24.09.2026
Archbishop of Dublin Reflects on Visit to Diocese of Jerusalem
Archbishop Michael Jackson was in the Diocese of Jerusalem last week to attend their Diocesan Majma (Synod) which took place in Jordan. Prior to Synod he preached in St George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem and visited the Nassar family at the Tent of Nations. He writes about his experiences below.
My arrival in Jerusalem on Saturday 12th September coincided with the end of The Sabbath and with the Eve of The Jewish New Year. I had had the pleasure of sharing in New Year Celebrations in Dublin ahead of New Year on Tuesday of the same week, so this was a double pleasure. I was also afforded the rare privilege of meeting Patriarch Theophilus III, the Head of the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem, on Saturday evening.
The Dean of St George’s College, The Reverend Canon Richard Sewell, had informed me that an Irish woman, Emma Cowan Leite, had worshipped in the cathedral on the previous Sunday and was working with The Tent of Nations southwest of Bethlehem. I preached in St George’s at the 10am Service of Holy Communion on Sunday 13th September. (You can read the sermon here.) This afforded me the opportunity to present a Celtic Pectoral Cross (from St Patrick’s Cathedral) to Archbishop Hosam Naoum as a mark of our diocesan partnership in the work of Christ.
The Tent of Nations
Between them, Richard and Emma enabled me to visit The Tent of Nations on Sunday afternoon. It is rare indeed to find people whose motto is: We refuse to be enemies … but that has been the case with the Nassar family throughout the lifetime of this remarkable group of people who live on an outcrop high above Bethlehem, the last outcrop that has not been appropriated by Israeli Settlers. They explained to me that a Settlement begins with prefabricated dwellings and develops from that starting–point into a full–blown community. There now are such prefabs right beside the Nassars’ farm. One such Settlement, on the opposite side of the valley from the farm, has a Torah School along with accompanying Boarding Facilities. The family live under Israeli Military Law. I was told on the farm that the state mechanism is such as to make life so regularly and so sporadically challenging for Palestinian farmers that they are pressed either into violence or into emigration.
The Nassar family alone remain there to farm their land as Palestinians and as Christians in the face of bulldozing of well–established olive trees and ploughing them into the ground days before the olive harvest – in order to give the impression that their land is not a continuously working farm but virgin soil and therefore ripe for state appropriation. Other families have left everything behind and gone abroad on foot of repeated and sustained physical, mechanical and legal harassment based primarily on forcing people who have been there for generations to produce documents which simply do not, nor can they, exist. Failure to provide such documentation results in summary eviction. This is the legal battle the Nassars have waged daily for decades.
While The Settlements and their occupants have the benefits of tarmacadamed road systems (and an exclusive new highway is in the process of being constructed) along with electricity and running water, the Nassar family is not permitted to build any buildings, they collect water in cisterns, use solar panels and live in caves.
The farm is first and foremost a statement of intent. It is also a community who welcome individuals and groups from around the world who hold with the values espoused by the Nassar family: belonging to one’s inheritance, working one’s land, espousing non–violence, providing opportunities for education in issues of humanity and justice to anyone willing to participate and learn and to contribute, by loving and not hating. All of those to whom I spoke, who had come from abroad, found the experience both gutting and transformative – but they would not have wished to be elsewhere. Experience of undying goodness breeds love and loyalty. The positive contribution that can be made by anyone (see www.tentofnations.org) is to contribute financially, to buy new olive trees to replace those removed or destroyed on a regular basis by forces, to work in various ways on the farm in line with your own talents and skills including in the educational development side of the work.
My lasting impression is that it is an organic and non–judgemental community where humanity and nature come together very beautifully. In this way, it is possible to share the Nassars’ belief in a future that they cannot possibly see but in which they hope, namely that with international support and advocacy their farm thrives, they survive and human dignity with its accompanying rights flourish within a short distance of the little town of Bethlehem. They would cherish the support and the interest of any or all of us in what they are doing and in what they are enduring.
The Majma in Jordan
On Monday 14th September I travelled with Canons Binder and Sewell along with The Right Reverend Dr Peter Easton, bishop of South Florida, to Amman, Jordan overland through The Crossing at The Allenby Bridge. This was a harrowing experience in its own right, not so much for me, but by observing the experiences of people who, I suspect, largely for family reasons were making the crossing and the Sisyphean struggle they had in effecting that journey. We proceeded to The Schneller School in Amman (well–known to diocesan clergy who have accompanied me on retreat with the clergy of the Diocese of Jerusalem) where Mr Saba Walid Kerry was made deacon on Holy Cross Day.
This was a joyous occasion with all the participating Synod Members present. After the ordination, the archbishop dedicated the refurbished Guest House at Schneller and all enjoyed dinner together. The service led us into the theme of the Majma (Synod): The Cross of Christ: Power and Life. I recall a most memorable phrase from the archbishop’s sermon: ‘The Cross is not simply an event belonging to the past. It is the pattern of the Church’s life in every age. From the Cross, the Church learns the meaning of leadership; from the Cross, ministry receives its spirit; from the Cross, communion is renewed; and from the Cross, mission draws its authority.’ One senses that the understanding of the Church in the Diocese of Jerusalem is instinctively Anglican and instinctively Ecumenical. There is little if any scope for wrangling and squabbling over The Gospel when you live in a pressure cooker in a war zone.
Our Saviour’s Church and School in Zarqa
On Wednesday September 16th the whole Majma visited Our Saviour’s Church and School in Zarqa. Zarqa is a city of more than a million inhabitants and it is mainly a military and a mechanical based economy. It was described the whole of Jordan in a small space. Ecumenical and Inter Faith relations are very good. The Principal, Mrs Duua Haddad is married to Archdeacon Faeq Haddad. She has served for thirty–three years in a school that has been going for seventy–one. She and her staff and pupils have shown significant initiative in developing the school infrastructure including interactive teaching boards and a soon–to–be–updated computer room for the students. For me it was a genuinely tender moment as I had been there before to see two trees that the school had planted in memory of April Banks, a young pupil of Springdale National School, Raheny, through the initiatve of both School Principals.
Synod
The Synod itself is spread over four days, from Tuesday 15th September to Friday 18th September. In 2026, the days began with an hour long Bible Study on 1 Corinthians 12 in three successive sections: One Spirit – One Calling; One Body – Many Vocations; Appointed by God, for God’s Mission. This took the form of setting the context and reflecting on it, followed by the reading of the relevant passage of Scripture and then a series of questions for table discussion. Over the course of the three days, the Bible Study developed into a Synod–wide discussion of understanding and developing ministry. What struck me, as it would strike any of us, is that this was not a warm fireside conversation. This was a discussion of a vital ecclesiastical matter by members of a community under oppression and losing members to emigration at an alarming rate weekly. This is planning for the future by people whose present is intolerable.
Rightly, the Synod covered matters from the year past that have to do with property and finance, youth work and institutions, both schools and hospitals. I have long known that the institutions are the lifeblood of the diocese. The Synod also came up with an agreement actively to explore The Permanent Diaconate as a further strand in the provision of publicly authorized ministry in the diocese. This was an exciting development and, in my own address to the Majma, I suggested that this might be a way to bring the caring institutions into the community beyond the various buildings in a new dynamic way.
The highest point of the Majama – and there were many high points – was when Suhaila Dawani, the Director of Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza, spoke about the on–going work of the hospital in a community and a land devastated and destroyed, dehumanized and degraded. It is hardly what we associate with synods, but nobody present could hold back tears as we heard the voice of care and of goodness, of realism and of response and always of the absence of any desire to hate or to give up hope.
Suhaila’s testimony on behalf of her staff and patients was followed by Elections to a range of Committees. Everyone knew that they were, and remain, essential to good governance. But at this stage the heart had gone out of an administrative synod. The people were still with Suhaila in Gaza City and in the hospital to which she gives her life.
