Checkpoint gospel

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These days there's a conference going on in Bethlehem, arranged by Bethlehem Bible College. "Christ at the Checkpoint: Theology in the Service of Peace and Justice", it's called. Between 200 and 25o Evangelical Christians from the US and Europe, as well as Palestinians, are gathered to work with theology in the Palestinian context. Christ is at the checkpoint. What does he have to say to people there?

Gjermund and I attended a lecture yesterday by Gary M. Burge, who is a professor in the New Testament at Wheaton College in Chicaco. He talked about the New Testament and the Land, a topic that he has just finished a book about. I'm sure I didn't catch everything that Dr. Burge said, but I'd like to render a few points he made.


From the lecture. Thank you to Gjermund for letting me use his picture.

First of all, he pointed out that Holy Land theologies was a highly debated issue among Jews in Jesus' time. Jews were under Roman occupation. Should they fight to get their sovereignty back? What about Jews living in diaspora, who were actually the majority? Could you really be a good Jew living outside the Holy Land? Considering this debate, Jesus' silence about this issue is a loud silence, Dr. Burke argued. Still the question is touched upon in some passages in the gospels, for instance in the Beatitudes: "Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth." (Matthew 5:5). According to Dr. Burke, the word in Greek for "earth" can also be translated "land", as in the Greek version of the strikingly similar verse in Psalm 37: "But the meek will inherit the land and enjoy great peace." "Land" and "inheritance" were conceptions tightly linked to the promise to the Jews. But here Jesus does not say that the land belongs to a certain people, but to those who are meek. Does this mean that Jesus gave the land to his followers? No, says Dr. Burke. The rest of the New Testament interprets "the land" in relation to the Kingdom of God.

This is reaffirmed by the practice and writings of the early Christian church. The gospel is preached to Diaspora Jews. But Jews or non-Jews who receives the new faith, are they asked to move to the Holy Land? Never. They can stay where they are. There is no territorial theology in early Christianity. Paul is in his writings strikingly uninterested in geography. Terms connected to Holy Land theology are reinterpreted. For instance, Abraham's seed, that the promises were spoken to, is not the Jewish people, but Jesus (Gal, 3:16). And what was Abraham promised? According to Paul's letter to the Romans 4:13, not today's Israel, but "the world"! Also in the other texts in the New Testament, "land" is not connected to territory. For instance, in the Book of Revelation, Jerusalem is a city newly built by God, not the city in Judea. The country the Christians are longing for, is not Israel, it's heaven or the heavenly renewal of the world.

For those who have an idea about the support Evangelical Christians have given to the Zionist cause especially in the USA, this message and this conference is potentially revolutionary stuff. Of course the people present at that lecture do not make up a big percentage of Evangelical Christians. Some of them are still traveling around Israel in buses with slogans like: "I will not keep silent for Zion's sake. Christians united for Israel." But the change in many churches around the world is noticed and even warned about by those in Israel who support their country's policies, as can be seen in this article in Jerusalem Post. The Kairos document might, with it's urge for churches to revisit theologies that are justifying the occupation and to stand up in support for the oppressed, add momentum to this change. It might actually mean a difference. It might be good news at the checkpoint.


From the wall. Thank you to Gjermund's father, who took the photo.
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