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| St. Matthew's Zababdeh (Greene photo) |
Sunday morning, we drove to Zababdeh, a West Bank town with
a Christian majority. We attended church
at St. Matthews Episcopal Church, part of the Anglican Diocese of
Jerusalem. Father Nael Abu Rahmoun, the
priest, told us that since the town was Christian, the laws of the Palestine
Authority said it had to have a Christian mayor. The town has a Greek Orthodox, a Roman
Catholic, a Melkite Catholic and an Episcopal church. St. Matthews runs a health clinic and teaches
classes in Hebrew, English and Italian for the community. They also run children’s Christian education
classes, a Vacation Bible School for their parish and an interfaith summer
program. The service was conducted in
mostly in Arabic, as it is every Sunday, with Fr. Nael using English for some
of the prayers and Bishop Sean concelebrating and praying some of the
Eucharistic Prayer in English. The
parishioners used their hymnal, which contains Arabic texts to many familiar
tunes including “What a Friend We Have In Jesus”, “How Great Thou Art”, “Ode to
Joy”, and “Slane.” While they sang in
Arabic, a projection screen flashed English words for us to sing along. We also recited the Lord’s Prayer and the
Creeds in our own languages. The
Eucharistic Service Booklet for the Diocese of Jerusalem includes five
different Eucharistic prayers from a variety of Anglican prayerbooks. We had a copy of the booklet in English and
Arabic copies were in the pews.
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| Fr. Nael and Bishop Sean (Greene photo) |
After the service, Fr. Nael had to run to do another service
in a neighboring town to cover for a priest who was on vacation (NWPA and the
Holy Land aren’t so different!). His
wife, Mira, and their two-year-old Clara gave us a tour of their outreach
projects. Then the congregation hosted
us for a wonderful lunch which is called “upside-down.” They brought in a huge pot with rice,
chicken, cauliflower, carrots and spices, then they put a pan on top of it and
flipped the whole thing over. Delicious!
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Today (Tuesday) we drove from Nazareth to another Galilean
town called Shefa’Amr. (I’ll catch up
the trip to Nazareth as soon as I can.
Both Nazareth and Shefa’Amr are within the borders of Israel proper.) In Shefa’Amr, we met with Fr. Fuad Dagher at
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. He talked
about his own background as someone born into the Episcopal Church who went on
to ministry right after school, serving in Jerusalem and Lebanon before
returning to his native area. Then he
talked about his identity and the identity of many of his parishioners. He said, “I am Arab, Christian, Palestinian,
Israeli, and Episcopalian.” Then he
unpacked each of these.
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| The Lord's Prayer in Arabic at St. Paul's Community Center (Greene Photo) |
He is Arab, but not Muslim, noting that not all Arabs are
Muslim, and not all Muslims are Arab. In
fact, Arabs were Christians 600 years before Mohammed was born. (Read Acts 2 –
notice anybody surprising that was present at the first Pentecost!) He noted that he prays to Allah, which is
simply the name for God in Arabic and not a specifically Moslem God. (In fact, Allah is closely related to the
Hebrew word for God, which is El. Both
come from the same Semitic language root.)
Fr. Fuad said that he is Christian, but that doesn’t mean he
is a recent convent. Many Evangelicals
he meets seem to think that an Arab or a Palestinian Christian must have become
one recently, but he could even be called a cradle Episcopalian.
He is a Palestinian, being part of a family that was native
to the land before the State of Israel was created in 1948. At the same time, he is a citizen of the
State of Israel. Living within the
borders of Israel before the Six Days War, he has the right to vote and he pays
taxes to the Israeli government. He has
an Israeli passport. At the same time,
being a Christian makes him a minority within a minority. Palestinians are about 20% of the population
within Israel, but Christian Palestinians are only about 1.5% of the Israeli
population (there are other Messianic Jewish Christians, but I don’t have
statistics for that group at this point).
Finally, Fr. Fuad is Episcopalian, but not British (or American). As we noted tonight in our group reflections,
often in America we don’t realize that when we speak of Arabs in the Middle
East, we are talking about Christians as well as Moslems.
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| St. Paul's Community Center (Green photo) |
Fr. Fuad gave us a tour of the new community center St.
Paul’s had built over the last two years with generous support from the Diocese
of Los Angeles and contributions from throughout their local community. The center has large terrace overlooking a
courtyard that is used for concerts, plays and other events, as well as three
interior rooms for any number of community gatherings. Part of the beauty of the construction was
that the entire community offered contributions of time, talent and
treasure. His parishioners contributed,
but so did the Christians from the Greek Orthodox, Melkite Catholic and Roman
Catholic churches. Moslem and Druse
neighbors worked beside their Christian brothers and sisters, and Jewish
experts provided construction consultation.
Everybody worked together to build something good for their common
community.
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| Fr. Fuad: "Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem" (Green Photo) |
Before we left his church, Fr. Fuad pulled out his guitar
and sang a song about praying for the peace of Jerusalem. The tune is easy and catchy, and I hope we’ll
have opportunities to sing it when we return to the states. We visited the local Melkite church with Fr.
Fuad, as well. The priest there, Fr.
Andrew, works closely with Fr. Fuad, and their parishes do a lot together. The church looked very much like an Orthodox
Church. They had icons throughout the
church, although Fr. Andrew noted that underneath many of the icons was the
name of the donor which he did not feel was appropriate. They also had a laptop
on shelf with a camera to put their liturgies on the internet for shut-ins!
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