Babel

I had my first German class last night ("Ich komme aus den USA"). This is such an international city, everyone speaks at least two languages and many speak 4 or 5, flipping easily among them in the course of a single conversation. I have developed language-envy. So the Arabic classes I've been taking for a month didn't seem enough and I signed up for German, too.

The Arabic is beginning to work a little. It's a difficult language, but I'm putting enough words together now to have simple 2-3 sentence conversations. I love the people here, they are always so helpful and of course I'm learning alot from the immersion experience. The other night I went to get a schwarma sandwich from a shop who know me now and the owner helped me do the whole transaction in Arabic. Schwarma and a 10-minute Arabic lesson....Priceless. I think that some Palestinian people feel that the world has shunned them, so there are many people here who are receptive to someone who actually wants to live here and learn to speak.

A few people here still speak Aramaic, the language that Jesus used. There's a church here where the caretaker will recite the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic. It's quite a moving experience to hear it. This church lays claim, along with other sites, to housing the Upper Room where the Last Supper occurred. Inside the church is a portrait of Mary that legend has was painted by St Luke. In the bottom right corner of the portrait is a small depiction of the baby Jesus, but painted as an adult because Luke only knew him as an adult. It is a stunning and astonishing face and your chills tell you it might just be accurate.

A photo shop in the Old City sells amazing photos taken by the owner's father in the 1930's (www.eliaphoto.com). I have one of a Palestinian man standing in a wheat field, the wheat just coming up to his knees. He is lean from hard work and poverty. He has a beard and mustache and his skin is dark. He wears a linen robe and his head is wrapped against the heat. He holds a bunch of wheat in his right hand that he probably just cut. He stands tall and the camera has caught him in a pause. His head is inclined slightly down as he gazes absently in thought. I imagine he is thinking of a parable to tell people to help them understand something better. I imagine this could be Jesus.

People who come here almost always say they never hear the Gospels the same way again. They hear the passages about mustard plants, the River Jordan, and trying to grow crops in rocky soil in a completely different way. A journey on foot from Galilee to Jerusalem can now be seen as difficult, treacherous and harrowing. The wind that can cause a sudden storm on the Sea of Galilee to frighten the disciples in their boat is a new reality.

For me, being here has made me see Jesus as he must have been. That man in the photo. Lean, poor, unkempt, probably dark-skinned. And he didn't speak my language. I bet we all imagine Jesus speaking our language, don't we? It's natural that we would. As I know the people here a little better every day and affection grows for them, and as I realize that Jesus looked more like them than me, I also try to begin to understand the language he spoke. Like the Palestinian people here now, Jesus lived under occupation. Among soldiers and guards. So much of Jesus' talk in the Gospels is about justice, mercy, peace, righteousness. In this new language I'm learning, "justice" in my large beautiful church in San Antonio is a very different word from the one I hear standing in line at a checkpoint.

A friend sent me a quote recently that wonders whether we can see the image of God in a person who looks different than we do. Our immediate reaction is, Well of course we can, no problem. What does Jesus look like for you? What language does he speak?