International prayer service simulcast Saturday from Bethlehem and the Washington National Cathedral

Door at the Church of the Nativity,
Bethlehem;
photo by Lori K. Richardson

Please consider yourself invited tomorrow to this worldwide gathering of prayer in Bethlehem to be broadcast simultaneously with a prayer service at the Washington National Cathedral, via the Internet. Here are the details:

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Bethlehem - D.C. prayer service set for Dec. 17   Simulcast to link Christmas Lutheran Church, National Cathedral   [Anglican Commons] The fifth annual simulcast prayer service linking the congregations gathered in Bethlehem's Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church and the nave of Washington National Cathedral - with online viewing access worldwide - is set for Saturday, Dec. 17, at 10 a.m. Eastern Time (7 p.m. local time in Bethlehem, and 7 a.m. Pacific). Online viewers may log in  here for the liturgy featuring prayers, readings in Arabic and English, and hymns alternating between Bethlehem and Washington, D.C. Lead partners are the Lutheran and Anglican churches in Bethlehem and Jerusalem, and Palestine/Israel Advocacy Group at Washington Cathedral. The service also raises funds for the Bright Stars of Bethlehem Center for its work in education, health, the arts, and social services. Clergy scheduled to participate include Christmas Church pastor Dr. Mitri Raheb in Bethlehem; Bishop Suheil Dawani and other leaders of theEpiscopal Diocese of Jerusalem; and the Rt. Rev. Munib Younan, bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land; bishops Mariann Edgar Budde of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington and  Richard H. Graham of the Metropolitan Washington D.C. Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Rev. Canon Jan Naylor Cope, cathedral vicar; and the Rev. Canon John L. Peterson. Viewship also is promoted within the Diocese of Jerusalem and its companion dioceses of Washington and Los Angeles, and the Anglican Church of Canada, its partner province. Anglican Commons is a new volunteer effort featuring mission companions and the shared newsfeed of the Digital Faith community. Christmastide features will focus on the church's mission of "acompanamiento," or accompaniment, in El Salvador.

Pray for peace in the Holy Land

Palestinian students from United Nations schools in the Jericho area create an aerial image in the shape of Pablo Picasso’s Peace Dove, at the foot of the Mount of Temptation just outside the West Bank city of Jericho on November 25, 2011. The UN initiative was done in conjunction with the world-renowned aerial artist, John Quigley, to send out a peace message to the world.
Photo credit: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty

Christians surviving in the Holy Land - barely

This Lent, we might want to keep in our prayers and our awareness those Christians who live in the Holy Land, and who have lived there for generations. Harry Hagopian, an Armenian Christian living in Jerusalem, writes eloquently today in Ekkelesia about their plight:

Eugenie Tabourian, my nonagenarian maternal grandmother, passed away recently. She was an Armenian Christian from Jerusalem. Our whole family are Jerusalemites, in fact, dating back to the time when my grandparents fled Ottoman Turkey during the Armenian genocide of 1915.

Indeed, the Holy Land was once bustling with local Christians, and two of the four quarters of the Old City of Jerusalem (the Christian and Armenian ones) were a living testimony to their millennia-old presence. Today, many indigenous Christians - including members of my own family - have left this golden city (as the prophet Zechariah described it) in search of fresher pastures that provide more viable political and economic alternatives.

So what do Christians witness to in a holy land that is host to many hurried pilgrimages?

To read the full story, click HERE. The photograph is of Palestinian Christians lighting candles in Bethlehem.

The Holy Land: Becoming voices of reconciliation

With all of the escalating violence and military action in the past few days in Gaza, I think it incumbent upon us as Christians to speak as voices of reconciliation and peace and deescalation. Blessed are the peacemakers, Jesus tells us, and they would be us.

My former bishop from the Diocese of Northern California, The Rt. Rev. Barry Beisner, recently returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land with his wife, The Rev. Ann Hallisey. Both are treasured friends and helped me in big ways and small through the ordination process and beyond into our transition to Virginia.

Barry shared this message with the Diocese of Northern California on Christmas Eve, and I share it with you:

Dear Friends in Christ:
Grace and peace to you this holy Season, and in the New Year.

As you may know, Ann and I took some vacation time mid-Advent to accompany a group of Oxford seminarians on pilgrimage to the Holy Land . She and I had each been there before, but this was our first opportunity in nearly eleven years of marriage to share such a time of encounter with the land of our Lord.

And with its people. We were blessed to have significant time with Palestinian Christians. One especially meaningful visit was to a Lutheran ministry named International Center of Bethlehem. One of their programs is an arts and crafts center that trains and employs young persons in creative and meaningful work. At ICB, I purchased some leaded stained glass Christmas ornaments, a collection of stars, wreaths, angels, and the like. An accompanying leaflet explains: “These art pieces were made out of…fragments of broken bottles thrown away or glass destroyed during the Israeli invasion of Bethlehem . Human hands pick them from among the rubble, then assemble them together by some of the poorest of the poor in the Bethlehem region at the ICB art workshops. These art pieces tell all about ‘the hopes and fears of all the years’ that people have in Bethlehem today. The broken glass pieces are a sign of the brokenness of our world, and it is also the reason for God to incarnate. Through His incarnation he brought the divine and the human back together; He picked what seems to be worthless and hopeless and transformed it into a beautiful and whole creation. It is this incarnation, which took place here in Bethlehem two thousand years ago, which gives us the strength to continue to look for broken lives and hopes and to transform them through art into angels and different art pieces, messengers of justice, peace, and dignity.”

So it is that a sign and symbol of one of the most moving encounters of our pilgrimage now hangs before me on our Christmas tree, reminding me of the urgent work to which we all are called: Christ’s ministry of reconciliation—in our homes, our communities, in the Church and in the world. Remember this Christmas that we are partners with Him in this work. We truly are His messengers of justice, peace, and dignity.

May the blessings of this Season and the joy of the New Year strengthen and encourage us all in our mission partnership with the Incarnate God.

Yours in the love of Christ,
+Barry