While Cindy and I served as MCC country representatives in Jordan, I was invited to be one of three speakers for an online press conference with U.S. media.  The press conference was organized by InterAction – a coalition of U.S.-based NGOs — to highlight the Syrian refugee crisis in the Middle East.

The three of us were each given five minutes to talk. My task was to describe the refugee situation in Jordan. There were probably a dozen reporters who participated in the press conference.  Several of them were Tweeting as we spoke.

MCC’s communications director Cheryl Zehr Walker was monitoring the press conference and feeding me their Tweets as I spoke.  What I remember most from that experience was wondering whether anyone was actually listening, or whether we were all simply passing along information.

Indeed, we are inundated with information in today’s culture. But does anyone listening deeply anymore?  Do we take time to understand the meaning of all those words and images we receive from each other? Does all this information build relationships?  I confess that I don’t always read all my emails as carefully as I wish I did.

As of last month, Twitter now boasts 500 million users worldwide.  Jack Dorsey, one of the founders of Twitter describes their choice of Twitter as a name: “…we came across the word ‘twitter’, and it was just perfect,” says Dorsey. “The definition was ‘a short burst of inconsequential information,’ and ‘chirps from birds’. And that’s exactly what the product was.”

One market research firm analyzed 2,000 tweets over a two week period and found that some 40 percent of them are “pointless babble” and another 10 percent are either self-promotion or spam.”

Of course that still leaves some space for more meaningful uses. Nearly 38 percent of Tweets are labeled as “conversational” – even though 44 percent of Twitter members are only followers, they have never tweeted themselves. One southern California pastor told me recently that he had been advised to Tweet during his sermons so that he could keep the attention of the young people in the congregation.

The lectionary texts for this Second Sunday after Epiphany are about God’s desire to communicate with us at a deep level and about our challenge to hear God’s voice.

In the Old Testament reading, it takes God four tries before the young Samuel realizes who is speaking to him.  Samuel – probably about 12 years old at the time — is an assistant to Eli the priest.  And when Samuel hears a voice, he naturally believes it is Eli speaking to him. So he runs to respond.

After this happens three time, Eli — who has experience with hearing God’s voice — figures out what’s going on. He tells Samuel that the next time he hears the voice, he should say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” (I Sam. 3:9) Samuel obeys, and the next time God speaks, Samuel is ready.  Unfortunately, the word from God is not good news for Eli and his household.

One wonders why God didn’t just give this bad news directly to Eli rather than trouble Samuel with being the bearer of bad tidings.  According to the text, apparently God had tried.  But Eli didn’t pay attention.  Eli’s sons had disrespected their office as priests. They had no regard for God (2:12); they abused the people who brought sacrifices to the Tabernacle; and they slept with the women who served at the entrance to the Tabernacle.  Eli rebuked his sons for their behavior, but he failed to remove them from office.

So God resorts to Plan B, which required teaching to boy Samuel to listen for God’s voice.

I find several things interesting about this story.

• God is persistent. God gives us more than one chance to hear and understand. That is comforting, because we don’t always get it on the first try.
• It is also fascinating that, while Eli did heed God’s initial message to him, when the boy Samuel delivers it, the message finally gets through. Indeed, Eli is not defensive in the least.  “So Samuel told him everything and hid nothing from him. Then Eli said, ‘It is the Lord; let him do what seems good to him.’” (v.18)
• When we hear and heed God’s call, our lives have life-changing impact on the world. The story ends with this summary: “As Samuel grew up, the Lord was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel was a trustworthy prophet of the Lord.” (vv. 19-20)

In the Gospel reading, Jesus goes to Galilee, where he finds Philip. “Follow me,” says Jesus. (John 1:43) Just to be clear, Jesus wasn’t inviting Philip to subscribe to his blog or Twitter account. Indeed following had a very different meaning for Jesus. It was an invitation to a deep relationship of discipleship.

Philip is impressed with Jesus and tells his friend Nathanael that he has discovered the one who Moses and the prophets had written about.

But Nathanael is a skeptic.  “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” he asks.

Nathanael was from Cana — the next town over from Nazareth. So perhaps his skepticism was rooted in an inter-town rivalry. “Those folks over in Nazareth are kind of naïve or backward.” Or maybe he was a scholar of Jewish holy texts and knew that the Messiah would not come from Nazareth. Or maybe he had been trained as a good scientist who demands evidence.  But rather than argue, Philip wisely invites Nathanael to, “Come and see.”

In 2009 Palestine Christian leaders issued the “Kairos Document” as a challenge to Western Churches to better learn about their situation in Palestine: “In order to understand our reality, we say to the Churches: Come and see. We will fulfil our role to make known to you the truth of our reality, receiving you as pilgrims coming to us to pray, carrying a message of peace, love and reconciliation. You will know the facts and the people of this land, Palestinians and Israelis alike.”

Philip uses this same come-and-see strategy. He invites his friend Nathanael to meet Jesus.  And in their brief encounter, Nathanael’s skepticism is quickly moderated.

“When Jesus saw Nathanael coming towards him, he said of him, ‘Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!’ Nathanael asked him, ‘Where did you come to know me?’ Jesus answered, ‘I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.’ Nathanael replied, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’” (vv. 47-49)

Nathanael’s quick journey from skepticism to faith takes even Jesus by surprise. “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree?” Jesus answers. “You will see greater things than these.  . . . You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’” (vv. 50-51)

Some scholars believe that Nathanael became one of Jesus’ disciples, and became known as Bartholomew. In any case, in John’s Gospel, the very next story is about Jesus receiving an invitation to a wedding in Nathanael’s home town of Cana. It’s not hard to imagine that the invitation came from Nathanael himself. In Cana, Jesus performs his first miracle by turning the water into wine.

Stories

In our years of living in the Middle East and now of working at EMU’s Center for Justice and Peacebuilding, we have been privileged to learn the stories of many persons who have heard God’s call to be peacebuilders and have heeded that call. I’d like to share three of those stories:

Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish is a Palestinian physician who grew up in the Jabaliya Refugee Camp in the northern Gaza Strip.  He credits his mother with instilling within him the importance of getting a good education. So after earning good marks in the UN-run schools in Gaza, he went on to go to medical school in Cairo, followed by additional medical training in the U.K. and a Master’s Degree in Public Health at Harvard.

What distinguished Dr. Abuelaish’s medical practice was that he worked in an Israeli hospital – treating Israeli patients as well as the few Palestinian patients who were fortunate enough to be allowed to travel from Gaza into Israel. He saw this as a way to build bridges of understanding between Israelis and Palestinians.

Six years ago this past Friday, Dr. Abuelaish was at home with his family in Gaza when an Israeli tank shelled his house, killing three of his daughters and a niece, and seriously wounding a fourth daughter.  Because of the strong relationships that Dr. Abuelaish had built in Israel, this tragic story received major attention in the Israeli press.

Rather than call for revenge and retaliation, Dr. Abuelaish has become a passionate voice for peace between Israelis and Palestinians.  He wrote a best-selling book, I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey, which has been referred to by President Obama as “an example of the promise of reconciliation in the Middle East.”

Dr. Abuelaish spoke at Eastern Mennonite University in early November. He made a powerful presentation to the nursing students, reminding them why health care professionals are at their core peacebuilders who offer healing to patients of all classes, races, ethnicities and nationalities.  He described hate as a chronic disease which destroys the one who hates. He talked about how his Muslim faith has sustained him through the deep waters of the past six years. EMU’s international students were particularly intrigued by how his “I shall not hate” message might apply in their own context.

To honor his daughters, Dr. Abuelaish has created the Daughters for Life Foundation, which supports young women from Gaza – as well as from Israel and across the Middle East – to attend universities in Europe, Canada and the United States.  EMU will be receiving two of these women in coming years.

On Friday I sent a note to Dr. Abuelaish, telling him that we were remembering him on the anniversary of his loss. He responded quickly with a poem he had written in their memory:

I see you every moment with every blink of the eye.

I see you in the Palestinian children in besieged Gaza, where children are killed.
(I see you in the) children of Syria;

I see you in Iraq and Afghanistan and the world’s children in Africa and Asia.

I see you in the innocent people who are being killed in cold blood in France and the world.

Heeding God’s call to be a peacbuilder.

Jean Zaru describes herself this way: “I am a Palestinian, a Palestinian woman, a Palestinian Christian woman, and I am also a Quaker and pacifist. Identity is always complex,” she quips.

Jean was born in the West Bank town of Ramallah in 1940. She recalls that, at age 8, her family shared their home with 50 Palestinian refugees, while another 100 refugees camped under the family’s pine trees.

In her book, Occupied with Nonviolence, Jean describes what it is like to live under military occupation and to endure the daily humiliation of checkpoints and border crossings, while maintaining a commitment to nonviolence. She writes:

“I found myself at a crossroads. I needed to know in my own deepest convictions whether I really did believe in the power of nonviolence to transform as situation of conflict. My own questions and experiences seemed to pull me in different directions and the whole journey seemed simply too difficult. My life seemed to have turned into a jigsaw puzzle for which I could not find all the pieces. I had been taught to love my enemy but, sometimes, those words simply increased the tension within myself. How can I have peace within when I worry so much about life in general and the lives of my family members? How can I have peace within when others call my people terrorists and justify our oppression by quoting the Bible? How can I have peace within when our movement is restricted in our own country, when walls are built to imprison us and separate us from one another?”

Jean openly acknowledges that this creates a daily struggle. But she has been resilient. “In the midst of privation, anxiety, and suffering, I found that my hope was simply to acknowledge my dependence upon God. I thought often of the affirmation of Paul in his letter to the Philippians: ‘I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me’ (Phil. 4:11b-13).”

What a powerful affirmation of faith to embrace God’s call to be a peacebuilder.  Cindy and I have had opportunity to meet Jean on a number of occasions. She has a beautiful spirit. Incidentally, Jean’s son Saleem lives in the D.C. area and is Executive Director of United Palestinian Appeal.

The Psalm for this Second of Epiphany is Psalm 139.  It is a powerful reminder of how deeply God knows, understands and accompanies us in our calling to build peace.  In some translations this psalm is titled “The inescapable God.”

¹ O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
² You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from far away.
³ You search out my path and my lying down,
and are acquainted with all my ways.
⁴ Even before a word is on my tongue,
O Lord, you know it completely.
⁵ You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is so high that I cannot attain it.

¹³ For it was you who formed my inward parts;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
that I know very well.
¹⁵   My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶ Your eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In your book were written
all the days that were formed for me,
when none of them as yet existed.
¹⁷ How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!
¹⁸ I try to count them—they are more than the sand;
I come to the end—I am still with you.

Hearing God’s call.  It would be nice if God spoke audibly to us as to Samuel. I have often wished for that.  More often God’s call comes to us through the voice of others or through open doors.

So does God Tweet?  I suppose it is possible to imagine the promptings of God’s Spirit as Tweets of a sort.  But the overwhelming image in Scripture is not of a God who Tweets us cryptic text messages – certainly not messages of an inconsequential nature. Rather, it is the picture of a God who created us and knows us intimately. A God who keeps communicating until the message finally gets through. A God who invites us to follow Jesus daily in the way of peace. And a God guides us and sustains us on this journey.

May we each find joy in hearing and heeding God’s call – however that call comes to us.