Place and Placelessness

When the Zionist movement began within the Jewish diaspora, it is interesting to note that there was significant debate about what place to secure as a home for the Jewish people, but there was agreement that the Jewish people needed a place to call home. Of course the Holy Land will always loom large in the Jewish imagination, but leading thinkers in the early Zionist movement were open to the possibility of a Jewish state in other locales such as Argentina. The argument was that at the root of the problems and persecutions of the Jews was the problem of placelessness. If only the Jewish people could have a place of their own, then many of the problems tied to their precarious status as a perpetual diaspora could be resolved. 

The state of Israel has not brought about the promised end to these problems. Jews are still reviled (though perhaps not as candidly in polite company). Worse still, the Israeli sponsored apartheid of Palestinians has undercut their own construction of place with the violent displacement and dehumanization of their fellow inhabitants (by no means a new phenomena in in the construction of place). 

I tell this story not to pass judgement on the moral quagmire which is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but to draw attention to the connection between place, placelessness, and our humanity. Human flourishing is inextricably tied to the concrete places in which life happens. War exposes this clearly. What is at stake in displacement is not simply destroyed homes - it is the end of the form of life that makes being who we are intelligible to ourselves. Displacement is the dehumanizing act par excellence.

Consider who the social pariahs are in Canadian and Western society. The homeless, refugees, indigenous peoples, gypsies, and Jews. We fear and hate them because they stand as condemning witnesses of our failed projects of imperial place building. These are the displaced that our own colonial placedness have created. They stand as objects of our potential futures as the forces of global capital continue to grind on, extinguishing particularity and placedness, deeply compromised and tribalistic as it may be.

Given the interconnectedness of placelessness and dehumanization the Christian doctrine of place must necessarily begin with a person - Jesus of Nazareth. Naming Messiah in this way, "Jesus of Nazareth" reveals the paradox of Jesus' own placedness. We name him as though he belongs to the place of Nazareth - yet it was only in Nazareth that he was rejected by the crowds. This Nazarene, we are told, has no place to lay his head. His itinerant ministry keeps him in the rural and wilderness and when he dares to come to Jerusalem he is killed. But not just killed. Fleming Rutledge, in her recent book The Crucifixion,observes that the means of Jesus death is in fact the ultimate humiliating spectacle of a man who's humanity has been stripped from him. In his death, Jesus fully embodies the dehumanization of placelessness in order that nobody might be so again. Jesus of Nazareth is denied a place so that in him nobody need be denied a place again. 

The spectacle of Jesus' crucifixion fundamentally alters our moral vision. No longer can we see the displaced and placeless as mere objects of our anxiety and violence. The degraded conditions in which the marginalized live can no longer be opportunities for mere sympathy but are in fact calls to work to actualize their placedness in the world that has been once and for all secured by Jesus. This means that the Christian doctrine of place is necessarily radically inclusive and self-critical. Place, for the Christian, is located in the person of Jesus and so cannot be sustained by the violent exclusion of others. 

The biblical vision of place is summarized in Jesus call of Nathanael, "I saw you under the fig tree." This curious phrase opens up an eschatological window into the peace of God. In God's peace, the covenant people are at rest, each enjoying the fruit of their own fig tree and vine. Jesus call to Nathanael is incredible! This call is a representative invitation to Israel leading toward a peaceful placedness that has been denied them since the Babylonian captivity. This call to a peaceful placedness is extended to all those who come to Jesus.

John's gospel tells us that Jesus had to depart from the disciples to "prepare a place for them." That place is a this worldly reality. Jesus departs from his disciples to take on the ultimate dehumanization of all those who lack a place in the world in order that in his resurrection the promise to Nathanael might be revealed as the promise that is extended to each of us - that we all have a place in this world where we might live in peace with enough. 

Jesus gives us a place to be fully human.

Alleluia.