A Day at the Museum

Jerusalem, 10 December 2010

What a fantastic day – the Museum of Israel has just recently opened so after joining the opening hour throng to get through a security check – very cursory – we had four hours to ourselves to wonder around.

They have a huge display of archeological items – many on loan from other places – from across the 10000 years of human inhabitation in this area. It was mind numbing really looking at everything from stone axes and the first flint knives through the miniatures for the Egyptian afterlife to glass design in the Ottoman period. The detail is phenomenal though it was a bit distressing to see many items without identifiers or with no record of where they were found – I guess archeology has moved on a lot since then evidenced in a display about the first people (blokes) who started looking for biblical archeology in the mid C19th – hilarious images of well dressed colonials.

Trying to let things jump up and grab me I went maples so ended up jumping between periods quite a bit as the rooms didn't seem to go in any sensible order to me – anyway some standouts were the remnants of early bronze age weaving, some of the cultic items from the first temple period and glorious greek pottery over several centuries, the sarcophagus in the Nicholson Museum isn't as colourful but is better preserved. I just soaked it all in letting my imagination run away trying to imagine what it would have been like to have lived the life that these objects point towards. The pure volume of it was so intense that I forgot to be critical about the way that it kept referring to "the Land" rather than using a name about this area – I guess that's trying to be as sensitive as possible – if I'm feeling charitable or it lets those who can go project their own name onto it.

Which is a way of segueing into last night's guest speaker who is a Palestinian liberation theologian – Naim Ateek. Passionate, engaged, committed to his identity and to facing the situation here using methods of non violent resistance. He didn't speak of his theological journey but he hasn't been working for the diocese here for some time and the organization is on the top ten biggest threats to the state of Israel (they've been told that they are considered more dangerous by some people than hammas!) so I think there has been a shift over his lifetime as he's tried to be a true minister amongst the Palestinian people. What I loved was the way he reminded me about the different approaches to doing theology and the way that Christology in this situation has so much more power than Trinitarian approaches. That sense of needing to identify the stories of the people and then have a person to model from and follow the example of – the real sense of a grounded theology that matches a grounded theory approach to working with people here. An approach that keeps them in the here and now and the what can be done by us – not what's the theory or how can I analyse this from another more distant angle – but what's the story and how does it connect with the God story in Jesus. Missiologically it seems to fit – I get that when the "what is good news" question is asked here that this approach meets it in a prophetic and hope filling way but it made me wonder if this is the case missiologically in all places? Anyway it was very thought provoking but I won't bore you with the philosophy etc as even here people's eyes are glazing over as I said this sort of stuff.

It may be hard to see the connection between this and the museum but for me its about how story gets told and what gets highlighted and named – these all seem such key issues in this highly contested conflicted place.