Phone: +972-(0)2-626-6800 Fax: +972-(0)2-628-5764 Address: Muristan Road P.O. Box 14076 Jerusalem 91140 via Israel
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Arabic: 9am Sundays English: 9am Sundays (Chapel) German: 10:30am Sundays
In the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, a stone's throw from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, is the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer. Built by Kaiser Wilhelm in the late 1800s, he personally dedicated the church in 1898, when he and his wife, Augusta Victoria, became the first western rulers to visit Jerusalem. The Lutheran church houses other Lutheran congregations, speaking four different languages (Arabic, German, English, and Danish), as well as the Offices of the Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land (ELCJHL), Bishop Dr. Munib A. Younan.
Pastor Sani Ibrahim Azar, Pastor of Redeemer's Arabic-speaking congregation, pictured at left, estimates there are about 420 baptized members in the congregation, representing 80 families.
It is Sunday morning and Rev. Azar stands at the door of the main sanctuary of the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer shortly before 9:00 am, welcoming the people to worship. While he shakes hands with everyone, the pastor pays special attention to the babies and small children.
At 9:00 am the Redeemer church bells begin to ring with full, loud, melodic tones. When the ringing is over, it is time for worship to begin for the Arabic congregation in the main sanctuary and for the English-speaking congregation in the chapel.
Using a formal Lutheran liturgy and hymns in the Arabic language, the congregation sings and participate with energy and the joy that goes with being so familiar with the words and melodies. Rev. Azar tells the English-speaking people the page number of the hymns and the text for the gospel lesson, but after that a person who does not speak Arabic is on his or her own. However, there is a certain cadence to the parts of the service so a worshipper can tell when the creed or the Lord’s Prayer is being said, and can participate in his or her own language. The worshiping guests can either hum along with the hymns or occasionally will hear a familiar tune and can sing the words in their own language.
Following the worship service the Arabic-speaking congregation joins with the English-speaking congregation for tea and conversation. The English-speaking worship has been taking place in the Crusader Chapel of the Redeemer church during the 9:00 am hour.
Pastor Azar estimates that about 100 families have emigrated to other countries, and that about 20 families are now behind the separation wall, which makes coming to church completely unpredictable if not impossible.
"The Jerusalem congregation is now divided in three parts: About 55% of our members live around the Old City before the checkpoint; another 25% live between the checkpoint and the Wall; and the remaining 20% live outside the Wall. This fragments the congregation, alienates one from one another and makes it almost impossible to come together as a whole community."
The wall - built largely on Palestinian land - isolates East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank and wreaks havoc on the fabric of Palestinian life. International law does not recognize Israel's unilateral annexation of much of East Jerusalem, and thus it is considered occupied territory under that law. Nevertheless, with the building of the wall and the increasing difficulty in obtaining permits for travel to Jerusalem, the separation of East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank is now virtually complete.
Traditionally, East Jerusalem has contributed about 30-40% of the economy to Palestinian areas; any two-state solution that does not give Palestinians access to East Jerusalem (and vice versa) will not be a viable solution.
Pastor Azar also estimates that another 20 families are "forbidden families." Since 2002, Israel has refused to issue the permits necessary in Jerusalem when one spouse does not have a Jerusalem ID but they want to live there, or have been living there for years.
For example, Rimaz is illegal in her own home. She was arrested 3 times while pregnant, taken to the police headquarters in a squad car, where she avoided a strip search only when a priest she had worked with came to the station on her behalf. Her crime? Living in Jerusalem with her family without the proper permit. In June of 2003 a temporary order that suspended the issuing of family unification permits was passed, and has continued to be extended and upheld as recently as January 2012. Under this law, family unification permits are no longer given to those whose spouses are from the West Bank.
Born in Nablus, Rimaz married Ghassan, now Redeemer's organist, in 1996, when the hopes from Oslo were still fairly high. Almost 15 years, 3 children and 1 intifada later, Rimaz still does not have the Israeli government's permission to live with her family. From the porch of their home, the house where Ghassan grew up and where they and his mother share the house, the top of the gray concrete slabs of the wall that now separate them from the rest of the West Bank peek out through the trees.
For years their only legal choice, if they wanted to live as a family, was to move to the West Bank. But Ghassan and the three children would then lose their Jerusalem IDs, which entitled them to health insurance and pension which they have paid taxes for as long as they lived there. The rest of the family would then also forfeit permission to live in and even perhaps visit - or work in - Jerusalem.
In 2006, however, Rimaz was granted a 12 month residency permit, which temporarily gave her the right to live in Jerusalem for one year. But even with this permit, she was not permitted to drive her husband's yellow-plated car, nor to access health or pension benefits, which come with having the actual Jerusalem IDs.
These are just examples of the problems facing Palestinians today, which fall harder on Palestinian Christians because of their already small numbers and extended families throughout the area.
Sunday worship is held at 9:00 a.m. in the large, cathedral-like sanctuary of the Redeemer church. The service is entirely in Arabic, although Pastor Azar will occasionally speak in English or another language to help visitors find the hymns and Scripture texts. During the spring and summer months, the congregation worships one Sunday each month at the Lutheran Church of the Ascension, located adjacent to the Augusta Victoria Hospital on the Lutheran World Federation Jerusalem campus on the Mount of Olives.
During the week, church meetings and activities are held at the church center located in the neighborhood of Beit Hanina, a few miles north of the Old City, toward Ramallah. The center is a remodeled house on the main road to Ramallah, a location that is more convenient for many church members than coming into the Old City. Women’s group meetings are held weekly in the center, as are youth groups, children’s activities and administrative meetings. But with a large percentage of the Arabic-speaking Redeemer congregation now living on the far side of the wall, even this location no longer solves the difficulties of coming together as a congregation.
Often, to begin meetings, Pastor Azar will bring out a portable electronic keyboard; hymnbooks will come down from the shelves in the comfortable meeting room; and the room will soon resound with singing. Palestinian Lutherans really like to sing. Whether it is in the church service or a small gathering, they sing with vigor and volume. After the singing, the meeting will likely follow with Bible study and lively discussion, and the sharing of prayer concerns for both those who are able to be present and those who are not.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Redeemer complex also houses the Martin Luther Community Development Center (MLCDC), a joint program of the Arabic-speaking congregation and the ELCJHL Director of Education Offices.
The mission of the MLCDC is "to strengthen the local community by developing the competencies of its clients through providing opportunities for education, recreation and communication, improving the quality of life for the East Jerusalem community in general and Old City inhabitants in particular."
The Elderly Day Center is open five days a week, offering an enjoyable and accessible environment for seniors in the Old City to come for socializing. Social workers are elso employed to meet a range of care needs.
The center also offers a Fitness Center with exercise machines and a weight room, programs for Children's Activities, and an Afterschool Sports Program.
The MLCDC also houses the Director of Education Offices which have responsibility for the various ELCJHL Schools and Educational Programs.
Pastor Azar been the pastor of the Redeemer Arabic-speaking congregation since his ordination in 1988. He was born in Lebanon where his father was a deacon with the Schneller school (a Lutheran, German-sponsored school for boys). In 1961 the family moved to Bethlehem and the father became the housefather for the Evangelical Lutheran Home for Boys in Beit Jala. Rev. Azar took his higher education and seminary training in Germany. In 1992 he was married to Nah’la and they are the parents of three daughters.
The Redeemer church building itself and the land on which it stands have a long and interesting history. The church is built on the site of the medieval church St. Mary la Latine, which fell into ruin, and then a second St. Mary’s church and a St. John’s church were built as part of a huge building complex which was called the Muristan, the Persian word for hospital. Nearby there is said to have been a hospice (hostel) for western pilgrims, near the place of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Only as of the eleventh century is it possible to have a more exact history. People from Italy revitalized the Convent of St. Mary la Latine before 1070, and a hospital was established near the Church of St. John. When the Crusaders were the administrators of Jerusalem during the twelfth century, the religious brothers who served in the hospital developed into one of the three great orders of knights, the Order of the Knights of St. John. They cared for the pilgrims who visited Jerusalem, many of whom became ill and needed nursing. Thus the knights also became known as “hospitallers.” For a century, 1099-1187 the Muristan was the headquarters of the Knights of St. John, with churches and hospitals. It is reported that at times there were up to 2000 patients with hundreds of nursing brothers caring for them.
When the Turkish ruler, Saladin, conquered Jerusalem in 1187, the hospital continued as an Islamic institution, but by the sixteenth century the Muristan fell into ruins. The City of Jerusalem and its churches were all but forgotten by the west. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, pilgrims began coming once again to Jerusalem and by 1840 European nations and churches wanted to be represented in Jerusalem.
In 1841 the Anglicans and the Prussians arrived in Jerusalem and established a joint Jerusalem bishopric. By 1886 the two churches had grown and developed, and went their separate ways. The Prussian Kaiser Wilhelm was able to move ahead with his plan to build a Lutheran church in Jerusalem. In 1869 Wilhem, then the crown prince, had taken possession of a part of the old Muristan, and later the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer was built on the site. It was dedicated on October 31, 1898, with Kaiser Wilhelm II and his entourage in attendance. He was the first western ruler of modern times to come to Jerusalem and he personally dedicated the new church.
Several Lutheran congregations were established under German Lutheran leadership, and in 1959 the indigenous Palestinian Lutheran church was recognized by the King of Jordan. The West Bank and a part of Jerusalem including the Old City were under Jordanian control at that time. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan (now the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land) became an independent church and its first bishop was the Rt. Rev. Daoud Haddad, who served both as bishop and as pastor of the ELCJ congregation in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Redeemer. This arrangement continued into the leadership of the next ELCJ bishop, the Rt. Rev. Naim Nassar. Not until Rev. Azar became the pastor of the Arab congregation at Redeemer in 1988 were the bishop’s duties and the work of the congregational pastor separated.
Today the ELCJHL Bishop is the Rt. Rev. Dr. Munib A. Younan, whose offices are located in the buildings attached to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Redeemer. The Arabic-speaking congregation also has an office in this area, as does the English-speaking congregation which worships in the St. John Chapel, served by Rev. Fred Strickert (ELCA). The offices of the German Probstei are also housed in the adjacent building. The German Lutheran church continues to own the property and the church buildings.
Mailing Address:
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Redeemer
PO Box 14076
Jerusalem 91140
via Israel
Phone: Office: +972-(0)2-627-6111
Direct line: +972-(0)2-626-6851
Fax: +972-(0)2-628-5764
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