Revelation 5:13, “Then I heard every creature in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing…”
Psalm 30:4, “Sing praises to the Lord, O you faithful ones, and give thanks to God’s holy name.”
Last week I stayed in a refugee camp in Bethlehem, just down the hill from where Christ was born. Every day, before dawn, I dreamt the most beautiful music, the sounds of mysteries. As I was dreaming, with my eyes still shut, my ears began to open, and the music became more and more clear, the sounds of the call to prayer, the Adhan, echoing from one minaret to another, voices chasing one another in the night, making strange harmonies, singing that was dancing.
Allahu akbar, “God is Great.”
Hayya ‘ala-s-Salah, “Rise up for prayer.”
As-salatu Khayrun Minan-nawm, “Prayer is better than sleep.”
These lines sung as a refrain, over and over again. Waves of sound, musical words, pouring down from the sky, into my ears.
In the city of Nazareth, at the place where the angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she would give birth to the messiah—there, in that place, there’s a cathedral with an icon of Mary, and it shows a scroll, stretching from heaven to Mary, into her ear. Christ is conceived through her ear, the Word
In Arabic the call to prayer is called, the Adhan. It means “ears.”
In our story from John’s Gospel, after a night of fishing, before the sunrise, Jesus calls out to Peter, a call he repeats again and again, three times, like the refrain of a song—Jesus echoing his own voice. “Peter,” he says, “Do you love me?”
The call of Jesus is the call to love. And we spend our lives learning how to answer, learning how to say yes to God’s love.
~
Last week, when the call to prayer woke me up, my first day in Bethlehem, I zigzagged through narrow alleys, into a neighborhood near the Church of the Nativity, to a community house, Ma’an lil-Hayat, L’Arche in Bethlehem.
They had told me to come by around eight in the morning. People were already gathered in the main room, seated in chairs pushed against the walls. A woman greeted me with a smile and waved me to an empty chair. As soon as I sat down, a young man darted from his seat across the room, and he stood in front of me, almost on top of me, hunching down into my face, his eyes danced—first glancing at my forehead, then the ceiling, then my beard, then the ceiling, only looking into my eyes for a flash of a moment, only a flicker of mutual recognition.
He said one word to me before he rushed back to his chair. His eyes connected with mine, he smiled, and in a voice much louder than I’m used to—a gentle yell—he said, “Yes.” One word. Yes.
After their time of sharing and singing in the morning, the thirty people in the room divided up into five groups for a day of crafts, of work, baskets of wool washed and felted into miniature sheep and caves for nativity scenes. I was led to one of the rooms, and as I entered I saw him again, the same young man, seated around a table with six other people—and he saw me. He jumped from his chair, bouncing his way to me, bumping into the wall, the table, his friends. He came to my side, as close as he could without touching me, and he pointed at the empty chair beside his, and he said the same word again, “Yes.”
I worked by his side all morning, all afternoon—and whenever we took a break for a snack, or for a dance party, he would show me where to go, never speaking a word other than “Yes” whenever he turned toward me.
This is what God is like—this turning toward us, this affirmation, this “yes” to who we are. That’s the gospel. That “God is simply in love with you,” that God “never changes [her] mind about you.”[i]
God says yes—from the foundations of the world, always and forever, God says yes. The world was created with one word, Yes. From the beginning of time, God says, “Yes, I want this”—that’s how God made the world, that’s how God made you. With a Yes.
~
At the L’Arche house in Bethlehem, I took my seat in the workshop, at a table covered with layers of wool, and the work began, each person knowing their role, except for me. I was asked to introduce myself. “I’m a pastor from the United States,” I said, “I’m here to visit, thanks for welcoming me as a guest.” I was going to say more, but I noticed that the man across the table began to move his lips, stretching his mouth, preparing for the labor of speech. He voiced words slowly, straining one syllable at a time, “Here You. Not. Guest.” He took a deep breath. “You. Are. Friend.” The rest of the group expressed their agreement, each in their own way. My friend, seated beside me, on my right, offered his same “Yes.” Across the table a woman smiled at me, giving me a subtle nod, a rigid gesture. Her eyes revealed more than she could say with words, more than the rest of her body would allow. From his wheelchair a man looked up from the wool in his hands: “Welcome,” he said, in perfect English.
The person on my right had been talking quietly to herself the whole time, in Arabic. She glanced over at me, and as she spoke, the others around the table giggled. The man who spoke perfect English translated for me, as he laughed. “She said, Welcome man with the beautiful beard.” “Shukran,” I said—thank you, as I blushed.
I watched them work around me, their hands busy with artistry I did not know. When a person beside me noticed that I wasn’t doing anything, she took each of my hands in hers, and put them on the bundle of wool in front of me, and moved my hands in circles, massaging the wool into the rough mat.
“Hal tafham?” she said to me. I had no idea what those words meant. Someone else began to translate for me, but she spoke to him abruptly, scowling, almost shouting. “She does not want me translate to you,” he explained, rolling his eyes. “She believes you will understand her, if you try hard enough.” So I tried, paying attention to the tone of her words, studying the expressions on her face, feeling the push and pull of her palms. She led and I followed. I learned slowly, she was patient.
She finally released my hands, and I continued on my own—dunking the bundle of wool into the warm water, rubbing it across the rubber grooves of the mat, skimming the suds into a bucket. She said words that sounded kind, an approval of my efforts, I assumed. We worked together that day, despite my lack of artistry and my inability to speak their language. With gentleness and love they welcomed me into their lives, into their work, and into their dancing, which happened during breaks, as we all gathered into a room and someone grabbed a drum, another person a guitar, and all of us stomping, clapping, and spinning with the beat. The words of the Psalmist came alive with them: “You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, so that my soul may praise you and not be silent” (Ps 30:11-12). There, in Bethlehem, our praise was not silent.
The name of the young man who told me yes, again and again, is Rami. His name means “to dream.” When I heard this, my mind drifted back to the morning, when I was laying in bed, before daybreak, when I dreamt of music—and I pictured Rami in a minaret, singing his yes as the call to prayer, his music echoing through the cramped alleys of the refugee camp, waves of sound crashing through the wall, mysteries poured down from the sky, into me: God’s word entering my body through my ear.
That same word God spoke before the beginning, before the first sunrise: God’s yes, Rami’s yes, voices chasing one another in the night, making strange harmonies, singing that was dancing.
Revelation 5:13, “Then I heard every creature in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing…”
Psalm 30:4, “Sing praises to the Lord, O you faithful ones, and give thanks to God’s holy name.”
“Do you love me?” That’s what I imagine the call to prayer to be. That question, the one Jesus asks Peter—a call that reaches inside of us. “Do you love me?”
And the response—God’s word, the same as Rami’s word: “Yes.”
~
[i] Herbert McCabe, “Forgiveness,” in Faith Within Reason (Contiuum, 2007), 158.