Marlin & Sally in Jerusalem

Man In The Mirror

Man in the mirror

(I'm grateful to good friend John Kleinheksel for this piece.  It was published in the NY Times on March 23, 2007.  John found it in Martin Marty's Context.)

Reporter Steven Erlanger:

"Michael Manekin, 27, is the director of Breaking the Silence, a group of former Israeli combat soldiers and some current reservists,shocked at their own misconduct and that of others, who have gathered to collect their stories and to bear witness. Since 2004 the group has collected testimonies from nearly 400 soldiers (available in English at shovrimshtika.org/index_e.asp). 

"At a recent talk and discussion session, one man stood up and said Mr. Manekin and his friends were hurting Israel, especially its image abroad, in order to salve their own consciences.  Many in the audience nodded in agreement. Tall and dignified, about 45, the man said that he, too, has served in the West Bank, 'and I'm proud of what I did there to defend Israelis. It is crucial to intimidate people at checkpoints,' he said, his voice shaking a little, 'because we are so few there, and they are so many.' Then he said: 'These people are not like us! They come up to our faces and they lie to us!'

"That was enough for Uriel Simon, 77, a professor emeritus of biblical studies at Bar-Ilan University and a noted religious dove. 'As for liars,' Mr. Simon said, then paused. ‘My father was a liar. My grandfather was a liar. How else did we cross lines to get into this country? We stayed alive by lying. We lied to the Russians, we lied to the Germans, we lied to the British! We lied for survival! As for the Palestinians,’ he said: 'Of course they lie! Everyone lies at a checkpoint! We lied at checkpoints, too. Everyone is afraid of mirrors,’ Mr. Simon said. ‘We hate the mirror. We don't want to look at ourselves. We don't like photographs of us—we say, “Oh, that's not a very good likeness.” We want to be much nicer than we are. But there are also prophets who are mirrors, who are not afraid of kings and generals. The prophet says, “You are ugly,” and we don't want to hear it, but we have to look at the mirror honestly, without fear.’”

Aaron

I just returned from five days in the Sinai desert with a group of stiff-necked Americans.  Not fun!  Not good!  Not something I want to do again tomorrow.

And yet, I will do it again – God willing.  I will do it again, God willing, because God be praised, I lived within the Exodus story in ways I never could have without this experience.  In fact, the story of a bunch of stiff-necked former slaves, their stressed out spiritual leaders, and their stern and steadfast God is now my story too.  Of course, it has always been my story, and your story too, but now it is more than just a story.  Now it is the story that opens up all the other stories of the Scriptures, and every part of my past and future story as well.

In short, I’ve been transformed, made new, born again.

I have a new appreciation for the Israelite people.  The desert is a hard place, unyielding and unforgiving.  You make a mistake in the desert and it could be fatal.  And while many of our group were murmuring, most were not.  Most were open to the adventure, willing to follow the guide and listen to the teaching of the teachers.  The whiners got the attention, this is true as always, but the majority got the blessing, and this too is always the way it works.

I have a new appreciation for Moses.  Tough job leading people out of bondage and into new life, especially if they didn’t have a clue what it would take to get from point A to point B.  And this was the case with our group.  They didn’t know what they were getting into when they got into the jeeps and began to be bounced into the desert.  They thought it would be fun to spend a few nights sleeping under the stars.  They thought the camel ride up the Sinai would be like an E-ride at Disney world.  It’s not.  Camels are smelly creatures, and camel saddles are dang uncomfortable.  And the criticism was directed at Moses, wasn't it?  It was his fault.  Why didn’t he make it clearer that this was not going to be easy?  The brochures never said anything about suffering.  And Moses was not who they expected him to be.  He was not a Joel Osteen type at all.  In fact, he could be downright aloof and unsmiling.

I have a new appreciation for God as well.  I now can understand why he was ready to kill them all and start over with Moses.  What a weak-willed people these people turned out to be.  Nothing was good enough for them.  For the first time in their lives they were free to make their own decisions and they decided they wanted to go back to the fleshpots of Alabama or Indiana or Iowa or Michigan.  They wanted wine with their meals for crying out loud – wine!

But the guy I really learned to appreciate was Aaron – the guy stuck in the middle.  The people didn’t go to Moses, didn’t go to God with their complaints either.  They came to Aaron, the spiritual leader, the priest, the man stuck in the middle.  I was Aaron on this trip, and I hated the role.  I had little or no power to do anything about any of the complaints coming my way, and even found myself agreeing with the complainers from time to time.  I was miserable.  If I thought that a measly little golden calf would put an end to their bitching at me, would have made them happy and content, I would have built them one in a New York minute. 

"Give me your gold Jerusalem crosses and I'll make you something less offensive, less of a reminder of the cost of freedom."

I didn’t do well in the Aaron role.  Actually, I failed miserably.  I wish I had been more supportive of Moses for one thing.  And I really wish I had assured them that they were exactly in the right place at the right time for a blessing.  Our Moses told them this over and over again.  He kept assuring them that it was not the desert they were going through, but rather that the desert was going through them.  “You will find God,” he said.  “Or more to the point, God will find you because here in the desert you are easier to find.”

In the Source by James Michener comes this moment when the people who are living in the desert decide they want to move into the city.  The wiry, old leader of the group goes out alone one night to seek a word from God.  “Will you speak to us in the city the way you speak to us in the desert?” he asks God.  God responds, “Yes, I will speak to you in the city, but my voice will be harder to hear.”

On the last night of the desert course, we sat in a classroom back at the college and reflected over the experience.  I was amazed at what the people said.  They got it!  Well, not all of them got it; some of them wouldn’t even come to the reflection time.  But most of them did, and most of them understood what had happened to them in the desert.  They had been pulled into the Exodus story and they knew that they had been exactly like the people they had been criticizing all these years of studying this story.  They got it.

The Palestinian Christian community gets it too.  They know who they are in this story of occupation.  They are like Aaron, I think.  They listen to a lot of complaining, and they do the very best they can to assure the people that God has not abandoned them.  One Palestinian Christian said this:  “You go to the Galilee to find love, to Jerusalem to find faith, but you have to go to the desert to find hope.”  Hope is what the Palestinian Christians keep alive in this place.  They believe and they declare that God will deliver them from bondage, and give them a share in the Promised Land – and a share is all they want.  They model trust and patience and perseverance, and I’m proud to be among them.