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A Texas Civil Rights Review Sunday Sermon.

By Greg Moses

As I was thinking about Palm Sunday’s nonviolent protest, that will demonstrate the futility of attempting to retrace the steps of Jesus, who traveled several days in a row from Bethany to Jerusalem and back, it seemed like a good time to read from the Book of Mark.

One of my cousins gave me for Christmas a wonderful ‘reader’s Bible’ translated by Eugene H. Peterson. Of course, it has the story of people shouting ‘Hosanna!’ as Jesus rode into Jerusalem, unimpeded by any walls or security checkpoints. That was on Sunday. And Jesus returned to Bethany for the night.

On Monday morning, there is a puzzling story about a fig tree. Jesus is hungry. He walks up to a fig tree “expecting to find something for breakfast, but found nothing but fig leaves.” Notes Mark: “It wasn’t yet the season for figs.” So Jesus tells the tree, “No one is going to eat fruit from you again – ever!” The tree withers up and dies.

Then when they all got to Jerusalem, Jesus walked into the Temple and started “throwing out everyone who had set up shop there, buying and selling. He kicked over the tables of the bankers and the stalls of the pigeon merchants.” He scolded the people for turning his “house of prayer” into a “house of thieves.” Then he went back to Bethany again for the night.

As Sunday was a day of celebration, Monday was a day of forthright judgment, ready or not.

Then came Tuesday. Jesus begins the day with a little sermon at the wasted fig tree. Throw your whole life into God, he said. Pray for everything, include everything, “and you’ll get God’s everything.” But especially pray to forgive others, he said. Then they went back to Jerusalem again, this time to teach in the Temple.

It’s a long day of teaching, too. Jesus appears to be in top form, very well prepared. Lots of interesting lessons. He does not promise good times, but there is one student he likes. In the evening, relaxing at the Mount of Olives, he teaches from the image of a fig tree again. The fig tree tells you when summer is coming. So, watch out for signs that God is coming.

One day of jubilation, one day of judgment, one day of forgiveness and teaching. Mark knows how to keep his story sharp. Two fig trees: the one that’s not ready in the morning, and the one that’s early in the evening. As you think about Jesus walking that road between Bethany and Jerusalem, you know which fig tree you don’t want to be, that is, if there’s anything at all you can do about it.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Loui Awawda

11 March 2008

Palm Sunday Procession to the Bethany Gate

BETHANY – On Palm Sunday, 16 March 2008 the local community, joined by
international visitors will process from Lazarus’ Tomb to the separation
barrier, celebrating Palm Sunday and calling for freedom of worship and an end
to the construction of the Apartheid Wall.

Since 1991, Israeli authorities have prevented Palestinian Christians and
Muslims from entering Jerusalem, depriving them of the right to worship in the
Holy City.

With the near completion of the wall and the closure of the gate Jesus himself
would not be able to follow the path he took 2,000 years ago. Participants
will carry olive branches, flags, and banners.

Worshipers will gather at Lazarus’ Tomb at 11:00 am.

---

For Immediate Release

Nonviolent Anti-Wall Protest in Al-Khader- Bethlehem Aria

Bethlehem – Palestine / Friday March 14, 2008: The Popular Committee against
the Wall and Colonization in Al-Khader is organizing a nonviolent demonstration
to protest the construction of the Segregation Wall in the town of Al-Khader,
located west of Bethlehem.

The motto of this demo is: Down the Wall, Palestine holds All

The construction of the wall in this town will expropriate more than 20000
dunams (5000 acres) of the town’s land, which will make life intolerable for
this predominantly agricultural community.

People will congregation will start at 11:45 am by the southern entrance of
Al-Khader- Bethlehem area. The protest will start after the Friday pray, near
the bypass, route 60 where the construction site is.

Join us; Palestinians, Israelis, and internationals to draw the future together
For more information, please contact:
For English; Samer Jaber
For Arabic; Bassam Ghneim

George S. Rishmawi
Coordinator,
Siraj, Center For Holy Land Studies
Beit Sahour, Schoold Street
P.O.Box 48
Palestine
Email: george@sirajcenter.org
Website: http://www.sirajcenter.org

In late December, 2007, Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr. was advised by the publisher of the Rio Grande Guardian that his column would be discontinued. This week Jay’s column returns to cyberspace at Narco News. Here are the leading paragraphs:

A Texas Divided Will Be Broken In Two:
South Texas Residents Are Struggling, Together, Like Never Before, to Stop the Border Wall and Militarization Being Imposed from Up North

By Jay J. Johnson-Castro, Sr.
Inside the Checkpoints: Commentary from the Río Grande

January 13, 2008

Just like our country, Texas is allowing itself to be divided in two.

The truth is that the great Texas icons like Moses and Stephen F. Austin, Sam Houston, Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and Will Travis, left the United States and immigrated to the land of opportunity, the provincial territory of the Mexican State of Coahuila called Tejas. These historic legends immigrated to become Mexican citizens.

We pretty much know the rest of the story. All we have to do is “Remember the Alamo.” That battle became a symbol… not of Americans fighting the dictatorship of Mexico… but Mexicans fighting the dictatorship of Santa Ana. Los Tejanos fought los Mexicanos and in 1836, the Republic of Texas emerged. Texas became a separate and independent country. Not American. Not Mexican. But Texan!

In order for the US government to be able to realize the “manifest destiny” of “sea to shining sea,” it had to get the Republic of Texas into the union. Why? Texas was geographically situated between the then United States and Mexico. After a lot of politicking, in December of 1845, the Texas Republic became annexed as a member state of the United States. Within a few months, in the spring of 1846, on a false political pretext, US troops launched a totally unprovoked invasion of Mexico and attacked the Mexican military fort of Palo Alto in what is now Brownsville, Texas… kicking off the two-year Mexican-American war. The US troops then marched all the way into and conquered the Capitol of Mexico, Mexico City.

To view the complete column, please go to Narco News.

But is it not the theological function of prophetic speech to talk precisely ‘as if’? (“Tolerance and the American Pulpit,” Mar. 22, 2008)

One of the major functions of prophetic speech is to castigate society for its failures to follow divine precepts. One of the great precepts of both Judaism and Christianity is the responsibility of those who have to care for those who have not. Examples of this are the Old-Testament duty of farmers to leave behind some food in the fields for the poor to glean so that they may eat, and the fact that Jesus is so frequently shown caring for the poor (to the extent of washing the feet of beggars) — he didn’t serve the military and the politicians, he served the downtrodden and the cast-off. I’d suggest that this is really about all one needs to know about liberation theology. Both Judaism and Christianity are rooted in the idea of social justice.

The great majority of Americans are misled to think that the function of the prophet is to tell the future. The job of the prophet is to call upon society to adhere to the principles of social justice. This was as true for Jeremiah Wright and Martin Luther King,, Jr., (especially after he was enlightened about the relationship between racism and American imperialism and militarism — much like the revelation that Malcolm X experienced on his Hajj) as it was for Amos and Jeremiah.

Jesus and Malcolm and Martin Luther King, Jr. were all killed because the “good people” — those who benefit from our injustice towards society’s victims — couldn’t bear the criticism. And that’s why the hue and cry after Jeremiah Wright. How dare he tell his congregation (and the rest of us, now) that this nation’s actions in Iraq, etc., are just as damnable as they were in Viet Nam, etc.? His repetition of “God Damn America” was using the prophetic voice as a contrast to the obscenity of the imperialist-militarist repetition of “God Bless America”.

Best wishes,
Joel Shimberg
Quaker old-time fiddler
Tennesseee

NOTE: “The Rev. Jeremiah Wright got a raucous standing ovation when he entered Saint Sabina church on the city’s South Side on Friday night . . . He also sang “Happy Birthday” to [Maya] Angelou, whose birthday is April 4. . . . He recently scrapped plans to receive an award in Texas, and to speak at churches in Houston and Tampa, Fla.” (AP, March 29, 2008).

And the winner is Tom O’Neil, a “Gold Derby” writer for the L.A. Times who posed the rhetorical question on Dec. 24, 2007, before the list of Oscar nominees was released:

Surely, Oscar voters won’t snub “Sweeney Todd” (Tim Burton), “There Will Be Blood” (Paul Thomas Anderson), “Atonement” (Joe Wright), “The Great Debaters” (Denzel Washington) and “The Kite Runner” (Marc Forster) entirely.

Of the five films named in the question, Mr. O’Neil was correct about four.

This “Black History Month in Hollywood” special presentation has been brought to you by the Texas Civil Rights Review, because February is about making memories that refuse to go quiet.

And by “White Atlantic” Perfume — Smells Classy!