Young adult lives out his mission
David Hosey often thinks of the patient widow in Luke 18.
In the parable, the patient widow returns again and again to the judge – who neither feared God nor cared about men — asking for justice. In the end she wears him down and he grants her justice.
Hosey, too, has made it his mission to continually press for justice in the conflicted Palestine-Israel
region. He keeps on advocating, sharing his message, hoping to wear down the judge – our government – so that U.S. policy in the Middle East will change.
Hosey, 24, grew up at Baldwin Memorial UMC in Millersville. He is more than halfway through his three-year mission service that splits time between international service and service in the U.S.
“Mission is everywhere,” says Hosey, who’s also an inquiring candidate into ordained ministry in the Baltimore-Washington Conference. “Mission is outside our door, in our families, in our communities and it’s across the world.”
He added that mission often gets misunderstood as an attitude of going far away and telling people what they need to believe.
“But what I found out about mission in Jerusalem,” he said, “is that it required a lot of listening to people’s stories and being able to listen to the patient widows in the Palestinian community, people who are steadfastly calling for repentance or justice.”
“As I was starting to think about my political beliefs, my beliefs about the way that the world works and my faith, September 11 happened,” said Hosey, who was 16 when the planes struck the twin towers at the World Trade Center.
“I became interested in our U.S. policy in the Middle East region,” Hosey said, “and how to relate to that as a person of faith and as a person who believes the basic tenets of faith about loving our enemies, seeking justice, seeking truth, seeking peace.”
After graduation, the first part of his mission internship for the General Board of Church and Society, was serving in Israel-Palestine, mainly in Jerusalem, with the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center — an ecumenical grass-roots liberation theology movement among Palestinian Christians.
“They work to deepen the faith of Palestinian Christians in a way that’s conscious of how our faith calls us to social action, non-violent action for peace and justice,” Hosey said. Part of his role was to introduce visitors on Holy Land pilgrimages to religious leaders, activists and international workers.
Now, in the second part of his mission internship, Hosey works as a media coordinator at the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, based in Washington, D.C. The campaign is a coalition of 200-plus organizations working to change U.S. policy towards Israel-Palestine to align with human rights and international law.
“So rather than dictating to Israelis and Palestinians what we think they should do, the focus is on seeing the log in our own eye as far as what our tax dollars are going to and what our government is doing in our name,” said Hosey, who attends Dumbarton UMC in Georgetown.
It’s his faith that pushes him to take action.
“My faith is in a God who has bigger dreams for the Middle East and who is working in the midst of violence to bring peace,” he said. “Our God doesn’t take care of situations for us,” but instead we have a God who “gets in and gets dirty,” so we can’t just sit back —- we must respond.”
One way Hosey encourages his local church to respond is by examining where money is invested. The United Methodist Church has a resolution saying that military aid to the region is a bad idea and it officially opposes the violence, so churches shouldn’t invest in companies that profit off of the occupation.
Hosey’s advice for believers looking to do mission or service work of all kinds is to “just jump in, but be aware of opportunities to hear stories coming from communities and individuals that we’re not used to hearing from,” he said.
For young people, Hosey recommends United Methodist programs like the one he’s serving in, the three-year Mission Intern Program and the US2 program, which offers two years of mission in the U.S.
A good first step is prayer, then asking your church’s mission committees about opportunities. Hosey urges people to tap into United Methodist resources, such as the Baltimore-Washington Conference and the General Board of Global Ministries, which has mission programs around the world.
“A lot of times, what you end up involved in is what grabs you and what calls to you,” Hosey said. “The world has plenty of great needs.”
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