Oh It's Raptrre time again.

So tomorrow is the Rapture,  ... again.  Can I roll my eyes right back into my head? Can I wonder who got hit with the stupid stick this time? Of course the creed says, "and he will come again to judge the living and the dead" But come on. Tomorrow? or in 1992? or in 2012? (or 2112 for  Rush fans) or anyone of 30 to 50 dates sworn to by rabid wackos since for ever.

There's a culture of love and fascination with "The End of the World" (and maybe a business) (and maybe a Worholish desire for 15 minutes of fame)' a culture that treats the bible like a book of predictions. Every event parsed and compared with some line of text. And it's primarily an American phenomenon. Most, if not all of this "end of the world"  (EOW) fascination is rooted in the USA. Historically, its related to the Pilgrim Fathers, and the "Great Awakening" and the "Pentecostal Revival" of the early twentieth century.

In this culture of  Fascination with (EOW)  history gets twisted. For instance, it is axiomatic in EOW culture that the USA began as a "Christian Nation"  Well that's a big whopper.  Of course most people were Christians of various kinds (and those who weren't were persecuted), but that does not mean that the USA was founded on Christian principles. The Declaration of Independence is a Rationalist Enlightenment document. There is nothing inherently Christian about " Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." nor was Jefferson trying to make it such.  If the document had been based on Christian principles,  there would have been an even larger fight much nastier fight in Independence Hall in 1776 about which principles to use. (think about the dilemma: Welcome of the stranger or shut up you women? Seek justice or keep a slave economy? Blessed are the peacemakers, or tar and feather Royalist sympathizers? you can see how this debate would have gone.) But in the Culture of Fascination with EOW history doesn't count.


  Current realities are also twisted.  The death of Osama Ben Ladin and the election of a black president are equally fodder  for the sign seekers. Is President Obama the anti-Christ? Stay tuned. And if not there are other candidates who can be nominated. The Republican Party has as a large constituency, people who live in the EOW culture. It is a strong enough segment to affect the foreign and domestic policy of the Republicans. An uncritical support for Israel is based on the assumption that if Israel can get the Temple running again then Jesus will return. (clearly not something that will happen by tomorrow)  And therefore attempts to build a peace process are undermined in by political members of this Culture.  Peace making is perverted as nations are encouraged to war and violence by thhose who say they follow Jesus. In EOW culture Justice is perverted because people must be forced to be "righteous" according to the principles of this culture. I actually heard someone say on TV that of course Gay people would not be stoned to death, but they would be executed by the state.   Far more humane, don't you think?

Most embarrassingly for Christians, the Scriptures get twisted. They are treated not like a holy book but like a fortune telling manual. The texts are gathered in to a big hopper and mixed and matched to produce a prodigious array of predictions that bear no relationship to  the purposes of the writers. Calling it "taken out of context" is too small a description for the wanton stripping of the structures and meanings of the texts of Scripture.  The culture of EOW is lurid, and it's easy news. Blood red moons and exploding planets play well these days. In the seventies, we didn't have such good CG effects. It's well funded too, and so gets the microphone more often (why else are we getting so exercised about them at this point?.)  And most secular people are suckered. People want to believe that Christians are wackos, and these folks  sustain that prejudice.. Even more, most secular people know nothing about Christianity, and so  they think that EOW is it.  Other Christians get splattered with this awful, death loving, self-hating, xenophobic brush.

One wonders why  such a strong culture of self-hate has grown up in America. Such loathing for the culture they are part of, such loathing for their neighbours, for the generous words of the Gospel  that they can only think of one response;  hoping God will blow it all up and start over. What's wrong with the USA that up sets them? It might be that pluralism is hard for them to bear.  EOW culture lives in the midst of a nation that people they consider as public sinners have rights. They are allowed to live, and religions other than Christianity thrive unpersecuted. It might be that "Liberty and Justice for all." turns out to mean black people, gays and lesbians, and wait for it, ...women. It might be a cultural inferiority complex.


I remember in the 70's when Hal Lindsay was moaning on about the end of the world, and compared the European Union to the Beast of the Apocalypse. The European Union was at that time growing from 6 states to 9, and somehow that made them the "Beast" mentioned in The Revelation of St. John the Divine ( a book that only barely made it into the canon). Well, the European Union is now up to 27 member nations.  And I just checked;  good old Hal has a web site and is still at it, completely unabashed. All that beast talk was hokum. All the talk of the Bible predicting the end of the world is hokum. By Hokum I mean WRONG. It is completely unfaithful to the Scriptures. The very nature of their self set task to make the Bible predict the end of the world perverts the Christian message.  We believe that Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead. Yes we do, but we're not hanging around trying to make sure it happens, or saving up bits of information to see if they fit somewhere. Most Christians are just carrying on with nurturing justice, learning how to forgive, helping where they see God's spirit at work, and worshiping with anyone who will join. We're not waiting around with bated breathe. That's not what was asked.   In the mean time, we're having a party tomorrow with Lobster and good white wine and fresh french bread, and if the world does end, then Jesus is welcome to come over, I hear he does some really cool things with bread and wine.

The Bishop of Jerusalem

http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Anglican-Bishop-of-Jerusalem%E2%80%99s-visa-revoked-20875.html


Here we go again. 

The Bishop of Jerusalem is not allowed to have a visa to live in East Jerusalem.  It's a very high profile example of what the Israeli government has been doing to the Palestinians for decades.
When I was in Jerusalem I walked past a Israeli visa building in East Jerusalem, (It was right across the street from the "Garden Tomb" if you want to have a look) and people were lined up to get their cards stamped so they could stay in their homes for another period of time, a month or something.The deal is that you are not a Israeli citizen, but a resident alien. I met a Palestinian whose family had lived man and boy in the same house in the "Arab" quarter of old Jerusalem since the reign of Henry VIII, and still had to go and get his visa stamped in this line up. However the soldiers didn't have to stamp any one's visa. Look funny? Be the random person when some official is in a bad mood about Palestinians, or has to go to the bathroom?  and "So sorry sir, no visa for you." They can also close the office at any moment or not even open it at all. No regular office hours, no criteria, no appeal process, Nada! And if this man I met, missed getting his visa, then too bad he had to move to one of the Palestinian camps in the desert. "...Same house in the city since 1500's sir? tough." Why because no one has ever lived here legitimately except us.  This has been happening for ages. Bishop  Suheil Dawani is  the victim of the same mentality. He sold some land to a Palestinian and " Whoops, you did what?  So sorry sir, no visa for you." 

Capricious, no criteria, no appeal process, no transparency, no civil rights. This is the way the Israeli state protects its people from the possibility of a new Holocaust



The foundational Israeli assumption is that all Palestinian people are squatters. It says in the bible God gave the land to Jews and if its good enough for Abraham its good enough for the 21st Century.   There is a good chance that the Exilic Community  massaged  the Abraham Cycle in the 5th Century B.C.E. to clarify their own claim to the land in the eyes of  their Babylonian/Persian masters and their children, so that it would be clear to every one where they belonged.  Ezra and Nehemiah took this affirmation to its logical conclusion when it disinherited the people of the land of that day when the exiles returned. It is a text that was a terror for the wives of Jewish men who had married outside the clan,  a terror for their children. It was a terror for those who had settled in and around Jerusalem while the Jews were in Babylon. But for Jews, ( and for Christians too for the most part) it has been a happy text, saying what a wonderful thing God has done for us giving us back the land (singing as they wove between the corpses of the disinherited)  So there is precedent for this approach. And indeed this is what Zionists were prepared to do. Beginning in the 1800's Jewish people moved to the land from the diaspora. And look; there are people already there, and cities, and well tended farms. But NO! They were squatters! They had no right to be there. Increasingly  the people who lived there already became inconvenient. Farms were confiscated, Palestinian people began to be pushed back to the edges. After the Holocaust, there was a  completely understandable rage and fear, rising from that hideous trauma, that fed the Jewish perception that the land needed to be theirs so they would be safe. And so it got really ugly for the Palestinians after that.


I saw a video a few years ago produced by the Israeli government that talked about the first Jews returning to the land as "pioneers"  recovering and civilizing an empty land. It showed pictures of green hills and felt like a tourist film, except it claimed that the land had been empty before they came back from the diaspora. This is the functioning myth in Israel. It goes so far that the Palestinian people are referred to as "Arabs" (!) This renaming signals that they don't really belong in Israel at all. If they don't belong, then it follows that they are squatters on someone else's land.

At this point the feed back loop starts. Palestinians get angry, Israelis get mad and defensive, Palestinians try to get their rights and their homes back. They are resisted. They behave in inappropriate ways increasingly violent and begin to behave as  terrorists. The fear that founded the state of Israel kicks back at that and justifies their  actions on the basis of Palestinian actions. "If only the "Arabs"  would be rational. If only the "Palestinians would give up the armed struggle" It all sounds so reasonable. But underneath it's not reasonable. It's founded on fear and on the determination that the Holocaust never happen again. The Abraham Cycle is used in service of that determination. And suddenly there are annexations of land, and towns springing up on disputed areas. " Tough!" And the highways don't have off and on ramps for Palestinian towns. And the Palestinians feeling crowded and pushed, fight back. And it's only after this has been going round  a few times that people start keeping score and then each act seems to be in response to a previous act.

This is the context for Bishop Suheil Dawani's trials. it matters not that he is a contributing member of society. It matters not that he is a representative of one of the most reasonable, peace loving, and faithful strands of Christianity. It matters not that he has lived in the Bishop's house in East Jerusalem since he became bishop. It matters not that the Diocesan offices are in the city. It matters not that the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Bishop himself have been praying for peace and reconciliation for years. (come to think of it this may actually make the Israeli's angrier) It only matters that he is a Palestinian that did something that doesn't fit the political agenda. He sold a piece of land. In Canada? this would not be a problem. In the USA, it might not be a problem. But in Israel, civil rights are for those who are Jewish first, and for those who are something else, only when it suits.  Basing a civilization on fear, and on texts which are isolating is a very bad thing.

Please pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

2 CORINTHIANS 5: 
17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.