This excerpt from a February pastoral letter on the Lenten season by the Rev. Hosam Naoum, an Anglican bishop in Jerusalem, could be written today. It captures the unmitigated pain and violence being visited upon people ensconced in a small region of the Middle East deemed holy by Protestant, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian faithful around the world.
Which brings us to their journey through this Christian Holy Week.
Palm Sunday, which commemorates Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, was celebrated a few days ago by congregants at Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives, as in years past. They gathered for prayers and vigils. As with here in the United States, there were remembrances of agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, of a cross being borne to Golgotha, of nails through wrists and feet — of sacrifice, death and victorious resurrection on the third day.
All that has taken or will take place during this Holy Week.
But amid these days of spiritual discernment, the razing and demolition of Gaza continues. Nearly 2 million Palestinians remain displaced — bodies sickened, bellies empty. They are watching children draw their last breaths because on Oct. 7, some 3,000 marauders invaded Israel under the banner of Hamas, slaughtering roughly 1,200 people, raping and defiling women, and spiriting about 250 hostages back to Gaza as human shields against what would be richly deserved retaliation.
This is a Holy Week in which attention to suffering on Calvary is being drawn away to suffering, injustices and destruction miles away in Gaza and the West Bank. A Holy Week that witnesses the opposite of what the scriptures teach should be a period of understanding the beauty of resurrection. Instead, we witness in the Israel-Gaza bloodbath the endurance of injustice and the triumphs of war over peace and death over life.
It is also no small matter that during this Holy Week, and for security reasons, U.S. government employees and family members “are temporarily restricted from entering the Old City of Jerusalem on Fridays during Ramadan (from midnight Friday morning until midnight Saturday morning)” and can’t privately travel in the West Bank, except in limited circumstance, according to the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.
In his pastoral letter, Naoum wrote both of a world enslaved by selfishness and deeply engrained animosities and of the need to “work towards justice based on divine grace and righteousness.”
Not so in the secular world, where governments put power first. Grace and reconciliation not so much.
So, the talk this week at the U.N. Security Council was all about gaining “a lasting sustainable ceasefire,” “the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages,” “humanitarian access [to Gaza] to address … medical and other humanitarian needs.” Fourteen nations said yes, none said no. The United States declined to vote, and Israel kicked up a fuss.
It is ever thus. Or so it seems.
The war between Israelis and their Arab neighbors precedes the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Who are the occupiers? Whose country is being occupied?
The venom. The hatred. Because they are Jewish? Arab? Is it all about land? Or something else?
It will be grisly, but much of Hamas eventually will be vanquished. But not the yearning to destroy Israel that lives in the hearts of many of Israel’s neighbors.
Religious bigotry and hate have woven their way into the fabric of that small region of the Middle East.
Is there any space left for justice, morality and peace? Any desire to lift up the oppressed regardless of which side of the border they live? To reconcile and commit to a common good?
This Holy Week is for believers to see and know — as some of us prayed on Good Friday — “that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new.” A week built on hope.
Credit: Source link
