Mission Crossroads is a three-time-a-year magazine focused on worldwide work of the PC(USA). It offers news and feature stories about mission personnel, international partners and grassroots Presbyterians involved in God's mission in the world.
Issue link: https://missioncrossroads.epubxp.com/i/491857
18 Spring 2015 Dr. Munther Isaac is a Palestinian Christian from Beit Sahour, a town neighboring Bethlehem in Palestine. He was born into a Greek Orthodox family, but at age 10 he began attending a small church in Bethlehem belonging to the Presbyterian Bible denomination. Isaac studied civil engineering, but after he felt a call to ministry, he studied at Westminster Teological Seminary in Philadelphia. Since 2005, Isaac has taught at Bethlehem Bible College, where he also directs the Christ at the Checkpoint conference. He recently earned a PhD through the Oxford Center for Mission Studies. Currently, Isaac is a candidate for ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Land. I had the privilege of interviewing him on January 23, 2015. You said in your address to the Kairos Palestine conference that the Sermon on the Mount rescued your faith. What did you mean? Tat's actually true. Te most urgent question for me in my whole life has been about the land and the people. When I was 15 years old, and in high school, I wrote my frst paper asking, "Who are God's chosen people?" Why would a 15-year- old write a paper like this? It's because we hear all around us that God favored one nation over the other. We are told that this land—where I grew up, that we inherited from our great-great- grandfathers—is not ours. In the end I wrote my PhD on the theology of the land. But the peace in my heart could not come from theological arguments. What helped me move forward is the Sermon on the Mount because it showed me how to live and how to make a diference. It showed me an alternative way. It's a challenge to live a diferent life, not just individually but as a community. How can we help young Palestinians, who don't have hope because of the political situation, who sometimes feel the church has let them down? How can we help them stay here and be a witness? I believe the Sermon on the Mount gives us an answer. As strange as it sounds, we must be poor in spirit, meek, to survive here. We must do it boldly. We must be convinced that we have to resist evil with good. We need to be courageous and trust in God's calling. Te sermon continues to challenge me. Is there an example you can give of the Christian community here, living that out? Tere are many, many examples. We do Christ at the Checkpoint. It is an international conference in which we invite evangelicals from around the world to come and have a discussion at the Checkpoint and ask, "What would Jesus do? How would he respond to the confict, to occupation?" Many of the people we invite are Christian Zionists. We challenge them, and they challenge us. One of our main goals is to challenge the theologies in the West that exclude Palestinians. One of the surprising outcomes has been the huge interest from young Palestinian Christians. I can't forget what one told me after the second conference: "Now we feel we can contribute. Now we feel our faith is relevant." All of sudden, the church is talking about things that matter to their daily lives, instead of only telling them how to get to heaven. My students came to me and said, "Let's Sermon on the Mount rescued Dr. Isaac's faith and brought him closer to God By Kate Taber Munther Isaac teaching at Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, Palestine.