One Body

Though we are many, we are one body, 
because we all share in one bread. 

It is Sunday morning, the sabbath is over and the orthodox Jews in our Jerusalem neighborhood are starting their work week. Traffic is noticeably heavier from the day before and the sidewalks are full of children heading to school. But it is our sabbath day. We are dressed in our travel Sunday best and we are headed to church. 

Our destination is St. Andrews Episcopal Church, deep in the heart of the occupied territory in Ramallah. Ramallah serves as the de facto administrative capital of the Palestinian National Authority. To get there, we travelled through an armed checkpoint, with Palestinians lined up to be questioned and searched. Once on the other side of the wall, the landscape changed - the population is denser, the vegetation is sparser and browner as the Palestinian areas receive water only once every seven to 10 days. Even the cars are different with white and green license plates marking Palestinian cars for greater scrutiny while the Jewish citizens whiz through the checkpoints with their yellow plates.

A young girl dressed in an acolyte's red cassock greets us and then continues to prepare for the service. We are given service booklets in English and a separate leaflet with the day's readings and hymns. Father Fadi Diab welcomed us and encouraged us to participate in English, while warning that it would be a "bit like Pentacost." Then he generously, and progressively, invited Mother Julia and Mother Posey to vest with him explicitly because he wanted the girls in his congregation to see ordained women celebrating in the church. 

And Pentecost it was! The Holy Spirit worked its miracles as we sang beloved hymns and prayed our familiar prayers simultaneously in two languages. The readings were read in one language with those fluent in the other language read along in their leaflet, while the Gospel was read by Father Fadi and Mother Posey in their respective tongue. Even Father Fadi's sermon interweaved the languages so that everyone heard him preach the message of forgiving our enemies. Throughout it all was this sense of familiarity and solace that even 7,000 miles from home, we are still in our church home. The same readings were read in our home parishes five and a half hours later. The same prayers for the people. The same declarations of our faith.

But we weren't at Trinity...or All Saint's...or St. John's Georgetown...or the Church of the Ascension, NYC. We were in the middle of Ramallah, behind a wall. We were celebrating the Eucharist with descendants of the very first Christians who date back to the original Pentecost. We were breaking bread with Christians in the Holy Land who have watched their population diminish to now under 1% of the Israeli population. We were one body with people who face daily discrimination and persecution.

As we took communion, our hosts sang an Arabic hymn and you could feel the Holy Spirit at work in this beautiful little church. Speaking in our own tongues, bringing our own experiences to the Lord's table, we shared in the bread and began to understand that we are one body.