Making the Desert Bloom

Advent 3 – Isaiah
Isaiah 35.1-10

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
The desert shall rejoice and blossom (Is 35.1)

Most scholars agree that this portion of Isaiah was written during the exile in Babylon. The people of Judah had been forced from their homes to make the long march across the desert to Babylon. They had lost everything they knew…their homes, their culture, and probably most importantly, their temple, the center of their worship and the dwelling place of their God. They were aliens in a strange land, without status or means of making a living, feeling separated from God, abandoned by God.

In the depths of their despair, Isaiah proclaims good news—this is not the end. Captivity is not the end of the story! God will bring something new out of their present misery. Isaiah speaks to the peoples’ longing for home. He tells them God will come “with vengeance…to save you.” God will do what seems impossible—bring life to the dry, barren wilderness, making the desert blossom. The people will know that God has not forsaken them. Isaiah promises that God will end their exile, lead them back home…through the wilderness…to God’s dwelling place on Mount Zion. “…Sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”

Like the ancient Israelites, Palestinians today hear these words as exceedingly good news!

Like their ancient sisters and brothers, today’s Palestinians, are a people in exile. Only a small minority of Palestinians today are living where their families lived prior to 1948. Every Palestinian I have asked has a story to tell about what happened to his/her family in the late 1940s. The lucky ones point to hills we can see in the distance and tell me, “My family lived in a village over there. In 1948 they were forced from their homes and came here to Bethlehem and lived with relatives. They were never permitted to return, so they stayed and made new lives for themselves here. I can see the hill where the village was, but I have never been able to visit it.” Photo is of the Wall in Bethlehem--see where it stretches into the distance.

Others tell of long wanderings—from villages in Israel walking south, over borders newly-drawn in 1949, searching for a place to stay….any place where the soldiers would leave them in peace. Many of these Palestinians ended up in Gaza, where they remain today, one million prisoners in a land too small for survival, hemmed in on all sides by Israeli soldiers—even on the west where the Mediterranean is their border. (Read Ramzy Baroud’s My Father Was a Freedom Fighter to hear one such story.)

Life looks hopeless, but God’s promise is firm: “The desert shall rejoice and blossom.”

In Palestine there are many people working to make the desert blossom. One group from Sweden, visiting Bethlehem, heard a pastor who works with youth tell them that when you grow up behind a wall, the most important is to be able to see the ”windows” in the Wall—”to see possibilities, to try to understand the fear that builds walls and to realize that you have friends on the other side of the wall.” He told them that is the only way to tear down walls, the only way to build peace.

The two groups of young people, Swedish and Palestinian, have worked together to create ”windows” in the wall with an Advent calendar of messages from the youth of Vasteras, Sweden and Palestinian youth. They want to show that walls between people can be torn down. ”It is the story of love and reconciliation by telling others your story. Just to show that we all are equal.” Take a look at their Advent calendar and meet some of these young people from Palestine and Sweden who are breaking down the West Bank wall. Photo shows how grafitti "cracks" break down the wall, and make it a joke.

This is also the message of Advent, we wait for a better world to come! Take a look at their one-minute YouTube messages: http://www.byggenbro.com/home.html (the site loads slowly, but the messages are short and worth it!)

God of the wanderers, you accompanied your people through the desert—to the promised land, to Babylon, to Gaza and beyond. Be with us in our desert of sometimes meaningless lives. Help us to find a way to connect with other wanderers and nourish the desert so that it blooms. Amen.

The Rachel Corrie Foundation is also making the desert bloom—figuratively, by working for justice for Palestinians—but also literally, by planting olive trees where they have been uprooted. Rachel, a young American volunteer, was killed by an Israeli bulldozer as she tried to prevent the demolition of a home in Gaza in 2007. Read her story and give a Christmas gift of $25 to plant an olive tree: http://www.endtheoccupation.org/article.php?id=2368