Some Final Thoughts on my Sabbatical 2023 – and then let’s live some of this out! (Part Three)

This third part is about our time at St Georges College participating on the "Footsteps of Jesus" and Jordan pilgrimages.

At the beginning of the "Footsteps of Jesus" pilgrimage, Dr Rodney Aist the course director invited us to be disciple learners; to be like Peter and available to be flipped around, re-orientated, ready to revise our assumptions and expectations and to be prepared to think big. The place of fruitfulness, he said, is the place of risk. 

And as we sat alone in the heat in the Judean wilderness as Jesus sat for 40 days I was asked “who are you as a Franciscan priest and what is mine to do? I would return to this over the next two weeks in places like Capernaum and continue to wrestle with it. Really, this is why I am even re-reading all this stuff and blogging about it.

So here are some further reflections as I re-read my blog posts. 

White Jesus was everywhere – confrontingly so, in a place where Jesus was clearly not white. 

Being constantly confronted by the reality of the Nakba and seeing something of life under occupation that Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem experience every day. 

Meeting several icons of Mary - strong, resilient, compassionate, resourceful women. The Mary of the Visitation and the Magnificat is not meek and mild, but an active agent in her life who is deeply embedded in the prophetic of justice. After our day at Ein Karem, Aida and Bethlehem I wrote, “Where did I see the incarnation today? In the white Jesus - which blinds and distracts? Or in Aida camp among the dispossessed - among Jesus's people? I met Jesus in the Muslim woman, Islam, and her passion for her son and for those mothers seeking the best for their disabled children. I met Jesus in the stories of strong women of faith who did not conform to what their society defined for them."

Going back to Tabgha reminded me of how that church and the ancient mosaic within it changed how I see the Eucharist, and my rule of life. Eucharist is more that just remembering the last supper. I think we too easily miss what Jesus was doing in that last meal, offering a radical lesson in leadership and being community, and reminding his friends and disciples of all the meals he ate with those the religious hierarchy had declared beyond the boundaries of the social, political and religious community, including the feeding of the multitude among the poor and sick. Tabgha reminds us that like them we are invited to join in Christ’s ongoing mission and ministry of removing those boundaries and declaring all to be “God’s beloved”, not as individuals but as God’s community of hope.

The gift of the calls to prayer during the day and my decision to pray both Francis’s names for God and 99 names/praises of Allah, and after Katie's reflection on the incarnation I added the Angelus. This is a good reminder to go back to that.

The pain several of those we met and talked to as they spoke their struggle pain holding all their identities together as Arab-Palestinian, Muslim/Christian, and Israeli in their country which looks to marginalise them, silence her story and diminish them at every step. One of the flash points is the Nakba which is denied by Israeli Jews and funding is withheld from Palestine schools if they teach this central part of their experience. All this leads to a sense of alienation in their own country as their experience is discounted and silenced. It helps me understand what is happening to a lesser degree in this country with groups like Act and Hobson’s Pledge discounting and seeking to silence the Māori experience of living in this land – only one version of the story is legitimate, and all others are to be disregarded. And then we came face to face with the ultranationalist Zionist settlers on al-Haram al-Sharif on a day that was otherwise such a gift. Trouble was brewing and there seems so little room for peace. And yet I pray for just that – a just peace for all.

Returning to Rodney’s pilgrimage themes of paying attention to divine calling, sacred time, place and people, and re-enacting the sacred stories, one of the gifts of this time were the people we met – the Mary’s of today I have talked about, the Palestinian women in Aida and Nazareth, and the women of Musalaha. Inspiring, and inviting me to see such people around me today in Aotearoa. Inspiring and inviting me to hope - “We do not believe that our peoples are doomed to make the same mistakes; nor do we believe that we are forever locked in cycles of violence and political impasse… We must look at our past and our present in light of our hope for the future.” — Through My Enemy’s Eyes.

As we re-enacted the stories of Holy Week we were confronted with Jesus' pain and death being lived out in the stories of people all around the holy sites we visited. There is much work to be done in God's work of building the Beloved Community of love, hope, and justice.

Amid all this the surprise people and places we met as we sauntered with purpose, especially in the Old City. So many gift moments. Pilgrimage is not a contained thing that happened in that time and place. We were reminded that our pilgrimage continues, and that like the couple in Emmaus, we are invited to go! The formal part in the Holy Land was coming to an end, but our pilgrimage was just beginning.