Put a spike in the wheel of injustice

This is part of Marc H. Ellis’s “Exile and the Prophetic” feature for Mondoweiss. To read the entire series visit the archive page.

Let’s be honest, most sermons are predictable. Once you’ve heard the first sentence, skip to the end. You don’t miss much.

On occasion, though, something more is offered. A prophetic word is spoken. Time to listen carefully.

This happened in Jerusalem on Sunday and, though I wasn’t in the church, the text of the sermon came my way.  It’s worth a hearing.

The context is important. The churches are still mouthing the words they spoke before Israel’s invasion of Gaza – as if being against the occupation, violence and the shedding of blood puts the church on the side of angels. Though obvious points to be made, they lack bite. No risk involved.

When a pastor bucks the trend she may be doing it for more than the congregation she’s speaking to. And even though she didn’t quite arrive, McGrail is obviously walking a fine line. Think of it as the church fault line – speaking about justice while being an enabler of injustice.

The sermon was delivered by Rev. Loren McGrail, a United Church of Christ pastor serving the Global Ministries of the United Church of Christ and Disciples of Christ in Palestine and Israel. In Jerusalem she is the Communications/Advocacy Church Relations Officer for the YWCA of Palestine. McGrail also coordinates the advocacy project, “Fabric of Our Lives,” which focuses on the Palestinian Right of Return. As part of her work she occasionally preaches and leads worship at St. Andrews Memorial Church of Scotland where she preached Sunday’s sermon.

This isn’t McGrail’s first time in Jerusalem. She was an ecumenical accompanier with the World Council of Churches Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in 2011. Then she saw horror and hope all around, but now living in Jerusalem and having just witnessed Israel’s invasion of Gaza from the vantage point of the terror visited upon her colleagues and friends in the West Bank, she’s moved to another level of awareness. McGrail doesn’t want to be complicit in the injustice she sees all around her.

McGrail’s sermon title – “Sing a Love Song” – is much less challenging than the Biblical texts she preached on – Isaiah 5:1-7 and Matthew 21:33-46. For our contemporary ears the text she added from Archbishop Oscar Romero hit the right note: “Blood soaked fields will never be fertile. And blood reforms will never bear fruit.”

Isaiah and Matthew’s Biblical riffing on vineyards is the easy part for Christians. They’re always mining Isaiah for Jesus. But these texts are also about practicing justice. Liberation theology puts our Biblical ancestors back into motion. You can’t have redemption without justice.

McGrail begins her sermon with her need to escape the psychological ravages of Israel’s murderous invasion of Gaza. Crete is her destination. Lo and behold she finds Isaiah’s and Matthew’s vineyards plentiful and healthy:

At the end of the ceasefire I escaped for a few days to the lovely island of Crete. It was a difficult summer for everyone with violence erupting everywhere even outside my home in Wadi Joz. I needed a break so I did what I know how to do to take care of myself. I headed to the blue ink waters of the Aegean Sea and the turquoise waters of the Mediterranean.

I swam day and night and took excursions around the island to various sites. On one of these long bus rides we passed a beautiful vineyard with the sunlight hitting the vines in such a lovely way—all was green. The vineyard didn’t look like any vineyards I had seen before in Palestine and then I winced and remembered why. This land was not occupied. The farmers had plenty of water and no worries about angry settlers coming to destroy their crops or soldiers coming to destroy the trees to declare the land state property.

I started to cry as I looked at the beautiful trees which would soon be harvested for grape juice or wine. I wept quietly for my friends at Tent of Nations who lost 1,500 fruit trees this spring one early morning when the soldiers came and bulldozed them into the ground. These were mature fruit bearing trees like these vines outside my window. They were trees that had been cultivated—pruned and weeded so they could produce the largest crop.

When McGrail returns to Jerusalem the difference further unsettles her. The vineyards of Israel-Palestine are soaked with blood – with more blood ahead. They’re dying from forced eviction and deprivation. Or flourishing because of power used over others.

McGrail ups the ante. Parables about vineyards are too often interpreted in light of individual responsibility and messianic promise. They need to be brought out in the open. They’re about structural violence:

The parable, then, is not about God punishing the bad tenants but rather exposing the structural violence inherent in unjust economic and social relationships in first century Palestine. The parable provokes us to question this unjust system and points us in the direction of how to stop it. The answer is cryptically given in the mention of the cornerstone, the stone that the builders rejected. This stone which is discarded and flawed, exploited and repressed, will become the capstone, God’s most precious. Those who do not respond with violence will become God’s living stones, cornerstones of God’s temple on earth. But redemptive violence is understandable is it not church? Don’t people have the right to defend themselves? Don’t people have the right to security? What kind of God would deny us these rights?

At the end of a summer of bloodletting in Gaza, the West Bank, and the mean streets of Jerusalem and as the Palestinian bid for statehood still hangs in the balance, the question of the possibility of a just peace seems remote. No wonder the fields and streets are blood soaked.

Israel is on the hot seat. But McGrail goes further. Is the Palestinian Authority also enabling injustice?

In this parable then, it is unfortunate but understandable why the servants of the vineyard owner would be met with violence as they were seen as doing his unjust bidding. They were collaborators in the oppressive system. Do you hear the echoes of this today Church? Is this not similar to some of the criticism aimed at the Palestinian Authority? Which master are they serving when their security forces allow or round up fellow Palestinians?

McGrail ends with a challenge:

So what about us? How is this issue our problem? Are we the new exploitive landowners or the wicked tenants? Are our countries acting as de facto absentee landlords? And most importantly what is the alternative to this violent bloodbath in God’s vineyard?

To stop this cycle, I believe we followers of the subversive and nonviolent Jesus, have a responsibility to address this structural violence and not just condemn the violence it ignites. For example, we don’t get entangled in arguments about who started it or who broke the ceasefire but we set ourselves about undoing and challenging the structures – laws and practices that maintain the inequality, the unjust systems that allow land confiscation and destruction of people’s homes and properties. We put a spike in the wheel of injustice as Bonhoeffer says.

McGrail begins with Romero. She ends with Bonhoeffer. The vineyards, now in full-scale resistance, hear the echoes of the Salvadoran and Nazi fascists and their collaborators.

McGrail has reached the edge of preaching etiquette. She knows that the spike in the wheel of injustice needs to be applied. Blood reforms will never bear fruit.

This is where McGrail is moving but the price that Romero and Bonhoeffer paid is high. Is the church that she represents – are the churches collectively, the NGOs, the United Nations and the Palestinian Authority – ready to pay the price?

Being seen as a thorn in the side of the respectable political and religious players on all sides is one thing. Actually being a thorn in the side of the respectable political and religious players on all sides is another thing.

McGrail looks into the church and political mirror and sees blood-soaked vineyards. Those who speak for justice aren’t doing enough. They have become bit players in the destruction of Palestine.

What is the church fault line – what is our fault line after Gaza? Is it time to pay up for what has become all too easy verbiage as the people of Gaza were slaughtered?

Strange that the challenge comes from a Jerusalem pulpit. From a minister no less – who lifts the Biblical vineyards from the church pews and places them in prophetic motion.