land of milk and hummus
Issue 2 /// January 2017
A strange family portrait
“… As I look around this chapel today, I see a collection of people who would perhaps never be sitting in the same room together were it not for the cross of Christ. I see people of many colors, many nationalities, many religious traditions, and representing many life experiences. If we were featured in a family photograph, some might say ‘what kind of family is this?!’ And yet, that is what we are — a new family. We are one body, sharing one faith, one baptism, one spirit, one table. We are created, nurtured, and sustained by the love of God, as we have known it through the cross of Christ. This new family does not replace our old ones. We do not abandon mother, father, wife, or child. But in following the Way of the Cross, we take on a new primary identity — that of disciple and cross-bearer …”
— Bishop Munib Younan, ELCJHL
The day I arrived in my new host community, I walked around the city and tried to imagine what my life would be like here — how I would spend my days, who I would share them with. The place and its people were still mysteries to me, full of depths and complexities I had only just begun to explore. The idea of forming relationships and building connections in a language and culture I didn’t understand was overwhelming. I worried I was in over my head.
As I walked through new streets amongst unfamiliar people, I reflected on the sermon Bishop Munib Younan of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Land gave at the YAGM commissioning earlier during our orientation. From the pulpit of the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer in Jerusalem’s Old City, we were welcomed into this new community and called to walk with the people here. But more importantly, we were welcomed into a new family, defined not by blood or biology, but by our love for Christ. In his sermon, Bishop Younan described a strange family portrait, one filled with the diversity and richness of life, a striking representation of the values we can share, even with people who have little else in common with us.
Walking on the streets of my new home, this message brought me a sense of peace and comfort — something solid for my mind to grasp at a time when everything else seemed like it was shifting. In a new place, I was reminded that family can be found everywhere.
As I celebrated Christmas this year, far away from my biological family, the words from Bishop Younan’s sermon came floating back to me. In North Dakota, my family spent Christmas riding out the latest blizzard and eating the same Scandinavian meals we eat every year. On the other side of the world, I gathered with my local pastor and his wife and children, people I have no biological connection to, to eat food that had nothing Scandinavian about it. And yet, gathered around a table crowded with people and food, we celebrated the same miraculous event that my family back home was also celebrating — the birth of a baby that would radically change our world.
The message that brought me a sense of peace as I started this year took on new meaning as I sat around a table filled with a family built not out of biology but shared beliefs and hopes. Through faith, we can find connections to one another that previously were not obvious, people who were once strangers are made family through the cross.
Several months into my year of service, many of the fears I felt during my first few weeks have been assuaged. I have found relationships and connections in this new home of mine. I have found a community that has walked with me on this journey just as I have tried to walk with them. This community, this family, is bound together by a shared identity as cross-bearers, people with a shared belief in Christ’s message of compassion and sacrifice. And that's a message that family, biological or not, can relate to.
Ask Carrie:
What's up at school?
What's Christmas like in the Holy Land?
How are your folks doing?
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//A huge thank you to my colleagues who took many of the photos featured in this newsletter//