Covid and Zacchaeus in a Tree
A Memory of Bethlehem in a Time of Division and Crisis
I keep coming back to a specific memory of Bethlehem that applies to right now. When I lived in Israel / Palestine I crossed the border into Bethlehem to see Pope Francis on his first visit to the “Holy Land” as Pope. It was the first time a Pope visited the “State of Palestine” in any official capacity. His motorcade was set to do a short parade around the city, ending in Manger Square for an outdoor mass near “the place where Jesus was born” — you have to air quotes many “places where X happened” in that region. This short drive would briefly bring him by the security wall / apartheid wall / West Bank wall — whatever you want to call it — that divides two groups of people, who are more alike than any conflicting group I have ever known.
For weeks some Palestinian teenagers had been spray painting messages to the Pope on the small section of wall that he would pass. The Israeli army would immediately come out and paint over them. But then just an hour or so before his parade, they bum rushed the wall and painted their messages — in broken English to a Pope who speaks Spanish and Italian, but both of whom speak enough English for tourists and dignitaries.
The Pope made an unplanned stop at the wall the second his hilarious “Pope-mobile” approached it. He got out. Walked up to the wall. And he simply stood there in awe and silent prayer. You can see it in his face — a pure sadness for a world in which something like this exists, a physical manifestation of all our fear and hatred, which also keeps an occupied people in an open air prison, which will frankly never be its own country. He stood there and prayed, in sadness and compassion. Not for a particular side or nationality, but for an utterly broken world. This act of love pissed off Israeli leadership to no end, but so did another unplanned stop for Palestinian leadership when he made a detour to a memorial for the victims of suicide bombings in the Second Intifada.
There is a palpable and crushing hopelessness in Palestinian territory. You breath it in everywhere, and it chokes your lungs. These are a broken people whose attempts at uprising, peaceful protest, violent protest, appeals to alleged allies and world leaders — all has gone nowhere. But when he left the wall and moved to the small stage in Manger Square, packed with Palestinian Christians and curious tourists like me, there was a sense of hope that I never experienced in all my time in that place. I kind of lied to heavy armed PA security to get into Manger Square to see the Pope (I think God will forgive me). Inside there were chairs close to the stage for the Palestinian Christians who had reserved spaces for their congregations, but almost all the onlookers filling the rest of Manger Square were Muslim or secular Palestinians. There were just there to see a rare and respected international figure say, “I am here with you, I see you, I am with you, and I love you, and your Country.”
I thought I left the hatred and division of Israel / Palestine when I moved back to America, but now in 2020 I feel like it has followed me here. The anger, the dread, the death, and the creeping madness around us. But I hold onto this memory of an impossibly and exceptional kind man in power showing what solidarity he could for “the least of these” in a world that is burning. I’m no longer looking for light at the end of the tunnel. I’m no longer saying things will get better, even if I hope and pray for it constantly. Mainly I pray that we can just be here in the midst of all this and show some fraction of the love that I saw on that strange day in Bethlehem, not a false love that blissfully ignores, but a love that stares directly at it all unflinchingly, which is the only real compassion.
(wall photos from journalists. One of me and onlookers in trees [very Zacchaeus] are my own)
