1st Sunday of (a Ceasefire) Advent

Week 1 of an anti-Zionist Advent curation during the continued genocide on Christ’s Birthplace

For the rest of December, I’ve developed what I’m calling “A Ceasefire Advent,”¹ which will be a Palestine-themed Advent reflection in your inbox each week for the month of December. If you’re planning to buy gifts this year for Christmas, I encourage you to invest your resources in Palestinian artisans during this consumer-driven season.² Interested in purchasing Palestinian artisans’ work for Christmas gifts? I will put the places where my family shopped for gifts this year in this footnote.³ Jesus was a brown Palestinian Jew born during an occupation to refugee parents. Don’t let the traditions of Church and capital allow you to forget that this Advent; Free Palestine.

Art by dani m. jiménez / &hersaints.

Weekly Practice Format

My suggestion is to repeat the practice each day of the week until the next Sunday, or set aside one special time per week to be present to the series, on the Sunday it is published or on your Sabbath-taking-day. Today’s post has some extra material, but most weeks it will look like this:

• Set the space.

  • Examples: Light or draw a candle. Set yourself before your nativity. Surround yourself with other-than-human animals or practice with kids around you. Assemble a digital nativity to have the people of Gaza, Bethlehem, and greater Palestine in your mind as you practice.

• Begin in Song/Chant.

• Read Scripture (passages will come from the RCL).

• Experience Questions.

  • Do this through journaling/a conversation partner/meditation/breath-work.

  • Good materials to prepare for this might include calling/videoing a friend or family member to join you. A journal. A coloring book. A fiber art.

• God is still speaking: pray aloud.

• End with Holy Action.

Set the Space

Today, your space should include your nativity scene. Assembling your creche to resemble the modern reality of Christ’s birthplace must be a holy action we take during these genocidal days. Many of us are decorating for Christmas this week. As you unpack your nativity to position in your home for the season, consider what must be added to your representation of the nativity scene that will allow you to better enter into Christ’s experience of being a little baby born in Bethlehem. Here are some ideas to get you thinking what might work for your home practice:

• The Christ in the Rubble Prayer-Kit from Christians 4 Ceasefire suggests adding to your already-existing creche model by surrounding the Christ child with stones, broken concrete, and other rubble this year, alluding to Rev. Munther Issac’s December 2023 sermon, “Christ in the Rubble.”

• My family’s yearly “Advent wreath” that we put up every year is the “Breaking Down the Wall” replica which supports the YWCA of Palestine. You either knock down a piece of the wall with each weekly “lighting” or decorate a piece of the wall each week with stickers of resistance graffiti from West Bank artists. It’s a beautiful liturgical resource that helps us hold both the hope of resistance and the reality of apartheid in one space.

• Assemble a digital or collaged nativity. Choose images from the last 13 months from Palestine that represent the main characters in a traditional nativity scene. Who have you seen as a young mother that represents Mary? What Palestinian men have you seen showing up for others amidst confusion and doubt that reminds you of Joseph? What borders would be impossible for the Holy Family to cross these days as you imagine the pathway to your collaged nativity’s manger bed? Consider the people, the structures, and even the animals that would surround a nativity today. (I will not soon forget seeing this wounded donkey trapped under the rubble last December, and thinking of how Mary wouldn’t have made it far in the Christmas story if the Christmas donkey had suffered this fate.)

• Many (like myself) who have been to Palestine come back with a small nativity scene that has a wall between some of the biblical characters found on our imagined Silent Night. (You can view and even purchase these at the online Wall Graffiti Shop, located in today’s Bethlehem, here.) These are another appropriate representation of Jesus’ birth story, as the apartheid wall today would make Mary and Joseph’s route impossible. Folks who use these nativity sets hope that, Inshallah, the day will come when we might get to remove that section of the set, meaning that the apartheid wall has come tumbling down.

This is an Tariq Salsa’s “Nativity Under the Rubble,” displayed in December of 2023, when Palestinian churches canceled Christmas in Bethlehem. I was able to see the installation in person (and take this photo) in Feb of 2024 at the Bethlehem city hall. You can read the artist’s statement here.

Begin in Song/Chant

To begin our month’s practice together, I submit to you We Breathe Together by

adrienne maree brown

(examples here with sheet music, here with different voices, and here by the song creator). For the past 13 months, I have sung this song to my little one to put them to sleep at night, and viewed it as a prayer for all of the mothers who are unable to be present to the simple act of singing their little ones to sleep. We don’t know what songs Mary sang to Jesus in the womb, but we know that they breathed together.

I will be posting different songs each week, but if one lives with you beyond the week (like this one has for me) keep it for your practice.

We have to remember to sing if we’re ever going to get free (together.)

Read Scripture

Passages for today are found in their entirety here at the RCL archive. When copying to quote, I will use the Common English Bible translation.

Jesus told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees. When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near. In the same way, when you see these things happening, you know that God’s kingdom is near. I assure you that this generation won’t pass away until everything has happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will certainly not pass away.

“Take care that your hearts aren’t dulled by drinking parties, drunkenness, and the anxieties of day-to-day life. Don’t let that day fall upon you unexpectedly, like a trap. It will come upon everyone who lives on the face of the whole earth. Stay alert at all times, praying that you are strong enough to escape everything that is about to happen and to stand before the Human One.”

Experience Questions

• Luke 21:25-36 reminds us that Jesus wants us to “be alert” and pay attention to what is happening in the world. We know that falling asleep to Jesus’ commands is a pattern for Jesus’ disciples. How to you keep yourself alert? What resources need to be in place to support your alertness?

• How are we liable to forget our call to alertness (or as the Scripture says: be “dulled”) especially when we spend time together over the holidays? How might we interrupt the ways in which we are lulled to sleep during the hustle and bustle of the waiting-for-Christmas season?

• What do you believe is possible: not for future generations, but for the communities that we currently belong to, that we are currently accountable to, and that we are currently stuck with?

• Consider the image of the fig tree in the above passage: what things are sprouting around you that serve as a still, small voice saying a new world is possible? Where do you see the possibility of “summer” sprouting for Gaza?

God is still speaking.

Pray aloud.⁴ If you have an advent candle to light, light it now.

We come to know you, Holy One, as Wisdom Incarnate, as Flickering Flame, as Spirit of Life, as Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love, Enfleshed. You come to us as the Stranger, and the Strange. Often we do not recognize you. Often we turn away from your gifts and your demands. And so, this Ceasefire Advent, we pause. We breathe. We pray. We dig deep. We reach out. We rise up. We remember. We vision. We sit with the pain. We stay with the trouble. We wait, expectant. We light candles. We labor. We open to You, and to one another, and to the Sacred Mystery that is Emmanuel, God-With-Us, Love Incarnate, Divinity Enfleshed.

The Hope of God-With-Us does not come as guaranteed outcome, or predetermined plan, or promise of a happy ending. Hope cannot be imposed from on high. Hope cannot be commanded. The Hope of God-With-Us is courageous, risky, unfolding, indeterminate. The Hope of God-With-Us is collective, liberating us from deadly complacency. Hope is gestating in darkness; it comes unexpectedly. Hope invites our expectation, and demands our participation. Prepare the way, for hope with courage. May Hope be birthed among, within, and through us, this Advent.

O Come, O Come, Emmanuel…

Holy Action

Assembling your creche to resemble Christ’s birthplace is a holy action we take during these genocidal days. If you haven’t had the chance to assemble a physical or digital marker of Christ’s birthplace in your home yet, spend time doing it now.

If you’d like to end with a further action, choose one of the following, and go in peace.

• Call your reps.

• Email your reps.

• Choose another active campaign with USCPR here.

1. This is a curation of resources. If a citation is given, I do not own and did not create the materials linked. You are welcome to use this curation for personal study, in churches, in groups with comrades, and as preaching/liturgist guides for worship.

2. Want to buy some family members books on Palestine for Christmas? My family did that this year! I am also a Bookshop affiliate (shoutout to Rachel at My Other Job for telling me about affiliate profiles), which means you can always support me by purchasing books through my affiliate profile by beginning your book buying at the link here. You can always find my recommended books about Palestine there too.

3. Shop for Palestine here: https://shoppalestine.org • https://starbazaar.bethbc.edu/ • https://handmadepalestine.com/ • https://canaanpalestine.com/

4. This prayer is adapted slightly from the enfleshed Advent Wreath Liturgy. © enfleshed 2018, Rev. Anna Blaedel.