May 19, 2013.
Pentecost
Dear Friends,
We will gather together for our shared Badaliya and Islands of Peace Institute
Prayer on Sunday, May 19, 2013 from 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm at St. Pauls Church in
Cambridge, in the small chapel located in the Parish Center. Please join us
in person or in spirit as we encourage Interfaith relations and pray together
for peace and reconciliation in the Middle East and especially in the Holy Land.
Fifty days after Easter Christians celebrate the Feast of Pentecost. The promise
that Jesus proclaims to the disciples before His Ascension to God is fulfilled
this day. They were gathered together in Jerusalem after fulfilling the customs
for the Jewish Festival of Weeks. The Book of Acts tells us that a great noise
was heard and tongues of fire came to rest on each of them as they were filled
with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in many languages. Jerusalem was crowded
with Jews from every nation gathered there for the Festival and were astounded
when they could understand the disciples, each in their own language.
The Festival of Weeks or Shevu'ot in the Jewish tradition takes
place fifty days after Passover and is therefore sometimes referred to as Pentecost.
It celebrates both the time when the first fruits of the harvest were brought
to the Temple and the giving of the Torah, or the Five Books of Moses, on Mt.
Sinai. Just as Christians count the fifty days to Easter with increasing hope
as they experience God's "appearances" in their lives and anticipate
the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, Jews count the days in remembrance
of their "Passover" to physical freedom from bondage and the giving
of the Torah, which freed them spiritually from their bondage to idolatry and
immorality. The giving of the Torah becomes meaningful when it is understood
as the way the Jews continually receive the Torah every day of their lives.
These holy days have taken on added significance for those of us who have recently
returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. There we can palpably feel the
presence of those early disciples of Jesus and renew our own discipleship while
honoring the sacred history of salvation as it is experienced by our Jewish
brothers and sisters. And yet, the land continues to be filled with conflict
and the pain of division. Massignon wrote many words on Palestine as the modern
State of Israel was being established. Perhaps out of great love and despair
in 1952 he wrote the following:
"[This people] no longer understands that the heroic value with which Abraham
practiced the virtue of hospitality was to him not only worthy of having the
Holy Land as an inheritance, but to make enter there all the stranger guests
that his hospitality has blessed....The hospitality of Abraham is a sign announcing
the final consummation of the gathering of all the nations. Blessed by Abraham;
this Holy Land must not be monopolized by anyone. And, as much in his nocturnal
Ascension as in his first orientation of canonical prayer towards Jerusalem,
Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam, claimed the portion of Abrahamic blessing, the
portion of possession of the Holy Land promised to all the sons of Abraham,
sons according to birth or according to adoption through faith." (Écrits
Mémorable, vol.1 p. 788)
Having just met many Palestinians and Israelis living in this contested Holy
Land and having experienced the crowds in Jerusalem, there is much for us to
share as we journey together towards greater appreciation for one another's
faith traditions and shared humanity.
Peace to you.
Dorothy