Holy Wound

(The Sixth Wound of Jesus—carrying the cross.)

Call To Prayer

June 25, 2007

It is Sunday morning, four o’clock, and I am standing on the roof terrace just outside our apartment in East Jerusalem. It is jet lag that has me awake at this 4^th watch of the night. And it’s dark – no moon, no hint of sunrise—darkest-before-the-dawn dark. The Muslim call to prayer is sounding softly over the city – unusually quiet it seems to me. It is almost a moan, or perhaps that’s just my mood. Normally the call to prayer is loud – intrusive and defiant, I’d say – but not this morning. This morning the cry is low, sweet, sorrowful and inviting. 

I’ve never heard the call to prayer this subdued. I wonder about it. It seems strange to me. Later in the day I ask one of my shop keeping Muslim neighbors about it. He says, “It’s nothing. Sometimes the call to prayer is loud and sometimes quiet.  It’s nothing.” He waves his hand dismissing my question as if it was a fly buzzing his head.

But stubborn, I persist, “I’ve never heard it this quiet before. Maybe I’ve been gone too long.” (I’ve just returned from three weeks in Turkey followed by three weeks in the States. Six weeks is a long time to be away.)

Just So Tired

“No,” he says. “We’re tired.” Tired. That’s what he said. “We’re tired.” I do not prod any further as I sense that he is uncertain of my motives in asking the question. (I’ve been gone too long to be asking too many questions. My comings and goings remind Palestinians of the fact that they can’t come and go the way I do. The old barber on the corner says, “We’re prisoners here.” One neighbor confessed that he thought Sally and I were CIA—no job, have money, gone a lot, and ask too many questions.) Sobering!

Standing on a rooftop in East Jerusalem at 4 o’clock on a Sunday morning, suffering from a bad case of jet lag, one thinks that one’s thoughts are more thoughtful than they are – or at least this is what I’m thinking as I’ve thought more about it. However, let me share what I was thinking then, on that quiet dark morning, just 17 years ago.

Religion Is Wounded!

That’s what I was thinking, feeling, worrying about and wondering over. Religion is wounded. In fact, the three religions that were birthed here are suffering from a mortal wound, and what makes matters the worse that matters can be, is that none of the three realize how badly they are wounded. I sense the Spirit ebbing out of the three Abrahamic faiths, like slowly draining blood from a person wounded in battle. We are bleeding out, paling before a world that is watching us slowly die.

Judaism seems primarily concerned with prospering the State of Israel and with not much else. Western Christianity seems consumed with consuming—and winning—or at least that is how it seems to one who is only around Western Christianity a few weeks a year. I don’t know what is conquering Islam but conquering seems to be a constant theme, or at least it seems so to me. To be honest, I don’t know enough about Islam to say much except to say that on the surface there is not much that draws me to know more. I realize that a Muslim would say the same about both Judaism and Christianity, and perhaps that is a symptom of the depth of our injury.

Is This a God-Thing?

Perhaps it is God who has wounded us. The prophets seemed to think that God would do such a thing if doing such a thing were what was necessary to keeping faith alive. A wounded person, when such a one finally realizes that he or she is wounded, will seek treatment. The problem, of course, is that none of us seem to realize how mortally wounded we each are! And what would a treatment plan look like? Would it be a return to something—make monotheism great again! Or we could move forward into something not yet perceived as possible—make monotheism good for everyone.

Whatever is to come, today, on this lonely rooftop, I’m sad. And like the quiet, subdued voice of the call to prayer, I’m sounding tired.