Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem (Ps 122)
Dear Friends,
For nearly two weeks now I’ve been reading, thinking, worrying, and praying about the war that is in Israel and Gaza. As Episcopalians, we have even been drawn in tragically in the past few days. The al-Ahli Hospital that suffered the explosion this week was founded as an Anglican mission and is in large part supported by The Episcopal Church. We must, as Psalm 122 says, “pray for the peace of Jerusalem.”
One of the things that’s been striking to me is how hard it has been for members of the media, heads of state, protesters around the world, and even individuals on social platforms to wrestle with the complexities of this conflict. As appealing as simplification is, and as much as we long for the comfort of being on the “right” side, as Christians we can do better.
Why did Harvard students end up blaming Israel for terrorists shooting babies and grandmothers? Harvard students aren’t stupid, but they don’t know (or simply refuse) the God given truth that “all have sinned and fallen short.” They simply had no way to conceive of “their side” in the Palestinian question being morally problematic.
We have something special as Christians — we have a realistic anthropology that doesn’t require us to tell lies in order to make sense of the world. We can say Gaza was already a hard and terrible place to live, and it’s more so today than it was two weeks ago. But we know that the oppressed can be also vicious murderers. And at the same time, those mourning the innocent dead and fearing living next to a terrorist quasi-state that wishes them dead — they can also be consumed by vengeance.
This is not moral equivocation. It is a refusal to lie to ourselves about who people are. Despite the protests claiming the contrary across the world, the death of thousands and suffering of millions in Gaza doesn’t mean Israel must have bombed a hospital.
Suffering does not make people morally pure any more than living in a liberal democracy does. Nothing makes us righteous, save Christ alone. So, when the world goes searching for righteousness apart from God, then we must end up calling evil good, which is theologically the same as calling Satan “God.” And that’s not good.
Finally, no matter how trying the days, we must, with Paul, hold fast to our conviction “that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
In Christ,
Fr. Andrew
