visit a particular site such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre or the Western

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1 Job 23:1-9, 16-17; Psalm 22:1-15; Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-31 The Rev. Linda Spiers 20 th Sunday after Pentecost October 11, 2015 Trinity Episcopal Church One of the highlights of my sabbatical was my trip to Israel/Palestine. When we had some free time, I would wander through the Old City of Jerusalem. I loved walking through the various gates of the city there are 7 in total plus the Golden Gate, which is sealed. I occasionally would return to visit a particular site such as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre or the Western Wall or the Stations of the Cross or exploring a new site such as a Jewish art exhibit or a Lutheran Church. Other times I loved going into a shop and engaging a shop owner in conversation. Some of the shop owners would even come after you into the streets using all sorts of questions or gimmicks to lure you into their shop! A photography shop caught my eye in the Armenian Quarter. There were photographs of the Old City of Jerusalem in black and white along with shots of peoples of the land. I went into the shop which was very small and loaded with many photographs from before the war of 1948 and afterward (roughly from 1924 and forward). I was quietly looking at these photographs, which were amazing works of art, when a friend of the shop owner came in to 1

2 introduce him to an American who had just come into town. We all started to have a conversation about the wonder and artistic qualities of these pictures. The shop owner s father had been a survivor of the Armenian Genocide, which took place during and after WW I. The Armenian Genocide is denied by many, particularly peoples of Turkey who challenge the use of the word Genocide. The shop is called Elia Photo and was named after the shop owner s father, Elia Kahvedjian. Elia was a young boy when he was incarcerated in the concentration camps, and he lost most all of his family in the Armenian Genocide a number somewhere around 100 people in his family. While Elia was in the camp, he met a photographer who planted the seeds in Elia for the trade of photography. It was out of the horror of that time that his creative gift was born. Elia died in 1999, and his son has continued the business of his photography. Elia s son, Kevork, now makes his father s pictures available. He has the original plates used to make the pictures and has digitized them such that they can be sized and still retain their clarity of image. He has put 131 of his father s images into a book entitled Jerusalem Through My Father s Eyes. There are images of children and animals and the Old City and street sellers and farmers and the Western Wall and rugged faces and Old City gates and monks praying the Stations of the Cross and the Muslim Quarter and the Christian 2

3 Quarter and the Via Dolorosa and women making yogurt and men eating hummus and a Bedouin family, etc. While I was browsing through the pictures in the shop, I noticed an image of the Western Wall that showed women and men praying together. The visitor in the shop quickly remarked, That s the way it was before the war of Now men and women pray separately and have a wall between them. The Armenian shop owners are almost like family, for they all seem to know one another and to respect each other and support one another. I loved learning about Elia and his photography and seeing Jerusalem through his eyes. His son keeps his memory alive in an endearing way that touched my heart, especially thinking about the ground in which Elia s gift of photography was fertilized and nurtured out of genocide there was new life. I can only imagine that Elia must have felt a similar desperation that Job expresses. Where is God? How did Elia survive that time of genocide horror and the loss of his family? He was very young and yet questions of God s absence must have surfaced at some point in his life. We hear Job s struggle when he says: If I go forward, God is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive God; on the left God hides, and I cannot behold God; 3

4 I turn to the right, but I cannot see God. (Job 23:8-9) For Job God is absent and Job lets it be known. Elie Wiesel has written about the horror of the Holocaust and has for years tried to make sense of what happened to him as a young boy in Nazi concentration camps. He writes in his book entitled Night: Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget those flames, which consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust. 1 Wiesel writes that many Jews continued to have faith in their God in the Holocaust horror and others lost their faith in more dramatic words than Wiesel or Job express. Wiesel uses the gift of his words to continue to tell his story. Elia spoke through his photography to bring the light of Jerusalem to others and to tell his story of Jerusalem. The question inside the heart of both during their time of horror must have been, where is God? Job struggles with the absence of God and longs to argue his case with God. At the same time Job does not give up his faith. In a sense Job reveals 1 Elie Wiesel, Night, trans. Stella Rodway (New York: Bantam Books, 1982), 32. 4

5 deep faith by his willingness to argue with God. I m guessing that question of where is God has come up for each of us in life and perhaps multiple times. Paul reminds us in Romans with regard to Christ s sufferings: For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39). I wonder if that assurance gives us permission to argue our case with God and to learn from Job. 5