My heart has been breaking this week as we watch horrific events of violence unfold in the Holy Land. Innocent civilians in Israel—men, women, and children—were brutally murdered, maimed, and taken hostage by a terrorist organization bent on evil. All people of good conscience should condemn such atrocities. We likewise should pray for the dead and injured and extend our hearts and hands to our Jewish brothers and sisters in their grief and horror.
Frankly, I have been disappointed in how slow and equivocal our church leaders—both Lutheran and Episcopalian—have been to say these simple things. As the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, once put it in a different context, what the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ teaches us as Christians is that “it is with the innocent victim that God identifies, and it is in the company of such victims that God is always to be found.” That is where we should be too.
For this very same reason, we also should stand in solidarity with those Palestinian brothers and sisters who have nothing to do with Hamas, who find themselves caught in a bloody conflict not of their making, and who are often themselves the victims of oppressive violence by their neighbor. And especially we pray for the innocent civilians, including the millions of children, who now find themselves in harm’s way as Israel prepares its response to this attack and the fighting on both sides inevitably escalates.
To be a Christian is to live with such contradiction because we claim an identity grounded in something that transcends political labels and national boundaries. This is no time for political sparring or jawboning. This is a time to pray for innocent victims—whether they be Jewish, Muslim, Christian, or otherwise. And it is time to pray that all those who hold political authority in this world do everything they possibly can to put an end to the madness.
"O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in your good time, all nations and races may serve you in harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."