On November 10, just a month ago, the Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem issued a
pastoral letter where they offered these hard and prophetic words to the worldwide Church:
“…there are not normal times. Since the start of the War there has been an atmosphere of sadness and pain. Thousands of innocent civilians, including women and children, have died or suffered serious injuries….despite our repeated calls for a humanitarian ceasefire and a de-escalation of violence, the war continues…we call upon our congregations to stand strong with those facing such afflictions by this year foregoing any unnecessarily festive activities. We likewise encourage our priests and the faithful to focus more on the spiritual meaning of Christmas in their pastoral activities and liturgical celebrations during this period, with all the focus directed at holding in our thoughts our brothers and sisters affected by this war and its consequences, and with fervent prayers for a just and lasting peace for our beloved Holy Land.”
They canceled all Christmas festivities.
And what has happened in the last month since this letter? We are now at nearly 18,000 people dead in Gaza, an estimated half of them children. This week the United Nations said that the health system has collapsed, with general order to collapse next, a situation that will be impossible to come back from. There is also no justification for the incursion into Israel, the taking of lives, kidnapping and sexual violence that occurred. The suffering is beyond all imagining.
Just this is enough to make me so sad, feel so despondent. I feel like I say words like “violence is always wrong and an affront to God” into a void. Preaching, teaching, and living in peace is so very hard these days.
I wish I had better answers or things to say, I have a feeling all of us are just so sad, and so numb, as we watch a whole place being obliterated off the globe right in front of our eyes. I know this isn’t what God would have for us, but I have a feeling this is why the baby Jesus arrived. Because we cannot be alone, we must have Emmanuel-God-with-us, how else could we live in Empire and still maintain hope, or maintain faithfulness if we did not have the Christ Child to show us the Way?
I am so deeply appreciative of the Rev. Munther Isaac of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bethlehem he pastors and how they handled the call to forgo decorations at Christmas, but still placed a Nativity in the church building. The Christ Child is in the rubble, a symbol of God’s preferential option for those in the unimaginable suffering that surrounds our Christmas this year. “This (Nativity) is a message of comfort and joy for us,” Pastor Isaac says. “While the world is celebrating, our children are under the rubble. While the world is celebrating, our families are displaced and our homes are destroyed. This is Christmas to us in Palestine.”
