“Presbyterians, Politics, and Peace”
A sermon by Sid Burgess for Edgewood Presbyterian Church,
Birmingham, AL
July 25, 2010
Text: Hosea 1:2-10
Christians living in the Holy Land are an endangered species. In an article last fall, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC called them: “The forgotten faithful.” In less than 100 years, Christians in the Middle East have declined from one quarter of the population to less than one-tenth. In Israel itself, and the Palestinian territories, that number had dropped to two percent—this on the very land Jesus and his disciples walked.1
The Christian minority is shrinking, but they are not silent. In December of last year an ecumenical group—Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant—issued a collective “cry of hope, with love, prayer and faith in God.” In their report, entitled “Kairos Palestine,” Palestinian Christians declare that the military occupation of (their) land is a sin against God and humanity. . .(for) true Christian theology is a theology of love and solidarity with the oppressed, a call to justice and equality among peoples.”2 Kairos is a Greek word meaning, “Timing is everything.” “Kairos Palestine” caught the attention of our Presbyterian Church General Assembly’s Middle East Peacemaking Committee. Acting upon this committee’s recommendation, the General Assembly has commended this document to us—to the congregations--- for study, prayer and response. In addition, the General Assembly has called for
o An immediate cessation of all violence, whether perpetrated by
Israelis or Palestinians;
o The reaffirmation of Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign nation
within secure borders;
o The end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories;
o An immediate freeze on the establishment and expansion of Israeli
settlements in the West Bank;
o An end to U.S. support for the Egyptian-Israeli blockade of the
Gaza strip to allow economic and humanitarian aid to reach the
millions of people packed into that narrow strip of land.3
In the Judeo/Christian tradition we have a long, long record of political engagement. It dates all the way back to Moses, whom God sent to Pharaoh with the highly political appeal: “Let my people go.”
The Church acknowledges the often-repeated biblical directive to provide for “widows, orphans, and strangers in the land”—biblical language for the poor among us. The scope of this task—locally, nationally, and internationally—is far beyond the resources of any single church, even all churches, all denominations, all branches of Christendom. This reality forces the Church to enlist the aid of government. What’s more, the Church has a divine calling to seek God’s justice in a world dominated by injustice; to seek peace in a world always at war.
God has assigned us these extraordinary challenges, And God has provided roles models for the work at hand. Case in point, the prophet Hosea.
Some 700 years before the time of Christ, Hosea was commissioned by God to challenge the government of King Jeroboam. According to Hosea, God was unhappy over this king’s foreign policy. (By the way, King Jeroboam’s great-grandfather seized the throne of Israel in a coup supported by the legendary prophets Elijah and Elisha.) In his mission, Hosea charged that the government’s foreign policy was a rejection of Holy God and amounted to idolatry. Hosea indicted both the government and the religious leadership for leading the people of Israel astray.
Hosea used some rather colorful metaphors, bordering on the obscene, to illustrate God’s disfavor with the government. With children metaphorically named, “Not Pitied” and “Not My People,” Hosea made it abundantly clear that the people of Israel had fallen out of favor with Holy God. “The special ties binding this people with their God are about to broken once and forever.”4
This brings Hosea’s use of the familial metaphor—the metaphor of family--into full focus. God is grieving like a spouse whose life has been turned to shambles by an unfaithful partner. “Like a parent who cannot love his or her children into being the kind of persons they are capable of being, God recognizes a relationship of brokenness.” Sometimes a parent, in what we call ‘tough love,’ just has to let go. Let go and let be what will be. And yet, and yet . . . .5
These sinful people are God’s people---persons of God’s own choosing. Later in this book of prophesy, Hosea will speak again for God, saying “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender”(Hosea 11.8 a&c). And so, even when it appears that the final word of God’s judgment has been spoken, there is still a further word of rescue and redemption: “In the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ it shall be said to them, ‘Children of the living God’(Hosea 1.10).
It is in response to this steadfast, never stopping love of God--for us and for all humankind--that the Presbyterian Church dares to enter into the political fray. We do so praying the prayer Christ taught us to pray—a prayer that calls for God’s will to be done, God’s will for justice, for mercy, and for peace be done, on earth as it is in heaven above. With that prayer, the Presbyterian Church has called for “breaking down the walls” that divide Palestinian Christians, Jews, and Muslims.
Of course we aren’t the only ones calling for peace. In Israel and in Palestine there is a remarkable organization doing what surely must be God’s work. It is called Parents Circle—Families Forum. It consists of Israelis and Palestinians who have lost loved ones in that seemingly interminable conflict. I invite you to listen to two of this organization’s members.
The first is a Palestinian woman whose name I cannot begin to pronounce.6 She was only five years old when she witnessed an Israeli air force attack that killed her mother and two brothers, and tore her sister’s leg off. “After the explosion there were bodies everywhere,” she writes, (and) “hell’s doors opened at that moment.” “Since then,” she continues, “not a day, not a moment passed, that I thought I would ever speak to an Israeli. I was convinced that whoever spoke Hebrew was an assassin. There was in me only blood, pain, and violence.”
But that was before Parent’s Circle—Families Forum connected her with Israelis who had suffered similar loses. Now, she writes: “The Israeli community must be able to see in me somebody who holds tightly onto the hand of peace."
Another Parent’s Circle—Families Forum member is an Israeli father, whose14-year old daughter was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber. He writes:
Nowhere is it written that we must continue dying and sacrificing our children forever and forever in this difficult horrible holy land. We can and once and for all must stop this crazy, vicious circle of violence, murder, retaliation, (and) revenge . . . . This never-ending cycle, with no purpose. With no winners and only with losers.
This grieving father continues:
Sixty years ago when my . . . forefathers were sent to the crematoriums in Europe, the free and civilized world stood aloof and did not lift a finger to save them. Today, too, sixty years later while (Palestinians and Israelis) are mercilessly butchering one another, the world again looks the other way and does nothing. . . . . All I have left is to beseech you . . . . Do not stand aloof. Be involved and concerned because we are talking about your future and ours. Not everyone must think the same. It is possible and necessary to argue, but to turn your backs on reality, to stick your heads in the sand and to live in a bubble is wrong, because you know: bubbles tend to burst in your face sometimes.7
Led by our General Assembly, the Presbyterian Church answers this plea. We will not stand aloof while our sisters and brothers—Muslims, Jews, and Christians—suffer and die. After all of the centuries of strife—all of bloodshed, the lives lost, the Church still hears God speaking to our sisters and brothers in the last called holy: “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender”(Hosea 11.8 a&c).
Finally, comes the question, ‘What can one little church do?” We can do as our Lord Jesus has taught us. We can pray—and pray earnestly that God’s will be done, in the Middle East. We can pray, and we can hope. The world seems to have given up hope for peace among Israelis and Palestinians. What the world lacks, the Church has in abundance: we have hope. It is one of God’s sacred gifts to us—hope for more than we have yet seen. Hope for a new heaven and a new earth. For a time to when the fellowship of human beings with God, and with each other, will be fully restored. With today’s psalmist, the Church cries: “Let me hear what God the LORD will speak, for God will speak peace to God’s people . . .”(Ps. 85.8). Let the Church hear and let the Church work for that day when “Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other”(Ps. 85.10).
Now to the One
who by the power at work within us
is able to do far more abundantly
than all we ask or imagine,
to God be the glory in the church
and in Christ Jesus
to all generations, forever and ever. Ephesians 3:20
1 Wright, Elliot, “Major Magazine Features Decline of
Holy Land Christians,” June 15, 2009, Global Missions of the United
Methodist Church: http://gbgm-umc.org/global_news/full_article.cfm?articleid=5435.
Original story appeared in the June, 2009, issue of NATIONAL
GEOGRAPHIC.
2 See PCUSA.org, “Swords Into Plowshares,” Peacemaking
Program.
3
http://www.pcusa.org/news/2010/7/10/ga-approves-breaking-down-walls-report-middle-east/
4 Newsome, James, TEXTS FOR PREACHING, Year C, p. 441.
5 Ibid.
6 Jalal Shuhial Khudiari
7 Jalal Shuhial Khudiari and Rami Elchanan’s stories may
be found on the Parent’s Circle—Families Forum web page:
http://www.theparentscircle.com/