Holy Land or Israel?
Sometimes I hear Catholics talking about making a pilgrimage to the
Holy Land, and I must confess that something about this lightly
irritates me. “Why would this irritate you” you might ask,
“what’s wrong with Catholics visiting the land of Jesus and cradle of
their faith?”
Nothing is wrong with Catholics visiting the land of Jesus of
course. Quite on the contrary, having lived there for some
eight years myself and knowing how life-changing this fascinating
country can be I would highly recommend such a pilgrimage to anyone.
It is with the terminology that I have a bone to pick. Almost
every time I hear Catholics talking about visiting the land of the
Bible, they almost invariably call it “the Holy Land” and rarely
“Israel.” A friend of mine recently wrote an article about
his own pilgrimage, and after reading through his otherwise moving
testimony I realized that he had written the entire article without
mentioning a single time the name of the country which he so
enthusiastically visited – Israel.
Why does this matter, you might ask?
Well, for one thing, the land of the Bible and of Jesus happens to be a
real country – a real nation with a real name, and this name is not the
Holy Land, nor Palestine, but Israel. Now I do realize this
is a politically charged issue (which I will address elsewhere), but it
is nonetheless a fact.
But calling Israel by name is not about making a political stand or
taking sides in the Middle East conflict. More importantly,
it’s about our own biblical roots and identity. Guess which
term appears more frequently in the Scriptures? A quick
search yields the following results:
Palestine: 0 occurrence
Holy Land: 1 occurrence
(Zech
2:12)
Israel:
2,787 occurrences
(2,489 in OT; 228 in Deuterocanononicals; 70 in NT)
Now don’t get me wrong. I have no problem at all with the
term “Holy Land.” Israel is undeniably a most Holy Land by
virtue of it being the stage of all the great events of salvation
history. But why do so many Catholics seem to have such a
hard time calling Israel by name when the Bible, our roots, our
heritage, our faith – are all about Israel?
Think for a moment about Who is the originator of the word.
According to Scripture, God Himself came up with the name when He
called the patriarch Jacob “Israel” and immediately associated this
name with the land lying between the Mediterranean and Jordan River
(Gen 35:10-12). Jacob’s family, the “children of Israel,”
went down to Egypt (46:1-27), and after greatly multiplying and
experiencing a long and bitter experience of slavery they were led out
by Moses towards the land that God promised them, a land “flowing with
milk and honey” (Ex 3:8) which became Eretz Israel – the Land of
Israel. The children of Israel entered the Promised Land
under the leadership of Joshua, and there the great Kingdom of Israel
was established under King David, with Jerusalem as its
capital. From the patriarchs to the slavery in Egypt to the
conquest of Canaan to the Davidic kingdom, to the Babylonian Exile to
the return to Judea, up to the time of Jesus – we read about the story
of God's covenantal relationship with the people and land of Israel.
This does not change in the New Testament. Jesus’ native land
is still called the “land of Israel” (cf. Mt 2:20-21) or “Israel” (cf.
Luk 7:9), and Jesus’ people, the Jews, are the “people of Israel” (cf.
Acts 4:10), the “house of Israel” (cf. Mat 15:24) or simply “Israel”
(cf. John 1:31; Acts 1:6). (Incidentally, it is an inaccurate
anachronism to refer to Jesus' homeland as “Palestine,” for it was only one hundred years later (in A.D. 132) that Emperor Hadrian renamed the province of Judea to
Syria Palaestina as part of an attempt to de-judaize the region.)
But there is more. Not only Jesus' land and people are
identified as Israel. God Himself is the “God of Israel” (203
times in the Bible) and “King of Israel” (cf. Isa 44:6; Zep 3:15), and
Jesus is also given this last title in the New Testament (John 1:49;
12:13).
Clearly, Israel – land and people – are an integral part of our
biblical and spiritual heritage as Catholics, because the name of
Israel is inseparable with the very identity of God and with the
covenant that He made with His people. But this begs the
question: Why the Catholic reluctance to call Israel by name?
No doubt, for many Catholics the preference for the term “Holy Land”
over Israel is simply a matter of habit, with probably little or no
theological reflection at all behind the choice of terms.
Catholic pilgrimages are routinely advertized as pilgrimages to “the
Holy Land;” it’s the standard term that most Catholics are used to
hearing, and so by force of habit they call Israel “the Holy Land.”
This said, I do suspect the issue at stake is much more than a harmless
choice of words, but is symptomatic of a much deeper and widespread
problem.
To put it simply, there seems to be a dichotomy or kind of “Great
Divorce” (to borrow C.S. Lewis’ term) between the Israel of the Bible
and the Israel of today in the mind of the average Catholic:
On the one hand there is the ancient land of Israel we read about in
the Bible. Then there is the “Holy Land” – a kind of
wonderful open-air museum where we can go and revisit the ancient
cradle of our faith. But then – and here the pilgrim’s
enthusiasm turns into a kind of hushed embarrassment – there is the
senseless Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and it’s such a shame that – of
all places! – it happens to rage in the Holy Land. Surely the
modern, messy, secular state of Israel with all its problems has
nothing to do with the glorious and holy cradle of our faith where
Jesus walked and talked?
Or does it? No real connection between the Israel of the
Bible and the Israel of today?
– “Well,” you will say, “Israel was God's people back then.
But then Christ came and the Jews rejected Him, and so He founded a new
people, the Church, which is now the ‘new Israel.’ Now God’s
promises are spiritual; they are no longer material or a question of
land and politics.”
– So you are basing the disconnect between biblical and modern Israel
on the old idea of supersessionism or replacement theology.
This theory claims that because most Jews rejected Jesus, God then
“disowned” them and replaced them by the Church, which is now the “new”
and “true” Israel. Thus “old Israel” (or the Jewish people)
has no further role to play in salvation history and the Jews’
historical connection with the land of Israel is now an outdated thing
of the past.
– Yeah, that’s pretty much it.
– The problem is that the Church rejects this
interpretation. Echoing the words of St. Paul, the
Church teaches that God has never revoked His covenant with the Jewish
people because this covenant is permanent: “God holds the Jews most
dear for the sake of their Fathers; He does not repent of the gifts He
makes or of the calls He issues” (Vatican II declaration Nostra Aetate
4; cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church 839, Romans 11:29).
[This does not mean that this covenant can save them without
Jesus. See What is Dual-Covenant Theology?]
– Hmm, well ok, so maybe God somehow still cares about the
Jews. But this doesn’t mean that the land of Israel still has
any importance today. If the Church is the new people of God
and the “new Israel,” then to call Israel by name makes me feel a
little uncomfortable: how can there be two Israels? Isn’t that a bit
schizophrenic? Plus isn’t the New Covenant a spiritual covenant, not a
material one? Who cares about the land?
– The Church has declared replacement theology to be wrong and God’s
covenant with the Jewish people to be irrevocable and valid even
today. But how can you separate the divine covenant with the
promise of the land? Every time God affirms His covenant with
the children of Abraham in the Bible, he adds that Eretz Israel is the
sign and guarantee of this covenant (cf. Gen 13:14-17; 17:5-8; 26:3-4;
35:10-12; 50:24; Ex 32:13; Deut 1:8). So how can you say that
God’s covenant with the people of Israel is valid and in the same
breath say that the land of Israel has no importance? Now
THAT is schizophrenic! This would be like a man who marries a
woman but refuses to live with her and have children with
her. The essence of marriage is the loving union between
spouses and procreation of children. Take these away and you
are left with but a travesty of a marriage, a meaningless declaration
emptied of its content. The same goes with God’s covenant
with Israel. You can’t say that the covenant is still valid
while denying at the same time its substance.
– So you are saying that God’s covenant with the Jewish people doesn’t
make any sense without taking into account the land of
Israel. But modern Israel is a secular entity founded on
injustice. Look at what they are doing to the Palestinians!
– Let’s leave aside for now the question of who has the moral upper
hand in the conflict and the number of imbalanced and inaccurate views
that are going around portraying Israel as the evil aggressor and the
Palestinians as the innocently oppressed. Let’s leave aside
also the permanent existential threat that the State of Israel has
faced since its foundation, and its tens of thousands of victims of
terrorism and war. Let’s grant that Israel has committed some
injustices towards the Palestinians, and that there are many things
that are wrong and sinful in Israeli society. No
doubt, such things should never be sanctioned, and we should always
pray and work for reparation, justice, reconciliation and peace
wherever injustice has been committed. We do want justice and
dignity for the Palestinians, and peace and reconciliation between both
people. But when did human sin ever nullify God’s election,
covenant and promises? If this were the case, the Church
would have ceased to exist a long time ago, for its history is not
lacking in sin, faithlessness, injustice, corruption, wars, and I could
go on. The fact that Israel has sinned and continues to sin
does not thereby nullify God’s election and covenant with them, for it
is of His very nature to remain faithful even in the midst of human sin
and failure.
In the Old Testament, God does promise to punish Israel for her sins –
and the culmination of divine punishment is exile from the
land. But even when Israel fails miserably, God’s covenant
faithfulness remains greater than Israel’s sin. God’s
covenant with His people, with Eretz Israel as its sign and guarantee,
is unconditional and immutable, like the covenant He has made with day
and night and with heaven and earth (Jer 33:25-26). It was
never revoked by the New Covenant. And so even when Israel
sins gravely God’s covenant with them remains firm. Even when
their unfaithfulness results in divine punishment and exile, God
repeatedly promises that He will gather them back into the land He
promised to their forefathers and will pour out his Spirit upon them
and give them a new heart (cf. Deut 30:1-6; Isa 11:12; 14:1; 43:5-6;
49:12; Jer 3:16-18; 16:14-16; 32:41; Ezek 11:17-20; 36-37; Amos
9:14-15). Does the prophecy of Israel receiving God’s Spirit
and a new heart not point to their future encounter with the Messiah,
who came to give the Holy Spirit? And could it be that we are
seeing the fulfillment of this prophecy before our very eyes today?
Allow me to share with you my own experience as a pilgrim to the Holy
Land. My first visit was in 1997. I was a fresh
convert, then an evangelical Christian. Immediately after my
conversion I had been reading the Scriptures very intensely, and it
didn’t take long for me to notice that all of the events of salvation
history depicted in the Bible from Abraham to Jesus and the apostles
were centered around the land and people of Israel. And so I
decided to go to Israel to “revisit the past”: to see the places where
Jesus walked, the hills in the Galilee where he performed miracles, the
streets of Jerusalem where He taught, and the hill where he was
crucified, was buried, and rose again.
All this was indeed fabulous. But I also discovered much
more. I discovered that as much as Israel’s past is momentous
and fascinating and brings the Bible to life for us Christians, its
role in God’s plan did not end with the last pages of the
Bible. I discovered that when we set foot in Israel, we do
not only visit a biblical museum or enter into a time warp taking us
back 2,000 years, but also enter into the living reality of the Word of
God being fulfilled among His people today. In Israel we can
observe first-hand the enduring faithfulness of the God of Israel’s
enduring covenant love for His chosen people that continues to be
manifested in our midst.
Since 1947/48 we are witnessing the miraculous rebirth of the State of
Israel and the return of God’s chosen people to the land that God
promised to their ancestors. In 1967 the Jews regained full
sovereignty of Jerusalem for the first time in over two thousand
years. That year also marked the beginning of the Messianic
Jewish movement, now the largest and fastest growing Jewish-Christian
movement since the first centuries of the Church. The
resurrection of the Church of the Circumcision is also manifest in the
rise of the Hebrew-Catholic community.
Divine revelation tells us that Christ’s Second Coming is “suspended at
every moment of history until his recognition by all Israel” (CCC
674). Jesus himself hinted that after a long period of
Gentile occupation, Jerusalem would eventually return under Jewish
sovereignty (Lk 21:24: “Jerusalem will be trampled by Gentiles until
the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled”). Can we Catholics
seriously believe that the return of the Jewish people to the land of
Israel – the land that God unceasingly promised to their forefathers throughout the Scriptures – is but a
mere accident of history, unrelated to all the biblical promises, or do we dare see in those momentous events
something greater happening before our very eyes in our own day?
By all means, do visit the Holy Land. Enjoy the sights and
sounds. Go where Jesus was born, lived, died and rose from
the dead. But as you go and revisit the past, keep your eyes
and heart open to see also the mystery of God’s action in the midst of
His people in the present and in the future. Dare to see
beyond the struggles, the conflicts, the human frailty, the sinfulness
and the pain that afflicts the Holy Land and its people.
Remember that the Holy Land is holy because it is Israel. It
is holy because it bears the very name of our God, the God of Israel.
“Blessed is the Lord God
of Israel, For He has visited and redeemed His
people,
And has raised up a horn
of salvation for us In the house of
His servant David,
As He spoke by the mouth
of His holy prophets, Who have been
since the world began,
That we should be saved
from our enemies And from the hand of
all who hate us,
To perform the mercy
promised to our fathers And to remember
His holy covenant,
The oath which He swore
to our father Abraham:
To grant us that we,
Being delivered from the hand of our
enemies, Might serve Him without fear,
In holiness and
righteousness before Him all the days of our
life.” (Luk 1:68-75)
|
