a nation and begins to walk,
and he sees that the spring has returned
and the tree that has shed its leaves
is turning green again.

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Sermon: "A Song in the Morning"

By: Rev. Dr. Robert Cathey

In 2011 –11, I spent a sabbatical year traveling in the Middle East to Israel, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria to discover the theological significance of this region for Christians, Jews, and Muslims. And I wanted to understand the violent conflicts in the holy lands of this historic region that become played out in conflicts between religious leaders here in America. I went to the Middle East to write a book. But I soon found the peoples and religions of the region and the friends I made in Beirut and Jerusalem were writing on me, writing on my heart. When I returned to Chicago, I found I had a new “Song to sing in the Morning.”

Along with studies in Beirut with Christians, I studied in Jerusalem for four weeks at the Hartman Institute of Jewish Studies. My favorite professor was Melila Hellner-Eshed, an expert on Jewish mystical texts and an activist for reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. This summer Melila led a group of Christian scholars into a study of the ‘Poetics of Peoplehood.’

‘Poetics of Peoplehood’ means that ancient and modern Israel began to walk together as a people or nation through their songs and poems before what we call a state existed in constitutions and treaties. Poetically we learn to dwell as a people before legal institutions codify our relationship. In other words, love songs come before marriage promises and pre-nuptial agreements. The poem we just heard Sarah Tanzer read in Hebrew and English was where our study of ‘poetics of peoplehood’ in Jerusalem began. It resonated with me deeply for many reasons after my months in both Lebanon and Israel.

During my sabbatical I encountered the spirit of this poem in Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv among many Israelis. But that was not all this poem that became an Israeli national song came to mean for me.

I felt the spirit of this song also among the Christians of Lebanon and Syria. When I was living at the Near East School of Theology in Beirut, one weekend we took an incredible field trip to the Qadisha Valley in northern Lebanon with a Maronite priest. Beginning from the top of a mountain we climbed down steep trails to find tiny monasteries, churches, and homes built into the sides of cliffs in the early middle ages. Thousands of Maronite Christians lived in the treacherous Qadisha Valley for centuries to avoid submission to their Muslim overlords who controlled Lebanon and Syria. In these tiny cave homes and churches the idea of a free and independent Lebanon was born, but not fully realized until the 1940s.

I felt the spirit of Gilboa’s song in the uprising in Syria that broke out this spring. I found the spirit of this song in the city of Nablus on the West Bank among Anglicans, and in the stories pouring out of Tahrir or Liberation Square in Cairo last winter, and from Tunisia, and Libya, and all across the Middle East.

I felt the spirit of this song in Bethlehem in the West Bank in the form of a longing for freedom, nationhood, and economic security. When I crossed through the check point for the first time between suburban Jerusalem and Bethlehem, Charlie Asmar, my cab driver, turned to me suddenly and said, “Bob, we are about to enter an open air prison.” He pointed toward Bethlehem and included all the occupied Palestinian territories.

That one quiet moment of protest came from Charlie, an Israeli Arab Christian, who has a nation and identity papers that allow him to drive all over the West Bank. But his extended family and friends in Bethlehem lack the same freedoms and struggle to survive economically in an historic Christian town where Christians have become a minority population, many leaving Bethlehem to look for peace and security elsewhere in the world, some in Chicago.

In the Scriptures today we have heard two Songs in the Morning. Isaiah 35 is a lyrical poem of cosmic and national redemption for Israel that is linked to the homecoming of the exiles in Isaiah chapters 40-55. But my Christian friends in Lebanon would quickly point out that the triad of desert, dry land, and wilderness are matched by the triad of abundance: Lebanon, Carmel, and Sharon. Lebanese Christians are emphatic: they also dwell in a holy land of God named and celebrated in Scripture. And they are convinced Jesus and the apostles also traveled through their land, making it holy by their presence celebrated in countless icons, hundreds of churches, and place names like Qana in the Bekaa Valley.

In Philippians 2 Paul expresses the poetics of peoplehood by quoting an early Christian hymn in verses 6 – 11. The apostle is proposing a way for the believers in Christ to live together in community that will mirror the path of Jesus through the world. Before there was theology or a creed there was a song in the morning, a poem that communicated a new way of being human in God’s cosmos.

Amidst the conflicts of the Middle East and the birth pangs of new regimes that are emerging out of the Arab Reawakening, I wonder, what would it mean to “adopt the attitude that was in Christ Jesus” in this both beautiful and violent region of the world?

I will leave you with two stories, one from Beirut and one from Tel Aviv.

The first story came to me from Johnny Awad, a Presbyterian ruling elder and Prof. of New Testament at the Near East School of Theology or NEST in Beirut.

When Johnny was a student at NEST some years ago, one of his teachers was McCormick’s former Dean Robert Worley, Rob Worley’s father. Dean Worley had flown into Beirut to teach an intensive course in Christian education at a very difficult time in the city’s history regarding security for US citizens in Lebanon. Americans were warned to stay off the streets in Hamra, the neighborhood surrounding the American University of Beirut and NEST. Dean Worley was able to get from the airport in Beirut to NEST safely. The school’s administration decreed that he was to stay on campus for his entire time in Beirut. So Dean Worley taught his course and then would stand down at the entrance to NEST everyday looking out into the streets of Beirut he knew so well from his previous years of teaching and living in Lebanon. One day after class, Johnny said to Dean Worley, “Let’s go out for a coffee. We’ll walk silently together through the streets. No one will figure out you’re an American if you remain silent. I know a coffee shop where we can sit in the back and talk quietly. Then we’ll walk silently together back to NEST.”

Dean Worley said yes and was joyful to be walking through the streets of Beirut again. They went to the coffee shop, had a long conversation, teacher and student, Presbyterian and Presbyterian, then walked quietly back to campus.

Johnny told me when we was older he realized how dangerous this simple act of hospitality was at the time. He said he shouldn’t have exposed Dean Worley to the risk on the street. But what he remembered was there was one American Presbyterian from McCormick in Chicago who was willing to walk with him through the streets of his city despite the danger. And although Johnny himself was shot at in the Lebanese civil war, he has committed his life to teach in Beirut regardless of what happens politically. But he said it still helps if some Christians from other nations come from time to time and walk with him in the streets of Beirut even just for a cup of coffee and some conversation.

On the Friday before 9/11 Sunday, Barbara and I had the privilege of meeting a woman named Robi Damelin from Tel Aviv. A few years ago her son, David, was serving in the Israeli Defense Force. He was shot and killed by a sniper at a checkpoint between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Two years later the sniper was caught. In the meantime Robi had become part of a group of bereaved Israeli and Palestinian families who had lost someone in their immediate family to the ongoing conflict. The group has chosen a path of reconciliation rather than revenge, and works to create a framework for peace between their two peoples.

When Robi Damelin heard that the sniper was in jail, she knew that she faced a true test. It took her four months before she wrote a letter to the parents of the sniper. Two of her Palestinian friends delivered it. Here is part of what she wrote:

“This for me is one of the most difficult letters I will ever have to write. I am the mother of David who was killed by your son…

What makes our children do what they do? They do not understand the pain they are causing. Your son having to be in jail for many years and mine who I will never be able to hold and see again or see him married, or have a grandchild from him. I cannot describe to you the pain I feel since his death….

After your son was captured, I spent many sleepless nights thinking about what to do, should I ignore the whole thing, or will I be true to my integrity and to the work that I am doing and try to find a way for closure and reconciliation. This is not easy for anyone and I am just an ordinary person, not a saint. I have now come to the conclusion that I would like to try to find a way to reconcile. Maybe this is difficult for you to understand or believe, but I know that in my heart it is the only path that I can choose.

I give this letter to people I love and trust to deliver. They will tell you of the work we are doing, and perhaps create in your hearts some hope for the future. I do not know what your reaction will be, it is a risk for me, but I believe that you will understand, as it comes from the most honest part of me. I hope that you will show the letter to your son, and that maybe in the future we can meet.

Let us put an end to the killing and look for a way, through mutual understanding and empathy, to live a normal life, free of violence.”

Someday when the Robi Damelins, Charlie Asmars, and Johnny Awads of the world are listened to and finally understood in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Hebron, Ramallah, Beirut, Damascus, Cairo, New York, and Washington, DC there will be justice and peace in the Middle East. Until that day, “Adopt the attitude that was in Christ Jesus….” Adopt the attitude that is in Robi Damelin and all the brave families and communities in the Middle East that are choosing the path of costly reconciliation rather than revenge.

And may it be so among us here as well! Amen.