Sermon

“Why Our Deepest Conflicts Are Nearly Always With Those Closest To Us.”[1]

INTRODUCTION: Back in 1968, I went for the first time to modern Israel, and the Occupied Territories of Palestine. For someone raised on the stories of the Bible, it was exciting to be in the ancient city of Jerusalem, or visiting Bethlehem – the birthplace of Jesus, or Nazareth – where he grew into manhood. Ditto for viewing the Sea of Galilee, standing on the Mount of Olives, or dipping my hand in the River Jordan where John the Baptist baptized Jesus.

All of those events and places were part of a collective memory of Sunday School stories, and Bible readings in which Israel was central. In place after place, I stood where the ancients had stood and imagined the events of thousands of years ago.

In the early 90s, I went back to Israel and traveled from North to South and East to West, in research on my doctoral project at Southern Methodist University, in Dallas. As I’ve mentioned before, I visited every place that the Christian Gospel of Matthew purports Jesus to have gone.

But one thing sticks out in my mind related to our topic today. It directly contradicts the common wisdom and it’s this: How much the Palestinians and Israelis have in common.

That’s very different than the events occurring there now indicate. The notion of Jews returning to their ancient homeland was first broached by Theodore Herzl in 1896. Zionists – which is a concept driving Jews from around the world to put a stop to the persecution and discrimination they have faced by having their own homeland, but not just any homeland – their ancient biblical homeland which the Roman empire drove them from 2,000 years ago. They called that homeland Zion. They returned to Zion by the tens of thousands. Riots and battles ensued between the Palestinians already there. It escalated enormously with the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948. It increased significantly with the decision of Israel to occupy the lands captured in the Six Days War in 1967.

Since then, the deadly art of suicide bombings has been perfected by Palestinians, taking thousands of lives. In a spiral of continuing violence, Israel has retaliated leading to the deaths of thousands of Palestinians. And yet, would you believe that Palestinians and Jews have so much in common. Here’s what I mean:

First, the whole area is not one of the many wonders of the world. It is barren, much of it desert. Simply put, some would call it ugly. Call it the “Holy Land,” if you wish, but it is not what many of us would think of as the “Promised Land.” In fact, we might want our money back, if that had been our expectation. True, there are exceptions, and sitting on the beaches of the Mediterranean at Tel Aviv is a special experience. But the whole area is a land worn out over the centuries by endless wars and battles and failures to take care of the environment.

So it’s not the beauty of the land over which the Palestinians and Israelis are fighting; rather, it’s much deeper. It’s their love of that particular piece of geography. There are really only two peoples in the world who treasure this land, barren though it may be. Two peoples who love it more than any other: Israeli’s and Palestinians, who are mostly Jews and Muslims, though there has been an influential Christian community at times.

I had proof of that demonstrated recently at lunch with the new rabbi at Temple Beth El, just days before the High Holy Days. He confessed that he would love to go live in Israel. Someone told me that Rabbi Bruce Diamond, of the Community Free Synagogue, on Yom Kippur, made a big point about the importance of Israel to the Jews and the need to support Israel.

But two peoples love the land, regardless of topography: they are the Palestinians and the Israelis. Their love for that land makes them very close, but it is also what makes them bitter enemies. They both want it and claim it.

There’s more: When Israel declared itself a nation in 1948, one of the unexpected outcomes was that it revived a dead language: Hebrew. No self-respecting Israeli, no rabbi anywhere, would presume not to speak this ancient tongue. It is the language of the Jews. But guess what other ancient people speaks Hebrew, more than any other population in the world: the Palestinians. They are in such constant contact, that Palestinians have had to learn to speak Hebrew.

So the two peoples who can speak to each other the easiest without linguistic impediment are not only the two peoples who love the land the most, but many of them also speak the same language.

There are other similarities: Muslims and Jews both claim to be in the lineage of the ancient biblical patriarch Abraham. Abraham had two sons: Isaac and Esau. Jews claim to come from Isaac, and Muslims from Esau. But both claim the lineage of Abraham.

Both Jews and Muslims revere the Hebrew Scriptures as sacred. In every Jewish service I’ve been part of, displaying the Torah – which for Christians is Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy – is always an important part of the services. The Torah is the story of Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses and the creation of the people of Israel.

If you listened to or read Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech from last Tuesday at Columbia University, you will notice that in his speech to Columbia, he mentioned Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, David, Solomon and Moses, as well as Jesus – names that came right out of Jewish and Christian scripture. This from a Muslim and a bitter foe of Israel. But Israeli’s and Palestinians have in common reverence for the same scripture.

Also, both Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Muslims, revere the ancient city of Jerusalem: Both claim many holy sites there: Two of the most holy are the dome of the Rock for Muslims, and the Wailing Wall for Jews. There are many other sites, as well. Jerusalem is crucial to each.

So the question is, what two warring peoples in the world have the most in common? Israelis and Palestinians? Second question: who is trying constantly to kill the other, and are locked in mortal combat that has not yielded to any efforts to bring peace to that troubled land? And in fact, at Oslo, when Israeli Prime Minister Rabin and Palestinian Prime Minister Yasser Arafat struck a deal to bring peace, it was a rabid, fundamentalist Israeli Jew who assassinated Prime Minister Rabin. That response from either side is always on the table.

Which brings me to the question of this sermon: Why are our deepest conflicts nearly always with those to whom we are closest?

For certain, it starts with how we see each other. In that first trip I made to Israel, our group went out into the Negev Desert to the home of the first prime minister of Israel, David Ben Gurion. Palestinians think of him as a terrorist, and Israeli’s as their Founding Father.

He came out on the lawn to visit with us. Members of the Israeli Defense Force were strategically stationed around his modest home. As we sat on the lawn, the singers in the group sang, “Jerusalem of Gold.” Ben Gurion was deeply moved.

Then he was asked to read his favorite scripture and he turned to Genesis 1:27 and read, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

I remember thinking at the time, that’s one strange favorite scripture verse. Then he explained. It’s the key to hostile peoples ever to get along. It’s this recognition:

“Before we were ever Israelis, Palestinians, or Americans; before we were Christians, Muslims or Jews; before we were any of the identity tags that divide us, we were human beings created by God.”

“And that,” according to Ben Gurion, “is the message of the great religions.” We are all human beings. Why can’t we get along? How do we come to that recognition?

I received a call one day from a person in another state, and she said that she was getting a divorce after 35+ years of marriage. The reason? Her husband wouldn’t quit smoking.

Now we all know that smoking is a terrible habit. It is amazing testimony to where the power is in our democracy, that our government has tolerated an industry that is killing our kids and our citizens through addiction to tobacco. We even permit it to be portrayed as cool and sophisticated. And just this past week, Congress passed a bill that extends health care coverage to more children than ever before. It would be paid for out of a tax on tobacco, which experts predict would lower the number of smokers. The president has said it’s going to be vetoed.

Congress and the president may have a parting of the ways, but couples who have lived together for 35 years and had children don’t get divorced over smoking, no matter how deadly it is. We get divorced because we don’t know how to handle conflict, which in this instance was one person’s smoking.

To examine that further, let’s presume that Donna Sue and Billy Bob have been married for 12 years. They are having big-time problems. If you think of a triangle’s having three points, two points will be Billy Bob and Donna Sue; the third point of the triangle will be what they identify as their problem or problem. In this instance, it’s Billy Bob’s smoking.

That’s why practices like that are called “triangulation.” It means that one or both of them will blame their relationship problem on the third point of the triangle, smoking. But the real issue is something much deeper than the one thing that they are triangulating over.

To overcome conflict is not easy, for any of us. To let go of the past is very hard. I experienced it myself recently. I had lunch with a couple in our congregation, and the subject became an incident of conflict in my past. I like to think of myself as having moved on so far past that period. But before I realized it, in our conversation I was using language such as “she,” “they,” and “them.” I had slipped back to the most elementary level of conflict by blaming others for the problem. In essence, I was saying it was their fault. I was the victim.

Getting out of that trap takes at least three steps in self-understanding: First, it means understanding that in any conflict, it takes two to tango. Nothing happens by itself. Everything happens in dynamic relationship and tension with the other. One may be more at fault than the other: absolutely. But when we describe the problem and use the language of he, him, she, her, they, or them, then we are at the most basic level of misunderstanding – we’re blaming everything on anyone but us: It’s all their faults.

A big shift occurs when we can make a shift from blaming others to one of taking responsibility for what happened. Rather than the issue being he or she, him or her, it is I -- moi. “I really made a big-time mistake.” “I knew better.” “I was the one to blame.” From the grammar of blaming her, him, or them, to uno numero – I was the problem. That is the first big step forward.

Accepting responsibility for what has happened in one’s life is an enormous breakthrough. It was I, who was to blame!

But after that breakthrough, there is another shift that has to happen. We have not only to move from blaming others, and to accepting personal responsibility. We also have to recognize that we live within a set of relationships, and no one, seldom if ever, is totally to blame for any conflict that gets out of control.

It’s a we-problem. Both share in the problem. No matter the conflict, it nearly always has a we-dimension to it. We were or are a part of the problem, because we live in relationships.

So as said before, for us to address conflicts between those we are closest to, the initial key indicator is when we move first from blaming everything on someone else. The second is when recognize that we share the fault.

But the third is when both parties can realize that we both share in the blame. True resolution requires that we both will work together to resolve it – even when that may mean the existing dynamics and relationship may end.

One of my favorite stories comes from the Russian poet, Yevtushenko. At the end of World War II, the Russian government marched the defeated armies of Germany down the streets of Moscow, by the thousands. They marched in order of military rank: officers first, then the enlisted men.

As the generals and colonels passed, dressed in their impressive uniforms, the crowds screamed and tried to break through the police ranks to get at their hated enemy. It was painful and agonizing to see those who had brought so much pain on the Russian people

But then something amazing happened. Yevetushenko said that as the ranks of the soldiers descended from officers to the enlisted, the well-being of the soldiers drastically changed. The Russian people began to see the actual troops in the field. They were starved, emaciated, and wounded, their uniforms ragged and torn. And Yevtushenko said the crowds grew strangely quiet. As they saw soldiers so young they looked like boys…as they saw the wounded holding each other up…one falling, and another rushing to help…their anger of only a few minutes before, turned either to painful silence, or in many cases to tears as they saw what war had done.

Yes, these were the once mighty German army, but they were also human beings…young boys…young men…young soldiers just like the Russians.

It’s so easy to use hate to mask the humanity of others. It’s so easy to call other’s names, when our own house is in worse disarray. It’s so easy to use the grammar of accusation, the language of name-calling, the raging of hate. But when push comes to shove, we are all human beings…we are all in this boat together.

[1] A sermon on September 30, 2007, at the All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, meeting at the Crestwell School, 1904 Park Meadows, Ft. Myers, FL, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.