If you were forced to flee your home, what would you take with you? Photographs for memories? Documents for identity? Food for sustenance?
Almost certainly you would carry with you the hope of a future home where we can all break bread together in peace.
We all dream of home — a place where we can live in peace, where we can make bread, and eat it, and share it with those we love. Many of us have homes that give us at least some of this — though home can also be a fraught place, where the sadness of the world is literally brought home to us. And for others, home is a distant dream.
This year, tens of thousands of people living in Gaza have been forced to leave their homes. Many times over. We stand with them, and with those peace-loving people in Israel who want to create a homeland they can share. We gather this year with hearts wrung out by the conflict in the Middle East.
Because of this, our Act of Communion will have a simple, stripped-down feel. We will meet like those who are still searching for a safe home. More than ever, it will be an act of participation, something we make together.
Daoud Nassar will be with us and we will break bread with the those at theTent of Nations, his family farm outside Bethlehem where their ancestral land is under threat. Bethlehem was the birthplace of Jesus. The name means ‘House of Bread’. And bread will be at the centre of our meeting.
Sometimes we make our homes very small. Sometimes we focus on home as a place of protection instead of hospitality. Jesus didn’t promise his followers a secure home at all — quite the opposite. In fact, he said: ‘Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’
What Jesus did offer was bread for today, and a vision of a heavenly home. As we share our physical homes, we work to shape the home of ourdreams: a community that will give human relationships the sturdiness that earth alone does not provide.
Our Act of Communion will be hosted by Isaac Borquaye, better known as Guvna B. Music will come from Siskin Green, a contemporary Scottish folk trio, who draw on themes of faith, feminism and justice. It will also feature Cyr wheel with Ariel Dempsey and a song from Flamy Grant.
