Good Friday Offering supports church in Jerusalem and Middle East

by the Right Reverend Thomas Clark Ely, Bishop of Vermont
Mountain Echo
March 2004

From May 6-14, 2004, I will be one of thirteen bishops traveling to the Holy Land as part of the American Bishops’ Peace Mission to the Holy Land. The mission is being led by Bishop Thomas Shaw of Massachusetts, a frequent traveler to the Holy Land and a tireless voice for peace and justice in the Middle East, especially for Palestinian Christians. This will be my first trip to the Holy Land and I look forward to the journey with all the hope, expectation and anxiety that one might suspect.
Our goals for the pilgrimage are two-fold. We want to be present and hear the stories of our Palestinian Christian brothers and sisters who, like all Palestinians, have suffered terribly during the last three years and who often feel abandoned by their fellow Christians abroad. We also want to talk with many Israelis and Palestinians, both Christian and Muslim, to learn of the impact of the ongoing violence on their daily lives and on the lives of their children.

Our base will be Saint George’s College, Jerusalem, an Anglican continuing education center, which shares a walled enclosure and garden in Jerusalem with Saint George’s Cathedral. While in Jerusalem, we expect to meet with such groups as the Bereaved Parent’s Circle, a joint Israeli/Palestinian peace group whose members have all lost children to the violence; the New Israel Fund, a funding organization that supports many human rights initiatives; and joint youth groups such as Kids4Peace. We want to learn not only about the immediate physical and emotional trauma experienced by children living daily with fear and loss but also about the longer range psychological effects on Palestinian youth who have grown up under occupation and on Israeli youth facing military service in an occupying army.

We will travel to West Bank cities such as Bethlehem, Nablus and Ramallah, where we will meet with Anglican clergy and laity, visit other Christian groups and experience life in Palestinian refugee camps. In Gaza, we expect to visit the Al Ahli Anglican hospital and the Gaza Mental Health Organization and Middle East Council of Churches’ youth programs. As we follow the line of the “Security Barrier” from upper Galilee via Jerusalem through Bethlehem, we’ll see the Wall’s effect on Palestinian villages and share the stories of Israeli kibbutzim and peace activists who believe that genuine security results from sharing rather than dividing the land.

Bishop Shaw has written in his letter to each of the bishops who will be part of this pilgrimage, “Be assured that we will adjust our itinerary on a daily basis if there is any question of safety; our friends at Saint George’s have an excellent sense of what’s happening each day and will advise us if change is necessary. Most of all, know that whatever we bring to the Palestinian Christians and Israeli peace communities by our prayers and presence will be returned to us many times as we experience their gracious hospitality and passion for peace and justice. We will return uplifted by their witness and strengthened to continue ours.”

I ask you for your prayers for us during this pilgrimage and draw you attention, especially this year, to the invitation to join other Episcopalians in the Good Friday Offering for the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East. Each year since 1922, the Good Friday Offering has been one significant way in which the Episcopal Church has celebrated and witnessed to the Light of Christ, which first appeared in Bethlehem. It has become our tradition to send signs of our love and concern by way of this offering.

The Presiding Bishop has written to all congregations to request our generous response to the Good Friday Offering. I add my own invitation to his. If you need more information or resources to help with your participation, please visit the Good Friday Offering home page at http://www. episcopalchurch.org/agr/friday.html, and click on the appropriate icons. Support received through the Good Friday Offering translates into operating hospitals, schools, orphanages and many other programs, accomplished for the benefit of all people in the Province—Christian, Jewish and Muslim alike. Your support for the Good Friday Offering is essential to a continued Anglican witness in Jesus’ homeland. As you walk with the Christ from Palm Sunday through Holy Week toward his final victory at the Resurrection, may every blessing be yours.

Shalom,
+Thomas

P.S. Ann joins me in thanking you for all the prayers and well wishes on the occasion of the birth of our first granddaughter, Elisabeth Arwen Foecking, on January 25, 2004. Elisabeth came into the world at 21 inches in length and weighing 9 pounds, 3 ounces! All are doing well.