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Sitting Under The Vine: A Theology Of Exile And Return
Theological Reflection #2
Alain Epp Weaver (originally published in
The Mennonite, May 7, 2002)
I have learned the words of blood-stained courts in order to
break the rules.
I have learned and dismantled all the words to construct a single
one: Home
Mahmoud Darwish, "I am from There"
They shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig
trees, and no one shall make them afraid.
Micah 4:4 (NRSV)
The Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish repeatedly tackles two interrelated
themes: exile and home. For the majority of Palestinians in the
world today, living in refugee camps throughout the Middle East,
life is one of involuntary exile. Many refugees still hold keys
to their former homes (many of them destroyed long ago) and the
title deeds to their properties. Returning home is a concrete hope
and desire for these refugees.
The prophet Micah, for his part, also recognized the importance
of home. In his vision of the LORD’s day when all will come
to the mountain of the LORD, Micah stresses that all will sit under
their own vines and fig trees, secure in their land.
In the previous article, I sketched out a critique of Zionism
which drew on the late John Howard Yoder’s reading of Scripture
and post-biblical Jewish history as revealing a pattern of communal
life which is nonviolent in character, refuses a violent return
to the land, and embraces the calling to seek the shalom of the
cities of one’s exile (Jer. 29:7). Jeremiah’s call to
the exiles is, I believe, a powerful one: it empowers dispossessed
refugees to transform the curse of exile into a new opportunity
for participating in God’s mission in the world and it serves
as an effective critique of all violent, premature efforts to grasp
at land, to return from exile.
But, we must ask, does this exilic theology do justice to the
real longing refugees have for their former homes? Does it provide
an adequate theology of justice and land for those who have been
dispossessed?
The Palestinian experience since 1948 has been one of being violently
separated from land, from home: the hundreds of thousands of refugees
from the 1948 war; farmers whose lands are confiscated for the construction
of illegal Israeli settlements, or colonies, in the occupied territories;
the thousands whose homes have been demolished by bulldozers; thousands
more whose identity cards have been stripped from them and can no
longer live in the land of their birth. Is the call to seek the
peace of the city of one’s exile the only word which Scripture
offers to dispossessed Palestinians? Does it say nothing about return
to one’s land or about justice in the land?
Furthermore, even if we can and should be critical of Zionism
as a colonialist enterprise which dispossessed and continues to
dispossess Palestinians, we must listen respectfully when Jews speak
of the meaning of Eretz Yisrael (Land of Israel) for them and also
recognize that the State of Israel was experienced as a refuge for
many Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. While we must be critical
of the dispossession of others, we must certainly also long for
the day when Israeli Jews as well as Palestinians sit in their own
lands under their vines and fig trees.
The attachment of Palestinians and Israeli Jews to the piece of
land which I’ll call Palestine/Israel is a challenge to many
of us. North American Christians, particularly those of us in urban
settings, might not be well attuned to the religious significance
of particular space, particular land. In articulating an "exilic
theology," therefore, we must be careful to avoid several temptations.
We must, first, not blind ourselves to the ways in which we (speaking
as a European-American to other European-Americans) have in fact
had deep connections to land, have at times become landed following
the dispossession of others, and have benefited economically from
our landedness.
Second, we must not close our ears to the spiritual significance
of particular land for others. The dreams of a refugee who wishes
fifty years later to return to his destroyed village in order to
rebuild it might be hard for some of us to understand. Capitalist
society promotes rootlessness and destroys the significance of place,
of particular land to such an extent that those who hold deep connections
to particular land seem strange to many of us. Our brothers and
sisters from indigenous communities in North America, with their
own stories of dispossession (not to mention genocide), have much
to teach us on this score.
Gerald Schlabach poignantly observes that "we do no favor
to any dispossessed people if we think of land only in a figurative
rather than an earthy sense." We must, therefore, in addition
to critiquing Zionism from the perspective of the exile outlined
with such force by John Yoder, also consider what resources we find
in Scripture for visions of justice in the land.
A biblical theology of justice in the land will begin by recognizing
that Scripture records a vigorous debate about how to live faithfully
in the land. Schlabach, for example, describes how the period after
the partial end of the Babylonia exile in 539 BCE set off a debate
on the question of faithful life in the land, with Ezra and Nehemiah
offering an exclusionary, ethnocentric vision, God’s mercy
to Nineveh in the book of Jonah providing a more open vision, the
Maccabees’ dream of sovereignty free of foreign influence
standing in contrast to a growing diaspora which "argued with
its feet that Israel might not need territory to be a people."
Tracing one metaphor, that of the vine, will help to focus this
scriptural debate. Psalm 80:8-13, for example, describes Israel
as a vine brought out of Egypt. God drives out the nations in order
to plant the vine, whose branches go out to the sea, its shoots
to the Jordan River. While the Psalmist records this as a history
of liberation from bondage in Egypt, he also records the fact that
entry into the land meant the dispossession of others, the driving
out of the nations. The Psalmist then continues to mourn the fact
that the vine is now ravaged and preyed upon. The tenth chapter
of Hosea suggests why the vine of Israel is now ravaged: Israel,
as a luxuriant vine which builds itself up, which trusts in the
multitude of its warriors, which plows wickedness, reaps injustice
and eats the fruit of lies, will be cut off. To live in the land
in a way which promotes injustice and depends on falsehood will
lead, Hosea suggests, to loss of land. But just as God gives us
up to the consequences of injustice and lies, so God also wills
for His creatures security, peace, and well-being in the land, and
this is the promise recorded by Micah that all will sit under their
own vines and fig trees.
Sitting under the vine is more than a metaphor: I have spent idyllic
afternoons drinking tea with Palestinian friends under grape vines
trellised above their porch. Sadly, thousands and vines and trees
have been uprooted by Israeli military bulldozers during decades
of occupation rule. Neither Palestinians nor Israelis sit secure
under vine and fig tree today, nor will they so long as injustice
is perpetrated, so long as the lie that peace can be had while injustice
reigns is believed.
Today’s "exilic community," argues Jewish theologian
Marc Ellis, "is composed of those who are fleeing from contemporary
injustice and hope to build a world beyond what is known today."
Courageous Israeli peace activists proclaim that living faithfully
and securely in the land is not compatible with military occupation
and the denial of justice for refugees; they join together with
Palestinians in their exile, recognizing that none will be free
in the land until all are free. The Palestinian writer Emile Habiby,
a "present absentee" within Israel from 1948 until his
death, spoke of a "longing for the land within the land."
Israeli Jewish writer Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin expands on Habiby’s
idea, suggesting that exilic consciousness from within the land,
a longing for the land from within the land, could be "a new
starting point of all who dwell in the land, a basis for their partnership."
May Israeli Jews and Palestinians together long for the land from
within the land, recognizing that no one will truly be at home in
the land so long as political structures which dispossess are perpetuated.
Alain Epp Weaver, with his wife, Sonia, is country representative
for Mennonite Central Committee in the occupied Palestinian territories.
He has two children, Samuel Rafiq (7) and Katherine Noor (6).
For Further Reading on the Issues Discussed in this Article:
Naim Ateek, Justice and Only Justice: A Palestinian Theology
of Liberation (Orbis 1989)
Gerald Schlabach, "Deuteronomic or Constantinian: What is
the Most Basic Problem for Christian Social Ethics?" in The
Wisdom of the Cross (Eerdmans 1999).
Laurence Silberstein, The Postzionism Debates (Routledge
1999)
Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, Original Sins: Reflections on the History
of Zionism and Israel (Olive Branch Press 1992)
Alain Epp Weaver, "Constantinianism, Zionism, Diaspora:
Towards a Political Theology of Exile and Return," MCC
Occasional Paper #28.
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