Catholic Views Radio Show
Transcript
December 18, 2001

KELO/KSDN

Jerry Klein: Good morning and welcome to Catholic Views. I'm Jerry Klein. Thanks for being with us on the program today. We're going to visit with some people in the Holy Land, a fascinating interview about what's going on there from people right on the scene, the Sanders. I think you'll enjoy that. Hope you'll stick around for that. This morning on Catholic Views, we are joined by telephone by Marthame Sanders. Martha and his wife Elizabeth are missionaries in our sister parish of Zababdeh in the West Bank of Palestine, and really delighted that you're able to be with us this morning.

Marthame Sanders: Very glad we could get through the technical glitches to get together.

Jerry: Absolutely. It's no small feat, of course, to be talking to you from the West Bank, particularly in light of what's gone on over the last many months. We're going to talk about that this morning. But first of all, I think people might be interested to know a bit about you and your wife, Marthame, and how it is you came to be in Zababdeh.

Marthame: Sure. I'm actually a Presbyterian minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), and we are working through them in support of, particularly, the Latin parish here, but also all of the churches here in the village of Zababdeh. The seeds for coming here were planted about seven years ago when I came on a trip to Ramallah, which is a big city down a little further south, closer to Jerusalem. It was my first exposure to the situation here, and to, particularly, the plight of Palestinian Christians. And since then, we together learned a lot, and met a lot of folks when we were living in the Chicago area. And those initial seeds grew into a call, and pulled us back very strongly to this area. We initially got an invitation to work here in this village from the Latin priest, and so we came about a year and a half ago, and we've been here since then working in ministries of support, and particularly in ministries of communication to the West, about the situation for Christians in Palestine.

Jerry: Right. And I do want to mention that I pulled a lot of information down about you off of your website. And very helpful, in a lot of ways, to learn about what's going on in a way that – presents it in a way that, perhaps, we don't ordinarily hear here in the United States.

Marthame: Yeah, that's our impression unfortunately, of the situation for the media in the West these days particularly as soon as something else happens anywhere else in the world, particularly Afghanistan, the world attention turns away. But we have noticed that there's a lack of breadth of voices to be heard from here.

Jerry: So I do want to mention that website, it's www.fpc-wilmette.org/sanders, and I think that will help people get a better sense of what's going on. We'll give that again towards the end so people can get a pen and paper if they don't have one right now. Obviously the last year that you have been there, it has to be just a remarkable thing to live through.

Marthame: It's been indescribable, and sometimes, we describe it like a frog in boiling water, where you put them in when the water's cold, and then you can just turn up the heat, and they'll stay there until they boil to death. When we first got here, it was before the Intifada, before any of the violence was happening. About a month after we got here was when politics and the violence all kind of unraveled into ultimate chaos. And there are periodic times of calm, but it just seems to get worse and worse. And particularly right now, the situation in the village is just really awful and unbelievable. One of the things that we really had to adjust to is that we initially came given the idea that our ministry would be in many different areas, and one of those would be to develop relationships with Christians from the West who would possibly come on pilgrimage groups or part of a pilgrimage group to visit Nazareth and Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and to visit also with what we call the “Living Stones” of the church, those Christians who are here living and worshiping. And when we first came, a group from Sioux Falls who came with Bishop Carlson. We were fortunate enough to meet them. But since then, I don't think we've had maybe one visit in a year and a half. We would get about a visit a week, and now we've had about one visit in the last year and a half. So we've had to shift our ministry to one more intentionally of communication as I mentioned earlier, but also just to kind of be ears for the people here. I think it’s become a very priestly or pastoral mission for us, just to hear people's stories and hear people's heartache through these days.

Jerry: We have talked, at other times, about how it is difficult for people living in the United States even to think about Christians still in the Holy Land, because of the constant information we hear about the tension between the Muslim and the Jewish communities. However, the Christians have been there since Christ’s time, of course.

Marthame: Since Pentecost. So yeah, the village we are in, Zababdeh is in the Northern West Bank. And there's a village nearby called Burqin. Burqin is a mostly Muslim village, but there's a small Christian population in there, and their parish church is the Orthodox church of the Ten Lepers. In the story, I think in Luke 17, talks about Jesus visit through the village of Samaria and Galilee, and the healing of ten lepers, of whom only one came back to say thank you. There's a church built on that site, and it’s one of the oldest churches in the world.

Jerry: Having a little bit of trouble hearing you, Marthame. I'm not sure if we're getting some interference here or not, but hopefully we can keep going. The fact is, I think as you're mentioning, that Zababdeh actually is more Christian, that it has a predominant Christian population.

Marthame: Zababdeh’s Christian population is about two thirds of the population. It's a small village of about 3000. It's the only majority Christian village in the Northern West Bank, and it's one of few in either Israel, Palestine or even Jordan for that matter. But it is small and it also in at least in its, what would you call it, narrative history, folk history, dates to the time of Jesus as well. The Latin parish is called the Church of Visitation, and the story is told that on their way down from Nazareth to Bethlehem for the census that Elizabeth and Mary stopped through Zababdeh there on their way.

Jerry: That's the connection of course, then, to the gospel. You mentioned that the tourists, the pilgrimages, have been virtually non-existent. That must just be, obviously it's painful economically, but it must also just be almost like a vacuum for the Christians, the Muslims, and the Jewish people who are used to that flow of the people coming through.

Marthame: The economic impact, as you said, has been staggering. I've heard numbers up to about 90% business numbers down in the Bethlehem area in particular.

Jerry: Wow.

Marthame: But yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, the populations are completely cut off from the outside world these days. And I think particularly for Palestinians and for Palestinian Christians in particular, who are used to having some kind of connection with the West and with American Christians, it was particularly difficult to lose that connection with brothers and sisters in Christ and people who are willing to share their stories and share their joys and their sorrows together.

Jerry: Well, I saw some statistics that I found just staggering, and this is just to be one example. Monsignor Andreatta who out works out of Italy with the Roman pilgrimages, said that they typically make 20,000 reservations for pilgrimages for people wanting to visit the Holy Land between October and December of each year, and this year the numbers were 2% of that. So, you can just see the staggering impact that that has to have. But he goes on to say something very interesting, that he thinks the pilgrimages ought to resume; and that, really, it would be fairly safe for people to do that. Would you find that to be true?

Marthame: I have said to groups that have come through and have braved it – although, like I said, only one group has come through Zababdeh. Most of them, if they do come, they end up going to Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth. But I have said to them, “Because this is the absolute wrong time, maybe that means it’s the absolute right time to come.” This is a time when all the people here, but particularly for Christians, the Christians here need to know that there's some sense of solidarity and unity among the Church. In terms of safety, we can never guarantee safety. It's risky to come here as it is to come anywhere. But you will certainly get the best deals on hotels that you've ever found. We went to Bethlehem last year for Christmas 2000, which was supposed to be a spectacular time of celebration. And it was, but for different reasons. The place was empty of tourists, but it was full of Palestinian Christians. We got our hotel reservation three days before, and stayed at the hotel right next to Church of the Nativity, and I will never forget the moment. We went to several services that day, of course, and one of them was to the Lutheran church in Bethlehem. And after having to bypass roadblocks and drive through, eventually, through an abandoned rock quarry in order to get into Bethlehem, we were singing, “O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant…come ye to Bethlehem.” And the meaning of that hymn hit home for the first time ever.

Jerry: Gave you some sense of perhaps what the shepherds went through trying to get to Bethlehem.

Marthame: Exactly. Yeah.

Jerry: Well, he goes on. The priest I mentioned before goes on to mention that, in 30 years of doing pilgrimages, no one has been harmed because Palestinians and Israelis alike respect the tourists as signs of peace and faith. So I hope that's true.

Marthame: Yeah, I think he's absolutely right. And I also think even on just a purely economic level, it's an absolute lifeline. Like you said, these numbers are down to 2% reservations, and they're giving an indication of how people whose livelihood depends on the tourist industry is absolutely crippled these days.

Jerry: Yeah, exactly. The Holy Father has put out a message for the World Day of Peace, which he has declared for January 1st, and in this, I find some hope for all that's going on, despite all of the violence and despite all of the seeming the hopelessness of the situation. He talks about how “shattered order cannot be fully restored except by a response that combines justice with forgiveness. The pillars of true peace are justice and that form of love, which is forgiveness.” Do you sense any possibility of that either in the near or the long term?

Marthame: I think you've gotten right to the heart of the matter. In the long term, I think we've heard a lot of speeches by politicians, and I think they, of course, all need to be taken with a grain of salt. But I think the one truth that has come out for me in all that is people saying that the futures of these two peoples and these three faiths in this land are intertwined.

And it's unavoidable that there will be some kind of solution. And I think the more information people have about what's going on here, the more likely that is to happen. Again, speaking from a political perspective, although I don't want to dwell on this, the people in America have far more power in their hands than I think we realize. And I think that became apparent to us upon coming here, is we’re the last remaining superpower. That's certainly something that's in our hands. But at the same time, I think we as people of faith have that obligation, as the Holy Father said, to work for peace with an absolute call to justice and mercy. It’s something that the prophets never shied away from calling the government to accountability for, and I don't think we should do any different.

Jerry: Yeah. Does that message get through at all to any of the politicians from either side for that matter?

Marthame: I think right now that the walls are built so high. I think one of the casualties of the violence, and particularly the way that – the best way to describe it now is the sieges around Palestinian towns – is that all dialogue has been cut off. There's a center, an ecumenical center on the border of Jerusalem and Bethlehem called Tantur. It's an ecumenical cooperation, and I forget the name of the priest who built that, this Roman Catholic. Do you remember? I’m sitting with my wife, but we don't remember. Anyway, Tantur sits on the border of Bethlehem and Jerusalem, and it was a meeting ground for Jews to come from the west part of this land and Palestinians to come from the east part of this land to come together and talk. But in the recent situation, we can't…for example, we're in the Northern West Bank, it is almost impossible even for us as Americans to get down to Bethlehem. So you can imagine what it's like for Palestinians. And so all joint programs have been called off. There's very little dialogue happening, and I think that is one of the great casualties, because it takes away the human face to the side of the conflict when people understand that there are mothers and fathers and children and brothers and sisters whose lives are affected very directly and very brutally by all that is taking place.

Jerry: Well, we know it's the land that Jesus walked. And when he walked it, it wasn't all that peaceful either. And so maybe in all of that is where we find our hope.

Marthame: I think there's always hope in…I find hope always in the message of the cross, particularly in the face of violence. Because for me, I see in the message of the cross the idea that violence has been redeemed and deemed no longer necessary in the light of the gospel. And as long as the Church continues to preach that, I think we have a message that is unique, and that can help to call the world to a vision of hope of reconciliation that’s needed.

Jerry: Well, we really, you taking some time to visit with us. Again, we were talking with Marthame Sanders. Marthame and his wife Elizabeth are missionaries working in Zababdeh in the West Bank of Palestine. And we're going to run this program on Christmas, just before Christmas actually, Marthame, and so we certainly wish you and all that you work with the peace of Christ. And may peace come to the land soon.

Marthame: Thank you. A Blessed Noel to you all.

Jerry: Thank you. Well, I hope you enjoyed our interview this morning with the Sanders on this Sunday before Christmas. I think, very timely to hear the message that they have to share. Want to remind you of their website if you'd like to learn more about what they're about. The website is www.fpc-wilmette.org. Hopefully that'll help you learn even more about what's going on in the Holy Land.