28.05.2018
Don’t Let Your Churches Become Ruins – Keep Faith With God and People Will Come
“Don’t let your church in the diocese become a church of ruins,” Canon Hatem Shehadeh, of St John’s Church in Haifa in the Diocese of Jerusalem said on Friday evening. He was speaking at Evening Prayer in St John’s Church, Laragh, near Glendalough, as his visit to the dioceses drew to a close.
Canon Hatem is a Christian, Arab, Palestinian, Israeli, Irish Anglican minister living in the Land of the Holy One and was visiting the dioceses as part of our Jerusalem Link. He had spent the afternoon in Glendalough with the local Rector, the Revd Brian O’Reilly, and had been searching for God’s reason as to why he was back in Dublin & Glendalough.
“We went to the monastic sites and again there were empty churches. All of a sudden I saw the word ‘ruins’ and I connected that with my country. In Israel and Jerusalem where I come from, the country is full of ruins… What God is saying to me and to my people and to the Christian church here is as long as you go straight with God and be obedient with his ministry, no matter what challenges we face, the church remains alive,” he stated.
Canon Hatem suggested that while the monastic city of Glendalough was in ruins, people’s witness in the area resulted in a new living community being created in Laragh. He feared that if the emigration of Christians from the Land of the Holy One continued at the same rate, churches there would become ruins.
“God was saying to me ‘I don’t want churches to become ruins. If you really love me, stay there. Keep ministering and I will keep people coming.’ The message of God is ‘I love you, keep witnessing.’ If we turn our backs on the Lord our churches will be in ruins. We should not be afraid. Fear cripples us. If we believe we will die, we will die. We in the Land of the Holy One decided to refuse to think these thoughts. If we believe I am sure our churches will never become ruins,” he said.
On Wednesday, Canon met both clergy and lay people at the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. He spoke movingly about the situation in his home country and said that as Christians in the Holy Land they must not stop believing the message of peace, witnessing to the Lord and spreading the good news and the message of peace and reconciliation.
His key message to both groups was a call to Christians in the west to:
1. Push back against the demonisation of both Palestinians and Israelis.
2. Reject the support of violence. It is not Christian.
3. Support those who are seeking peace. “We don’t need you to be pro–Palestinian or pro–Israeli. Be pro–peace”.
He urged those present to pray for the Christian Arab community. He also encouraged people who travel to the Land of the Holy One to visit the Living Stones as well as the old stones. “Millions of tourists come to Israel to visit the holy sites without recognising that there is a living community of Christ – the Living Stones. It is so important that you visit us. This is very important to us to know that we are not forgotten and that someone cares for us. You are feeding us by your presence and we feel that we are not alone,” Canon Hatem explained saying that people can ask their tour guides to bring them to worship in a local church.
He said that he believed God was working through the link between the Diocese of Jerusalem and the Dioceses of Dublin & Glendalough. He said the two Archbishops had planted the seeds and the link would grow because of their vision. “Our link is a witness to the Anglican Communion. Our witness will empower people in the Land of the Holy One and people here in Ireland,” he said adding that it was empowering to know that people in Dublin & Glendalough were thinking of them in the Land of the Holy One.
There are 120,000 Christians living in Israel, Canon Hatem said. In Gaza there are 1,020 Christians and just one Anglican. The Al Ahli Arab Hospital, run by the Diocese of Jerusalem, continues to do wonderful work and with the latest protests it is appealing for support.
Speaking at the end of the evening Archbishop Michael Jackson encouraged people in Dublin & Glendalough to seek out connections between their own parishes and parishes in the Diocese of Jerusalem, whether that be through parish churches, schools or healthcare institutions.
During the rest of his visit he attended the Healing Eucharist at St Ann’s and Christ Church Cathedral and attended the Romanian Orthodox Parish of the annunciation and All Saints in Broadstone, Dublin. He also visited the Solas Project in the Liberties.
He met pupils in Nun’s Cross School in Ashford and taught them a short prayer in Arabic. He told them that in his home country there were children just like them who wanted to be friends with them. He explained the conflict to them and highlighted the importance of peace. “Peace is so important. If you can learn how to live in peace at this age then you grow up to be ambassadors for peace,” he told them.
In East Glendalough School in Wicklow he spoke about Haifa and St John’s Anglican School. Addressing third year students he told them about the peace programme which had been established by the school and which was endorsed by the Israeli education department. He said the programme was based on the vertical relationship with God which must manifest itself through the horizontal relationships with your neighbours. “We try to put in the minds of the students that if you love God you must also love your friend and neighbour and if you have issues you must solve them peacefully,” he explained.
The programme sees students from St John’s visiting Jewish schools where they discover that they all talk the same talk and like the same things. “You make peace. It doesn’t come from Facebook or Instagram. You work for it,” he said.
