The First Advent in Palestine: Reversals, Resistance, and the Ongoing Complexity of Hope

In this humane treatise, Nikondeha (Defiant), codirector of the community development organization Communities of Hope, considers present-day Palestine in light of the birth narratives of Jesus in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew. “The first advent was about the arrival of God into a world of woe, and every advent since invites us to grapple with what Jesus’s coming means to our fraught landscapes now,” she contends. The author likens Ahed Tamimi, “a Palestinian icon of resistance” jailed when she was a young girl for slapping an Israeli soldier, to Jesus’s mother Mary, who was an adolescent when she “saw soldiers... terrorizing her neighbors in the name of peacekeeping.” Nikondeha argues that a close reading of Luke reveals Joseph and Mary were welcomed into a family compound, not turned away from an inn, illustrating that “hospitality is how people honor the humanity of one another on the underside of the empire.” The author underscores this by telling of a tea vendor she met while visiting Bethlehem who welcomed her despite the financial strain brought upon him by the West Bank barrier. Nikondeha’s exegesis is invigorating and inspired, as is her application of the New Testament’s lessons to the present day. The result is an illuminating take on what the Gospels can teach modern Christians about conflict in contemporary Palestine. (Oct.)