Advent 1, Week of November 30, 2009—Jeremiah

Jeremiah 33.14-16

The days are surely coming, says the Lord,
when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house or Israel and the house of Judah. (Jer. 33.14)

When I asked him how the tourist business had been this summer, our tour guide Sami said it had been slow, but that the tourist season was picking up with the cooler fall weather. In the summer, during the quiet season, he and his wife and three small children had been able to spend time with his wife’s family in Jordan. They visited his wife’s aunt, who is now 80, and she spent a lot of time telling them stories about the past—about the days of terror, when her family was forced out of their home in a small village near Ramle, on the road between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean. She remembered their long journey on foot, across the dry hills and through the desert to safety in Jordan, carrying a few possessions grabbed in haste. Thousands of families trudged this same road, carrying only what they could grab quickly, along with the keys to their homes, which they thought they would need in a few days or weeks when the soldiers left their village and it was safe to return. Many families still have their keys, and, sixty years later, in Jordan, this 80-year-old woman still carries the story, telling it for the children, so they can remember who they are, where they have come from.

Photo: Poster commemorating the 50th anniversary of the forced removals of Palestinian families from their villages and the tents they lived in while they stayed in the refugee camps.

Not much has changed in 2500 years. Today we hear Jeremiah speaking to the Israelites, who, like the 750,000 Palestinians in 1948, were routed out of their homes by soldiers, and forced to make the long march across the desert to Babylon. Sami’s aunt tells her story again and again, lamenting the loss of her home and her girlhood, separated from friends and family and everything familiar—the olive trees and oranges, the lemons and persimmons, the cinnamon and other delicious smells of her childhood.

Every Palestinian family I have met has a story like this one.

But, in this Advent season the prophet calls out to us, in our exile of broken treaties and hopeless peace negotiations, “the days are SURELY coming….” The promises of the Lord are sure, words of living water, spoken to all who long for justice in the land, all who long for a world where righteousness is lived out—where everyone lives according to the hopes and dreams God has for us. As we wait in Advent and yearn for God’s righteousness, we know God’s promises are sure…for we have met this babe that is to be born, the one “who shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.” We have seen him and we know God’s promises are sure.

God of all righteousness, in this Advent season we wait…and yearn for your justice and peace. While armies bulldoze homes in East Jerusalem, we wait in exile and long for the peace you have promised, to live in safety. Help us to be your agents of change, to bring about the new day of peace for all your people. We pray this in your holy name. Amen.