With Father Elie Azzi & the Maronites in Qannoubine Valley, Lebanon

On the first Saturday in November (6th), Dean George Sabra’s ‘Contemporary Eastern Churches’ class boarded a small bus at NEST early in the a.m. that drove us up into the northern range of Mount Lebanon. Along the way we picked up Fr. Elie Azzi, a Maronite priest and historian of his tradition, Lebanon’s largest Christian church and one of its oldest indigenous Christian institutions.

Fr. Azzi was our guide to the Qadisha Valley, also called the “Valley of the Saints.’ Carved into the sheer rock faces of the mountain he would led us down are a series of tiny monasteries and churches that once housed the patriarchs, monks, and many members of the Maronite Christian community when they sought a separate space from their Muslim overlords.

The Maronites (their name does not refer to Mary the mother of Jesus but to Saint Maroon, died 410 CE) are one of the most distinctive Christian churches in the Middle East. Their cultural and theological heritage is Syriac and Antiochene, yet their Christology is Chalcedonian; they are a patriarchal and monastic church that places a high value on asceticism as the truest form of the Christian life; they have acknowledged the primacy of the Pope in Rome since the time of the Crusades; they are grounded in Lebanon as their physical and spiritual home (although many Maronite Christians live in the Lebanese Diaspora). The Maronites have achieved a distinctive balance between both eastern and western Christianity. Their patriarch and monks live their ascetic lives very close to the laity, creating strong bonds of solidarity between laity and clergy. 

On the trip up I sat with the Rev. Nabil Shehadi, Vicar of All Saints’ International Congregation (www.allsaintsbeirut.com) and the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Representative to the Oriental Orthodox Churches. Rev. Nabil’s family is Lebanese Presbyterian. He studied architecture and became a licensed architect in London, England for many years, some of which overlapped with the Lebanese civil war. During that time, he discovered the Church of England, studied theology, and became an Anglican priest. His congregation in Beirut is located very near the Mediterranean in the first Christian church rebuilt after the civil war.

Rev. Nabil is also the Alpha Advisor for Lebanon, a great proponent of the Alpha Program (founded in England) as a means of evangelization. Unlike many other countries in the Middle East, citizens of Lebanon are free to convert from their parents’ religion to another. And as Rev. Nabil explained to me in the words of another Christian leader in this region, some Christians have been thoroughly ‘sacramentalized’ but not ‘evangelized.’ As an Anglican by adult decision, he seeks to create opportunities for other Lebanese to learn about the Christian message in creative new ways.

After driving up extremely inclined mountain roads for several hours, our bus trip ended on the top of a peak with absolutely gorgeous views. (No pun intended…there were some very steep gorges.) Fr. Azzi, Dean Sabra and Mrs. Sabra (Lydia is a teacher of music at the International School on the American Univ. of Beirut campus) led us down a series of rocky, steep steps with scattered rock fragments on almost every step. I was glad I had taken a course in mountain climbing during college on our way down. Some in our group had brought hiking poles to steady themselves on the descent. We each carried most of the food and water we would have for the daylight hours.

One of the goals on our descent of the mountain was to visit the hermitage of Fr. Dario Escobar, a priest from Columbia who became a Maronite to pursue the ancient way of the Christian hermits who have inhabited Lebanon for more than 1500 years. When we finally reached the hermitage, Fr. Azzi led us into a tiny chapel where we could cool down from the descent and pray. He quietly explained to us that two years ago, Fr. Escobar had been photographed by someone who had put his picture up on Facebook. This led to an overwhelming number of people climbing down to the hermitage to visit (and then disturb) Fr. Escobar in his life of daily prayer and study. According to Fr. Azzi, Fr. Escobar had spoken to no one for two years. We quietly enjoyed the cool chapel and then moved further down the trail.

Some of us who had just seen the new film, The Social Network, were not surprised that the global reach of Facebook had even disturbed the life of a hermit for Christ in this remote part of Lebanon. The power of technology both intimately connects us to one another and alienates us from our souls all at the same time unless we share in a power greater than technique alone.

But Rev. Nabil and Christian, one of the NEST students from the Univ. of Göttingen, stayed behind to explore some more of the hermitage. Suddenly they realized someone else was with them…Fr. Dario. He spoke with them and shared some stories from his student days. After this encounter, Christian ran to catch up with the larger group to tell us he had been one of the first persons the hermit had spoken with after two years of retreat. Meanwhile Rev. Nabil who is an excellent hiker rounded up some members of our group that was now strung out along a steep mountain path.

Along the way, we stopped at another tiny church that commemorates the life of a Maronite young woman who impersonated a man in order to become a monk. None of her brother monks discovered her secret and she was allowed to join the order on the mountain. After some years a woman in a local village accused the ‘monk’ of having fathered her child. As an act of penance, the monk raised the child as ‘his’ own. When the monk finally died, her secret was discovered and she was remembered as a saint for holy life exemplified in the fact that she had cared for a child not her own just like a parent.

Some students in our group found this hagiography hard to believe. But in terms of historical gender studies, a woman who convincingly impersonates a man is not totally unique in history. (Some will remember the Barbara Streisand film of a few decades ago about a young Jewish woman who impersonates a man in order to enter Orthodox rabbinical studies.)

We stopped at another monastery and church for lunch, where we met some other hikers from different countries. Overall I was struck with how few hikers were on this mountain on a gorgeous fall day.

As we continued to hike down to a more flat, mountain path that ran along an icy stream where there were tiny cafes, Fr. Azzi would pause and show us in his binoculars tiny monasteries carved into the cliffs of the mountain. The medieval Maronites must have been excellent rock climbers or built wooden cranes with baskets to lower monks into these tiny spaces.

The ascetic, mountain existence of the Maronites exemplifies the fiercely independent spirit of the Lebanese Christians, Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant. In the mountains the Maronites were safe from the armies of their Muslim rulers and escaped the taxes levied on Christian and Jewish citizens of Islamic empires. Christians were the majority population of Lebanon until sometime in the 1960s, and Lebanon emerged from the Ottoman Empire as a new Christian majority nation just after WWI. Seats in the Lebanese Parliament are still divided 50 / 50 between Christian and Muslim political representatives due in part to the Maronite heritage. Their church still owns about 23% of all properties in the nation. They also have a reputation as fierce soldiers and fighters in the complex political history of this cross roads of the ancient and modern Middle East.

As the sun was beginning to set, we boarded the bus for the long drive back to Beirut. Along the way we passed through tiny mountain villages where most inhabitants are still Maronites. When we asked Fr. Azzi for some good resources on the history of his Church, he said the best texts are in Arabic, French, Russian, and German. Most books on the Maronites in English are written for the busy tourist or pilgrim, not the student or scholar of Eastern Churches.

   

When I return to Chicago, the Maronites are another eastern Christian church I want to rediscover in my own city where the Diaspora of Christians from the Middle East continues.

Welcome to Damascus, Syria

On Saturday 30 October, three Americans living at NEST traveled to Damascus, Syria, a first-time trip for all of us. Karen & Gary Garbrielson, members of the ELCA from Colorado Springs, CO, lived for many years in Saudi Arabia when Gary worked for the Saudi airline. Gary speaks some Arabic and Karen enjoys shopping in souks (marketplaces with hundreds, in some cases thousands of tiny shops & vendors), so they are excellent traveling companions for an American on his first trip to Syria. Gary is working with NEST’s IT system as a volunteer from the ELCA this fall, and Karen is auditing courses at NEST.

NEST arranged for a Lebanese taxi driver from Hamra to take us up over the Mount Lebanon range through Lebanese and Syrian border crossings into Syria. The drive up over Mt. Lebanon early on a Saturday morning through the fog and mist gave us our first view of the beautiful breadbasket of Lebanon, the Bekah Valley.

When we crossed the border into Syria, Karen & Gary immediately were struck with how much Syria looks like Colorado: tall, steep mountains against a dry wilderness. Our Lebanese driver turned us over to a Syrian taxi driver who took us into the ancient / modern city of Damascus.  

The Greek Orthodox monastery where we stayed in Damasucs, St. Elias, was located in the former Christian & Jewish districts of the old city that was surrounded by walls and gates (called 'bab/s'). It is next door to the R. Catholic church that claims to be built on the site where Saul was unhorsed by the risen Jesus. There is a beautiful modernist chapel on the grounds of the church built in the 1950s that houses the traditional site that looks like a stone road over a very small grotto for prayer. 

On Saturday p.m., after lunch in a restaurant near our monastery with no tourists at all, we took a cab to the old souk (marketplace) to see the Umayyad mosque, one of the largest and most beautiful from the centuries of early Islam.

The souk of Damascus is enormous! Imagine on a Saturday p.m., more people than the Mall of America in Minneapolis with more than a thousand tiny shops that sell everything from ornate Qur'ans to exotic lingerie. It was absolutely packed with people doing weekend shopping. We found the Umayyad mosque and slipped inside and first saw Saladin's tomb (he was the Kurdish Muslim commander who defeated the Crusaders and re-established Muslim control over Jerusalem). 

The interior of the mosque was a huge courtyard surrounded by ornate walls with stonework, gold leaf, and several minarets. There were side door openings into halls for prayer. In the courtyard everyone had their shoes off, but families and groups came there to eat bag lunches, fly kites, take pictures, etc. It was a great civic space inside of a mosque and open to the sky. 

Milling around in the souk was tiring after our long cab drive early in the day, so we returned to the monastery before catching a cab to Bab Sharki, the city gate closest to our quarter. There we found by accident the R. Catholic church built over the traditional site of the home of Ananias, the Christian in Damascus who baptized Saul / Paul. We happened to arrive when Saturday evening mass was being celebrated in Arabic with both women and male priests leading the liturgy in a packed basement church that looked like it was cut out of the stone. 

Afterwards we had dinner at the 'St. Paul Cafe' that is beside Ananias' home. There we sampled a very tasty Syrian beer, a surprise for us in the Muslim-majority nation of Syria. (As someone in Beirut said to me: ‘Allah has many commandments, but we don’t follow them all;’ a wise saying for understanding daily life in Beirut, Damascus, & Jerusalem.)

On Saturday p.m., my friends discovered that their Anglican friend's congregation we were planning to attend on Sunday a.m. only has worship on Fridays and Saturdays. Sunday is a regular business day in Damascus. So on Sunday a.m. we took a cab to the Syrian National Museum which has room after room of archaeological objects from multiple civilizations. There I saw the original objects of many ancient civilizations that are displayed in introductions to the Hebrew Bible / Old Testament. We had lunch in the garden of the museum, then returned to the souk to try to find some gifts.

The citadel of Damascus was closed for renovations but we had dinner in a cafe overlooking the citadel and the old souk. 

On Saturday and Sunday evening we checked out Syrian TV. Lots of soap operas in Arabic (produced in Egypt?) and a number of stations devoted to music videos produced in the Middle East by various musicians mixed with N. American music videos. The FMTV channel seemed quite daring in what they were broadcasting in conservative Syria. The formula for doing music videos seems to have transplanted itself easily in the Middle East and N. Africa. I wonder if Iran allows people to watch this Middle Eastern channel!

On Sunday we learned about the invasion of a Greek Catholic church in Baghdad. Two priests and lay members inside the church were killed by Iraqi insurgents that were protesting an incident of conflict in Egypt between Muslims and Coptic Christians. Christians in the Middle East follow these stories very closely & are deeply moved because there is a very long history of sudden uprisings, massacres, and violent incidents against Christians in multiple nations in this region. (One student at NEST knew both of the priests who were murdered.)

The ride back on Monday through the mountains of Syria and Lebanon was spectacular, but we felt we had barely scratched the surface of old & modern Damascus. The border crossings from Syria to Lebanon involved our Lebanese driver giving various tips and gratuities to government employees to get us through all the checkpoints. Syria has a hidden exit fee they charge even to persons with all the right visas, so we paid that and moved on. 

When we returned to Beirut things were warm, sunny, and much more humid than dry, cool Damascus. I look forward to visiting Aleppo soon, Syria's most populous city that has its largest Christian community. 

Meeting Bishop George Saliba, Syriac Orthodox Archbishop, Mt. Lebanon Church, Sabtiyyeh

On Saturday October 23, our NEST class with Dean George Sabra on 'Contemporary Eastern Churches' traveled by bus to a neighborhood in Sabtiyyeh on Mount Lebanon just outside Beirut to meet with Bishop George Saliba of the Syriac Orthodox Church. This was meeting none of us will soon forget, especially the U.S. citizens among us!


Bishop Saliba arrived by car just as our bus parked outside one of the Syriac Orthodox churches on Mt. Lebanon. His warm smile, joyful spirit, wonderful sense of humor, and ever present cell phone were immediately endearing. He conducted us inside just as a Lebanese Scout unit of young teens, boys and girls, was assembling on the church grounds.


We were led into a cool room with AC surrounded by pictures of Syriac Orthodox monasteries in  Turkey, Iraq, & other Middle Eastern countries. The walls were lined with bookcases containing many volumes. A Syriac Orthodox Deacon attended the Bishop and other members of the Bishop's staff served us hot tea with sugar, pistachio cookies from Damascus, and Arabic coffee with more sugar. Each of us was given a copy of 'The Lord's Prayer in Syriac-Aramaic: The Spoken Language of Our Lord Jesus Christ,' a copy of the ancient & modern Syriac-Aramaic Alphabet, & 2 beautiful brochures on the recently constructed & sanctified 'Beth Suryoye - Mor Gabriel Church' in Kesrwan, Mount Lebanon.


The Syriac Orthodox Church was presented in my textbooks in college and seminary as 'monophysite,' i.e., the eastern Church that accepted the Nicene Creed (325 CE) & the decrees of the fourth century church councils at Constantinople & Ephesus, but that did not accept the Creed of Chalcedon of 451 CE. In early Christendom among Latin & Greek-speaking Churches, the Syriac Orthodox Church was referred to as the 'Jacobites' or 'monophysites,' those who teach that 'God became man in Christ, united in one nature' (related to the Alexandrian-inspired christology emphasizing the union of two natures in Christ). They teach that Jesus Christ is one Person of two natures (divine & human). They refer to Mary primarily as theotokos (God-bearer in Greek) but also as 'the mother of God.' 


By contrast Pope Leo and the Latin & Greek 'fathers' at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 declared Christ was one Person in two natures (divine & human), the two natures remaining distinct after the union. The Latin & Greek-speaking Church of the old Eastern Roman empire persecuted the Syriac Orthodox Christians as heretics for rejecting the Creed of Chalcedon. Differences in language, culture, & political loyalties turned these subtle metaphysical & theological distinctions into slogans that divided Christians along religious-political lines in an age where there was no separation between religion and ruling regimes. 


The persecution of the Syriac Orthodox Christians (who continued to worship in the Syriac-Aramaic language common to Mary, Jesus & the early Jewish-Christian movement of disciples that founded a center for the Church & mission in Antioch) was so severe that when the rising Islamic empire conquered the eastern region of Christianity in the seventh century, the Syriac Orthodox Christians welcomed the new regime. 


Over the centuries Syriac Orthodox Christians evangelized India where their church continues to have relatively large concentrations of members, and they were most numerous in the region of modern Turkey & Iraq. Due to persecutions of their churches by Muslims & Kurds that began in the late Ottoman empire and around WWI and in the 1930s, Syriac Orthodox churches moved to Lebanon, Syria, and outside the Middle East. 


Bishop Saliba emphasized to us that in more recent times in Iraq under Saddam Hussein, the Syriac Orthodox Church had lived in peace. He said that Saddam Hussein was like a 'father' to their Church & other Christian minorities in Iraq. That all changed with the U.S. invasion of 2003. Since the U.S. toppled the prior Iraqi government, and allowed a new regime to form dominated by Shia Muslims (along with Sunni Muslims in the government), the Syriac Orthodox Christians were brutally treated and have left Iraq by the thousands. Neither the new regime in Baghdad nor the U.S. forces have prevented the violent persecution of thousands of Syriac Orthodox Christians. The Bishop said that western powers followed a similar pattern in the 1990s in Kosovo in former Yugoslavia which was once a center for eastern Orthodox Christians, but is now dominated by Muslims and western Christians.


The Bishop also expressed his frustration with U.S. foreign policy regarding the State of Israel and the Palestinians (thousands of whom still live in 12 refugee camps scattered around Lebanon). He said bluntly that U.S. foreign policy is a "slave of Zionism" when it comes to dealing with Israeli political leaders over negotiations on a future Palestinian State. Neither in former President Bill Clinton nor in current President Barack Obama did he find the toughness necessary to bring the Israelis to a viable peace settlement with the Palestinians.


At the same time he said that the two Palestinian factions, Fatah & Hamas, need to reconcile if they are to negotiate effectively with the Israelis and the American mediators.


Although the Bishop's words were blunt & might have offended some of us who are American citizens who support a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, his personality and hospitality connected with everyone in our class. He said he was speaking about our leadership, not the American people as a people. He also had blunt words to say about western European powers & their involvement with the Ottoman empire in its closing days and in former Yugoslavia.


He also connected with our class made up of Christians from different nations due to his identification with persecuted Syriac Orthodox Christians in Turkey (along with Armenian Christians), in Iraq today, & other Christian minorities who suffer from second or third class citizenship in other contexts in this region.


One of my observations on preparation for ministry is that an individual may have an excellent education but lack the personality to connect with others effectively to communicate the Christian message. Bishop Saliba connected with us through his joyful and generous personality in such a way that we could hear his blunt words about U.S. foreign policy, about the current regime in Baghdad, and learn from his identification with suffering Christians in the Middle East. 


           

Worshipping with the Assyrian Church of the East, Sabtiyyeh, Mt. Lebanon

Today (Sunday / The Lord's Day, October 17) Dean George Sabra's "Contemporary Eastern Churches" class traveled by bus from Hamra (NEST's neighborhood) through Beirut and up part of Mount Lebanon to Sabtiyyeh, a suburb of the city where we visited with Fr. Akhikar Wardeh's congregation in the tradition of The Assyrian Church of the East. 

The Assyrian Church is one of the oldest expressions of Christianity dating its origins to 431 CE. They worship in both Aramaic (the language spoken by many first century Jews & Gentiles in Palestine & the eastern regions of the Roman empire & it is the language of their Bible & liturgy), & in the modern Syriac language which is related to but also different from Aramaic & Arabic. Their Church faced massive persecution from 1914 - 1933 under the Ottoman empire; 500,000 Assyrian Christians were massacred or died on a 1,000 km trek from southern Russia (where the Orthodox Russian authorities had protected them until Russia withdrew from WWI) to northern Iraq fleeing persecution by the Ottomans. At one time there were 750,000 Assyrian Christians in northern Iraq around Mosul (Nineveh) and in the Kurdish regions. Ongoing conflict between the Kurds and Assyrian Christians has reduced their numbers in recent years from 60 - 70,000 to only 20,000 remaining in Iraq today. Now their patriarch and their Church is based in Chicago where many Assyrian Christians immigrated in the 20th century. 

Fr. Wardeh is a young, relatively new priest from Iraq who received his theological education in Rome since there are no Assyrian monasteries or schools of higher learning remaining in the Middle East. There are 3 Assyrian Church congregations in Lebanon, including the village of Sarah (phonetic spelling) in the Bekah valley south of Beirut established by Assyrian church refugees from S. Russia in 1914. The church we visited was built in 1953 and was well attended. 

The Lord's Day service (that was in progress when we arrived) lasted at least 90 minutes and consisted almost entirely in the chanting of their liturgy in modern Syriac by a choir of young, single women (heads covered by a kind of red beret with red choir robes) and three priests who were joined by the congregation in some of the chants. There was much incense that was used, among other things, to cleanse one's hands before received the bread and wine of the Eucharist. Children were communicated with the bread, and women covered their heads with scarves to receive the elements. The Gospel reading for the day was Matthew 20:1-16 (The Laborers in the Vineyard) with a seven minute sermon on 'So the last will be first, and the first will be last.'

In our NEST group some of the Protestants who were less familiar with E. Orthodox liturgics were quite taken when a red curtain emblazoned with a gold cross was drawn to hide from us the consecration of the elements by Fr. Wardeh. Although our group was made up of Presbyterians (Lebanese & N. American), Lutherans (Europe & N. America), Anglicans (England & Scotland), & Armenian Evangelicals from Syria, we were all welcomed at the Lord's Table. 

The Assyrian Church of the East has a distinctive understanding of the Person of Christ that is  close to the Gospel of Mark, Colossians 1:15-20, early Jewish Christianity (before the 'parting of the ways' between Gentile Christians and rabbinic Judaism), and the school of Antioch's theology where Jesus' humanity becomes the subject of the incarnation of God's divinity from the moment of Jesus' conception. For them, Mary the mother of Jesus is not theotokos ('God-bearer') but christotokos (mother of the Messiah). They confess the faith using the Nicene Creed in its original version of 325 CE (where the Holy Spirit proceeds from God the Father, but not from both the Father and the Son) and they add to the Creed Colossians 1:15b, that Christ is 'the firstborn of all creation.' (This same text was used by Arius, the presbyter of Alexandria, who taught that Jesus is Savior of the world but not divine in the same way as God the Father. The Assyrian Church, however, does not have an Arian christology, as interpreted by Fr. Wardeh.)

In the celebration of the Eucharist, the breaking of the bread symbolizes for Assyrian Christians how Jesus' humanity and divinity was broken in the crucifixion, but then reunited in the resurrection and ascension to eternal glory.

Since Fr. Wardeh did his theological training in Rome, I wanted to ask him if the emphasis on the historical Jesus in Catholic theology since the 1940s and esp. since Vatican Council II in the 1960s has opened doors of dialogue with Assyrian Christians who have never forgotten that Jesus, Mary and the disciples spoke Aramaic. 

Given centuries of protected religious minority status under a series of Muslim empires, Assyrian Christians had a significant impact on Islamic scholarship that brought the philosophy of Aristotle & Greek medicine to western Europe through Arabic translations of the Greek texts. But the massacres and persecutions under the Ottoman empire and contemporary conflicts with the Kurds in N. Iraq marks the Assyrian Christians as a Church of the Cross. It is interesting to note that all the crosses in the congregation we visited were not crucifixes (they did not display the broken body of Jesus on the cross) but empty crosses proclaiming the resurrection from the dead of the crucified messiah.          

How to Stay Informed about Lebanon & Beirut

By now you probably know from news media that the President of Iran, Mahmoud Admadinejad, is visiting Lebanon this week (October 13-15). Yesterday (Wed.) he met with leaders of the Lebanese government in Beirut. Today (Thurs.) he is meeting with members of the 'Party of God' (Hizbullah) in southern Lebanon near the border with Israel. A good way to keep up on the local news from Lebanon is to paste this address into your browser & go to this English & Arabic language website:


http://web.naharnet.com


Naharnet posts updates hour to hour and provides both local (Lebanon) and regional news (Middle East).

Learning in The NEST in Beirut at a Crossroads of the Middle East & the West

This fall semester at NEST I am responsible for two courses: Theology of the Reformation: Luther & Calvin in Comparative Perspective, and Doctrine of Christ. Let me tell you first about my students.


In Luther & Calvin I have two: Kladys is a Presbyterian from a village in northern Lebanon working on her M.A. in Christian Education, and Saleem is an Anglican Palestinian from Nablus working on his M.Div. At the end of this post I will include with Kladys' permission a poetic meditation that she shared at the beginning of one of our classes last week, and a meditation that Saleem prepared for this week, also with his permission.


In Doctrine of Christ I have six: Kristina is Korean-American, already has her M.A. from Fuller Seminary in Cross-Cultural Studies & has lived in both Istanbul & Beirut; Rana is a Greek Catholic lay woman from Lebanon who studied architecture at the American Univ.-Beirut (AUB); Hagop (cf. Jacob) is an Armenian Evangelical from Lebanon who has studied biochemistry & psychology and is pursuing the M.Div.; Sevan is from Kurdistan in Iraq & a member of the Armenian Orthodox Church; Talar is from Aleppo, Syria working on her Bachelors in Christian Education; & Kladys is also taking this course.


These students are members of a community of 30 students at NEST this fall: 18 from the Middle East (Lebanon, Syria, Armenia, Iraq, the Occupied Palestinian Territories) and 12 from Europe (Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Scotland) & N. America. Here at NEST many of us live in the same vertical campus, dine together 2 - 3 meals a day, wash, iron & dry our clothes, drink Arabic coffee on the veranda, play volleyball, & worship in chapel 5 X per week. Imagine a kind of Protestant theological monastery in a busy, mixed Christian & Muslim neighborhood near the American Univ.-Beirut, and you have something like NEST.


In Luther & Calvin we are working our way through Kittelson's biography of Luther and watching the 2003 Luther film. Later in the course we will take up Luther & Calvin's views on Judaism & Islam. One thing we noted early on in the course was the tremendous anxiety about 'the Turks' in Rome and western Europe as Luther's reform began.


In Doctrine of Christ we are focusing on atonement and different understandings of Jesus' execution in Scripture & the history of Christian thought concluding with the contemporary debate about abuses of the cross. Over the weekend we were to re-read the Passion Narratives in the four New Testament gospels. We had four presenters on each Passion Narrative today. As Hagop interpreted John 18:16, he taught me a new word in Arabic: wasta <phonetic spelling> which means 'mediation,' something that happens when the 'other' or 'beloved disciple' who has followed Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest gets Peter brought in.


Teaching at NEST is a joy. The institution has high standards of admission and all my students are well prepared for class, well read in biblical studies, theology, & education, on task when we meet, and take their studies very seriously. Many of them come from cities and villages where Christianity has been around much longer than in Europe and N. America, yet their churches have been minority communities in this region for many centuries. 


And now here is the poetic meditation "Walking in the Desert" by Kladys Abboud of Lebanon shared with one of our classes:

Walking in the desert .. walking Alone…
Searching for a friend, searching for a home…

Asking Who am I? Asking what to do? In a world of loneliness, from where do I start?
It seems like they will never end, these long days of hopeless nights,

I scream, I cry, I shout, I feel like I will die, I always ask why…. but .. no reply ..
What shall I do to find a meaning for a life that I didn’t ask for..
From where do I grasp the power to continue.. to be stronger than before ??
I kept walking, searching for the answers here and there ..
Searching for the meaning that saves me from the despair..
While I was in this journey of struggle, I passed through a fountain of water, I looked around..
I saw the trees, the flowers, the little plants, the fishes.
The whole nature .. it was happier than me..

Suddenly I saw a man who was drinking from the fountain..
 He looked at me directly in my eyes,
He noticed me, he noticed that I am there..
He noticed the sadness, he noticed the fear..
He asked with a smile on his face, what are you searching for? Why are you here?

I answered with hesitation; I am searching for “the meaning”
Did you find it? Or are we together in this journey?
We are together my dear, he said..

Let’s sit and talk, let’s stop the walk ..
For just one moment ..
Looking to the creation .. 

Trying to find consolation .

I felt happy to find this friend..
It was a glorious moment for me after all this strife ..
It was the most meaningful moment that I spend in my life ..
Every word I heard from him, touched my soul
he was sincere, he talked directly to my whole ..
I asked who are you?   I want to know
Your presence changed my mood, helps me to go …
beyond the struggle and the sadness ..
you filled my heart with gladness
He answered saying, I am the meaning your searching for ..
 I am your friend, I am your lord..

I want to be always with you, let me shine in your heart .. l
et your light be so bright .
let the whole world know that you are loved by your God ..
Life is a struggle I agree with you .. but our friendship will give you the power to continue ...


Here is Saleem's meditation, entitled, "He Collects Your Tears."


"You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in Your bottle. You have recorded each one in Your book (Psalm 56:8).


Do you know how important you are to God? He cares so much about every detail of your life. He cares about your thoughts, feelings, and emotions. In fact, what you are going through is so important to Him that He records every sorrow and collects every tear you've shed. Why would God record  your sorrows and collect your tears? It's because He loves you so much. He's your Vindicator. He's keeping account of every wrong that's ever been done to you so that He can make up for every single one of them. He wants to restore everything that has ever been stolen. He wants to heal every single hurt and pain. He sees the longings and desires of your heart, and you can rest assured that behind the scenes He is working things out for your good!


I want to remind you today that God is with you. He is on your side. He has your best interest at heart, and He is working to bring restoration and peace to every area of your life. Keep standing, keep believing, and keep doing the right thing because the One who collects your tears will restore every broken place in your life!


Let us pray: Heavenly Father, thank You for loving me and setting me free. Thank you for being my Vindicator. I choose to release every hurt, pain and sorrow, knowing that You will make all things new. In Jesus' Name. Amen."

I look forward to learning more about the Christians, churches & cities of the Middle East in the weeks ahead from my students and colleagues in the faculty & staff at NEST.   

A Walk with President Mary Mikhael in Downtown Beirut

Friday evening (Oct. 1), I was invited for a walk downtown led by NEST President Mary Mikhael with a visiting committee from the World Council of Churches. The committee included ecumenical leaders from many global regions with Conrad Reisner, their distinguished chair.


As we walked the narrow and traffic-congested streets of Beirut in the tropical heat & humidity, President Mikhael would stop and point out public landmarks. We were moving from the Hamra district where NEST is located to city-center. Beirut is a relatively small city in square miles but densely populated and crammed with historic sites, both ancient and modern.


As we approached the parliament building which dates back to the Ottoman era of the 19th century, Mikhael showed us how both Christian and Jewish centers of worship were built around this building, for both Jews and Christians were protected peoples under Ottoman rule. The result is that the must public areas of downtown Beirut host some of the most beautiful churches and mosques I have seen in any global city.


What also makes these sacred sites significant is that several of the churches (including the very first Presbyterian church built in Lebanon) were destroyed, in whole or in part, during the Lebanese civil war of the late 20th century. Some of the churches which are built over much older churches dating back many centuries, were actually battle sites between different militias fighting inside the church buildings. All of them that were destroyed or damaged were re-built with funds from their own traditions, not with public funds. In the case of one church, beautiful icons from the 1700s were removed from the sanctuary and hidden in a hospital before gunfire broke out in the sanctuary. This beautiful church has been restored but those who re-built left the bullet marks on one wall to remind the public that a battle once scarred this holy place.


We also saw from different angles the reconstruction of Beirut's central synagogue as an historic site. The city was once home to a thriving Jewish community. It was significant that someone has taken the care and committed the funds to re-build this historic synagogue.


Then we walked around a neighborhood with four mosques, and an immense, beautiful new mosque built very recently. Near this new mosque is the burial site of the Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri who was assassinated in 2005, and the tombs of his body guards and driver who were blown up in the explosion. Hariri was a Sunni Muslim, an entrepreneur, and the P.M. who oversaw the re-building of downtown Beirut after the civil war in the 1990s and first half of the last decade. We went into the tent over his grave and viewed pictures of him on the tent walls, and then walked into the next tent where his guards and driver are buried and saw their pictures.


Later we had dinner al fresco in a beautiful neighborhood near where the new souk (marketplaces) have been located. The Lebanese dishes reminded me of eating tappas in Barcelona. The Lebanese wine was outstanding. As we dined and the WCC members honored President Mary and Conrad Reisner, a group of clowns were posing for pictures with  families. This part of downtown Beirut felt like a Parisian street corner on a Friday evening.


Most of our group returned to NEST in taxis, but a few of us walked back in the darkness with President Mary. At one point we had to cross very near the home of an important public official that was well guarded by police and soldiers. Mikhael stopped to chat with the soldiers and then gave them most of her chocolates, her gift from the WCC group she had just received. 


As I remember this evening now, it was like a dream finally to see the center of this city and country about which I have heard from Presbyterians & other Christians for so many years.     

First Few Days, First Impressions

Hard to believe I've only been here about 48 hours.... Beirut is bustling with life in the neighborhood around The Near East School of Theology (NEST), about one block into the city from the American University of Beirut (AUB) that stands by the seaside. Streets around NEST are narrow and full of pedestrians, cars, scooters, smells of open air cooking by vendors, & sounds of new construction work. This sector of Beirut is home to many students who come from all over the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and N. America. 


The weather is hot and humid this week, like Chicago in August. The Mediterranean sunlight strikes objects with a clarity that showed up in the very first pictures I took of the AUB campus. Five times a day I can hear from my room or out on the streets the call to prayer from various mosques in the area. On the street and on the NEST campus I hear Arabic (in several versions), French, German, Danish, and English in many different accents. 


I am just getting to meet most of my colleagues in the faculty, administration, & student body for the first time. We have our first faculty meeting on Friday. Over meals of Lebanese cuisine at NEST, I have already met two students in my courses who are from Lebanon and the West Bank. I have also met students from Armenia, Denmark, & Scotland. Classes begin on Tuesday.


On Tuesday, I begin my study of conversational Arabic with a tutor at the Berlitz Language Center just 5 mins. down the street. Our plan is to meet three times per week for 90 mins. of instruction at each session. This plan gets me through the basic course by the end of November. We'll see if I can keep up with the pace and add some Arabic words or phrases to later posts.


I had lunch with an Anglican M.Div. candidate today who took two semesters of Hebrew from Terra Winston, a recent graduate of McCormick (May '08) who lived here at NEST after completing her M.Div. It was wonderful to hear about Terra's teaching abilities becoming appreciated in a very different cultural setting from Chicago. She has just begun in the doctoral program in Hebrew Bible at Princeton Seminary this fall.


The first picture I have posted is the entrance to the NEST campus where an ecumenical community of Christians live, eat, study, worship, and play volleyball. We have students from several local campuses who live here also, and some faculty and administration have apartments in the building. There are offices for churches and other organizations in our 'vertical campus' that stretches both above and below the first floor. At least one local Presbyterian congregation also worships in the beautiful chapel here on Sundays. 


I am looking forward to meeting more of the faculty on Friday and discovering where I will worship on Sunday. Time to crack open my first Arabic textbooks....


      


      

From Chicago to Beirut

From September 27 to January 22, I will be on sabbatical at the Near East School of Theology or NEST (http://www.theonest.edu.lb/) in Beirut, Lebanon, taking some time out from my home institution, McCormick Theological Seminary (http://mccormick.edu). My thanks to the trustees and faculty of McCormick Seminary who provided me with a year-long sabbatical. 


During four months at NEST I will be teaching two courses: ST 363 Luther and Calvin and ST 302 Doctrine of Christ. I will also be studying Arabic and seeking to learn more about Christianity in the Middle East. On a weekly basis this blog, Nesting In Beirut, will be updated with stories, reflections, and pictures of the persons and places I am experiencing. Later in the fall I intend to travel to Syria and Jordan to extend my knowledge of the Middle East.