Smoke Gets in your Eyes
Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them.
Luke 24:51
The ascension story takes on a different tone this year, as the path to Bethany is clouded with smoke from fires and the sky over Israel is filled with rockets and explosions overhead.
Can the disciples even get to Bethany? Can Jesus even get up to Heaven?
We put up so many barriers to letting Jesus into our lives, and even more barriers between ourselves and seeing God in the other.
How do we hear the still small voice of the Holy Spirit when everything is a loud?
How do we see the face of Christ through the smoke?
The conflict in the Middle East seems far away, but it is reflected in all of our conflicts and divisions right here. We’d like to think this “started” because Israeli settlers tried to evict Palestinians in Jerusalem and a series of escalations led to thousands of rockets across border fences and country wide lock downs.
But the conflict started somewhere very different. It started when Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs stopped seeing each other as humans. When they let the smoke cloud their vision.
In the same way we think our current conflicts around racism and police started with Michael Brown or Trayvon Martin. But in reality they started much earlier. They started when our system of justice started seeing black people as less than — which was in the very beginning.
This past week I listened as a community leader spoke in a public forum about the dangers of low income housing and the extreme threat poor people present to our health and well being.
It was demoralizing and depressing. This is where the conflict starts. When we let the smoke and fire blind us. When we try to stop Jesus from ascending to Heaven. When we are too busy fighting with each other to hear Jesus’ words “ you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
How can we be witnesses for peace in Judea and Samaria? In Israel and Palestine? In Baltimore and around the world?