S-I-N-G is for Sing, of the Stone the Builder's Rejected

The Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem

Afraid and confused, his disciples encountered Jesus alive again after three days in Jerusalem, and then they had to rethink everything. Jesus came back not only alive but also in peace, and he "interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures" (Luke 24:27). Psalm 118 made sense to them in a new way because Jesus, "the stone that the builders rejected," had become for them "the chief cornerstone" (Psalm 118:22). Because God had vindicated Jesus by raising him from the dead, they sang, "This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes" (Psalm 118:23). Jesus became for them the fulfillment of the promise conveyed by Isaiah when the first temple lay in ruins and the people in exile: "[T]hus says the Lord GOD, See, I am laying in Zion a foundation stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation: 'One who trusts will not panic.' And I will make justice the line, and righteousness the plummet; hail will sweep away the refuge of lies" (Isaiah 28:16-17). The cross became for them no longer a display of the occupier's power but a display of the occupier's injustice caused by impotent servitude to the fear of death. It became a place where their own sin and fear was nailed. So they were "buried with [Christ] in baptism" and "raised with [Christ] through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead" (Colossians 2:12).

God did not only exercise power on their (and our) behalf, but gave them power by the gift of God's own Spirit, God's own life-breath with which Jesus was permeated. On the day of Pentecost she came to them in Jerusalem and from that day the story of Jesus and the gift of his Spirit began to go out from Jerusalem to people of many lands. Palestinian Christians especially love this story from Acts 2 because there they see that Arabic, their own language, was one of the first to be spoken in the church (Acts 2:11).

If our common enemy is death, and if Christ has freed us from the fear of death, then we have now no enemy. Therefore, even as Palestinian Christians join Palestinian Muslims in shouting out their right to exist as human beings made by God in God's image with a land, culture and language of their own, they cannot do so in a way that treats Israel as irredeemable. In fact, they are very clear in their witness that Israelis, too, have an equal right to exist given by the same God who loves Israelis, too, and does not want them to be enslaved by the fear of death either. There are Israelis who also want their own country to be based on justice and cooperation rather than on fear. I think of groups like the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions (<http://www.icahd.org>). Some Palestinians and Israelis have reached out to each other across a great deal of pain to form groups such as the Parents Circle-Families Forum (<http://www.theparentscircle.com>).

Those of us who do not live in this conflicted place still have the power to express our own faith that God can bring people out of death to new life together by strengthening and supporting those who are on the same team and who do live in this conflicted place. For Americans this encouragement involves pressuring our own government to change its policies from supporting the occupation to ending it so that new and better ways of relating may spring up between the two peoples here, no longer in the roles of occupier and occupied. One organization that facilitates such action is Churches for Middle East Peace (<http://www.cmep.org>).

From our brothers and sisters among the Palestinian Christians we can learn something about what it means to be the church, the body of Christ, because their yearning for genuine reconciliation is based on their belief that Christ has created "in himself" a new humanity, reconciling opposing groups "to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God" (Ephesians 2:15-22).

This is a startling claim that brings us back to the description of Christians as "living stones." First, it means that if Jesus is the cornerstone of the foundation, then we cannot justify the initiation of massive warfare by laying the foundation stones for a new temple on the Haram al-Sharif. Indeed, "no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ" (1 Corinthians 3:11). Second, it means that we are ourselves the new temple, the stones quarried from different times and places but all brought together, like the dry bones Ezekiel saw, by the Holy Spirit. If the land is holy, it is so because the temple of God is in it. "For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple" (1 Corinthians 3:17). If this living temple is destroyed in the state of Israel, it will be tragic for Israel. But God will make the living stones sing again, as the saints do throughout the book of Revelation, where the Lamb is the temple, slaughtered but living (Revelation 5:8-14 and 21:22).

Carolyn Schneider