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Pastoral Letter
Dear friends,
The grief we are feeling is intense. Our hearts have been broken repeatedly as we have watched and learned of violence of horrendous proportions. So much anger, hatred, and vengeance has been directed at innocent infants, children, young adults, parents, the elderly and the sick. And let me be clear here, when I talk about this violence, I am talking about the horrors Hamas inflicted on innocent Israelis AND the horrors the State of Israel has inflicted on Palestinians in Gaza as they hunt down Hamas. Both are against our Christian understanding of how we are to live together. There is no justification in our faith for such violent acts against innocent children and other innocent civilians.
Our Christian history includes many who follow Jesus’ way of pacifism, arguing that there is never a time when acts of violence can be justified. Jesus tells us to turn the other cheek and to love our enemy and pray for those who persecute us. When he was arrested and one of his followers reacted violently by cutting off the ear of the slave of the high priest with his sword (Matthew 26:51-52), Jesus stayed his hand and said, “Put your sword back into its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” Mahatma Gandhi, Dorothy Day, Howard Thurman, and Martin Luther King, Jr. also called for non-violent responses to oppression and evil in the world.
“Nonviolence is absolute commitment to the way of love. Love is not emotional bash; it is not empty sentimentalism. It is the active outpouring of one’s whole being into the being of another,” wrote King.
The opposite of love is hatred. Love sees the image of God in the other. Hatred removed humanity from the other. What we are witnessing in Israel and Gaza is hatred and dehumanization on both sides. Innocent people are paying with their lives.
Our history also includes many faithful followers of Christ who argue that there are times when war is inevitable and necessary to fight against evil. This argument for “just war” includes many theologians and followers of Jesus (Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Luther, Barth, Niebuhr) and includes clear moral reasons to enter into a war to fight injustice. However, the support of such necessary engagement against evil never includes violence against infants, children, the sick, infirm, or elderly.
Christians around the world do not agree on the right and moral way to respond to the situation in Gaza and Israel. It is not clear. What is clear through our faith, theology, and history, however, is that violence against innocents is never a just or right path to peace.
Friends, my prayers include the many people in Gaza who have already lost family members and friends of all ages and are now being forced from their homes with nowhere to go and no way to safely travel. My prayers also include those Israelis and Americans who have been taken hostage by Hamas (and their families who are terrified that they will never see them again). These are prayers full of grief that lean into hope for an end to violence (on both sides), a release of captives, a just solution for Palestinians (who have been oppressed for far too long), and an end to the dehumanization and acts of hatred toward both Jews and Muslims.
Last night, we had a prayer service of lament, music, prayer and candle lighting. Here is the link to the two spoken prayers we used.
Here is also a link to my sermon from Sunday, which also happened to be Children’s Sabbath. I preached on Philippians 4 and joy in Christ that brings wholeness even, perhaps especially, in the midst of pain. The sermon begins at about 21:53.
Friends let’s remain in conversation about this conflict, as well as the war in Ukraine. We will continue to share resources (see below) that will help us in this time of trial in our world.
With deep and abiding love for you all,
Mindy
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To learn more about Just War theory, see this article:
https://eppc.org/docLib/20080205_palpatterson03.pdf
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