The Dead Walked the Streets

In 1999 I was watching TV in the lounge at Erdmann Hall.  I was in Princeton for my doctoral program.  One of my classmates sat next to me and wept.  We were watching the news of the Intifada, the uprising in the West Bank.  Most of the fighting at this time was in and around the city of Ramallah.

The image they kept playing over and over was the young boy, a son, leaning over his father who had been shot and killed.  In my memory he seems to be trying to wake him up.  Shaking him.  Calling him to get up. My classmate, Andrew, just kept weeping.  I knew Andrew lived in Ramallah where he and his wife Karen ran a coffee shop ministry hoping to create a place of peaceful dialogue between Muslims, Jews, and Christians.  Andrew pointed at the screen and said, "that's, that's my street."

Through the last twenty or so years Andrew and I have kept in touch.  He's stayed at my home many times, dined with us, hosted our daughter Zoe for a part of a Summer.  He's come here and spoke.  You might remember him. 

I never know if Andrew is in the West Bank or if he's in Philadelphia.  He teaches at Temple and runs a center for dialogue and peacemaking in Bethlehem.  He's the type of guy who is always starting something profound.  He runs it for a time and then hands it over to local people. 

As things were unfolding this week, I wondered if Andrew was in the midst.  He is.  He sent out an update to friends so we would know he and Karen are alive.  I want to read you what he sent out.  It helped me a lot this week.

Dear Friends

We send our love from Bethlehem. We thank you for your many emails inquiring into our well-being. Your kind messages are so meaningful and encouraging to Karen and me. These are horrendous days.

We're hunkering down in Bethlehem. The roads out of Bethlehem are totally closed, and the airport is barely functioning. The general atmosphere in Bethlehem is fairly normal, or as normal as it can be with war planes thundering overhead. In Bethlehem there is no fighting. Actually, some of our friends are transferring from Jerusalem to Bethlehem because it is safer here.

People are moving around freely. Businesses, schools, and such are all open. Today we visited an elderly member of our Jerusalem church in her retirement community in Bethlehem.

We have all the necessary utilities- water and electricity, and internet. It's bizarre how these wars go here: one area can be exploding while other areas are relatively quiet. But everyone feels the sorrow for the situation.

Because the roads out of Bethlehem are sealed, we have merged our in-person Sunday service in Jerusalem with our online Saturday service.

Please pray for Shadi Najar, the Baptist pastor in Gaza. He and his wife Ghada and their two children are in a desperate situation. They want out, but there is no way out. Shadi messaged me this morning from Gaza:

In the midst of the terrible loss of life, it's not the best time for analysis and explanation. It is very easy for explanation to sound like excuse. But just a few facts that are important to know as the tragedy plays itself out in Gaza.

First, all Gazans are not Hamas. Hamas is a radical Islamic movement that took control of Gaza by force in 2007 from the secular Palestinian Authority, which is the official, internationally recognized government of the Palestinian people. It is based Ramallah, north of Jerusalem.

Second, half of the two million plus population of Gaza are children fifteen- years-old or younger.

Lastly, in peacemaking theory "negative peace" is only the absence of war. or conflict. It is the kind of peace that is imposed, but that doesn't settle anything. If negative peace is imposed for a long period of time the stronger party may think there is a real peace, but it is illusory.

"Positive peace" is peace that comes from recognizing the human dignity of all in a conflict, and which transforms the structures and institutions of society/ies to affirm equality and justice. In other words, true lasting peace is found only in positive peace. It is a lot harder to achieve. But the alternative is, well, what we see in the news.

In closing, I share the words of Hala, a Palestinian Christian and the librarian at Bethlehem Bible College. At lunch today Hala said to Karen, "I think violence is always wrong. Let us always work for peace without violence."

Thank you again for your prayers and expressions of support and concern for us and the people here.

It is important that this conflict doesn't spread or escalate. Let's pray for that. Let's pray also for all in grief from the loss of their loved ones in Israel and Gaza.

Thank you for standing with us in prayer -

Andrew and Karen

It is important that this conflict doesn't spread or escalate.  I know there are many voices now, many people calling for folks to take a side, to stand with one side or another, to call out the evil of Hamas or to remember the history of violence brought on Gaza by the Israelis.

The Governor of New York has taken a side, the former president of Harvard denounced his school for not taking a side.  On Tuesday at the interfaith prayer vigil two speakers near the end demanded we do the same, pick a side and spill blood. It's hard to resist the temptation of retribution in a tragedy, to keep the peace, hard to keep your peace in the midst of massacres.  Shouldn't the church take a side?

Andrew has helped me to navigate the treacherous waters of Israel/Palestine/Gaza for a long time now.  I believe his note answers the question of sides; his call for solidarity in sorrow not vengeance is a wise voice. 

Another voice, or comment really, that helped me navigate the week was the claim that many Israelis feel that this is their 9/11.  I heard people scoff at this, but then I listened to the rationale.  On 9/11 we lost a sense of security.  Nowhere was safe any longer.  It was the loss of life and the loss of security that impacted so many millions.  Our sense of security suddenly evaporated.

But in terms of prayer, it was an article in the New York Times that defined my hope.  The article said, please resist the trap of Gaza.  In the anger and vitriol of eye for an eye, in the call to raze Gaza, there is a terrible, terrible trap in which to fall.

The trap is decades of violence, a temptation to bring wrath.  As a pastor living next to Fort Drum for most of the Afghan and Iraqi wars, I can describe the trap in numbers.  Over the course of the 20 years of warfare, the U.S. lost 7,000 soldiers.  During the same time we caused the death of 177,000 civilians and soldiers.  And one more number. In the last twenty years, 30,000 veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq, American soldiers, have taken their own life. 

In our call to never forget the victims of 9/11, we often forget or have no idea of the death and destruction that followed in its wake.  The trap of Gaza is the same as the trap of Kandahar and Fallujah.  Is there really a side to take in a trap?

It is important that this conflict doesn't spread or escalate.

There are a million children in the Gaza.  Can you choose a side where each side would be willing to put a million children's lives at stake?  Can you make sense of or excuse the massacre of innocents?  Can you begin to fathom 177,000 dead; 30,000 suicides? What is a church to say, to do? Let's pray also for all in grief from the loss of their loved ones in Israel and Gaza.  Solidarity can be found in grief.  It is not as easy as a solidarity of hatred or wrath, but great things are never easy.

When Jesus died darkness prevailed at midday, the earth shook, and the curtain of the temple tore in two.  The dead walked the streets.  The soldiers said, "surely this was the son of god." There was glory to behold.  Amazing things.  Yet, what makes me stop, what causes me to stand still and gaze in awe is the violence we can never seem to lose, the propensity for wrath that never seems sated, the ease at which we discard peace for blood.  The cross of Jesus and his anguish and forsakenness amazes me not in its unique circumstance. The cross is amazing because the death of a million children in Gaza could be considered.

When Jesus reached the tomb of Lazarus, John says, he wept.  Many believe his tears were not over the loss of a friend, but the recognition, the awful step he would have to take of bringing Lazarus back to life.  This was a life of grinding poverty and illness.  Lazarus was now at rest; he was gathered unto peace and glory.  Jesus was going to call him back; raise him from his rest and cast him back into a life of misery.  He would take the glory Lazarus had just received and give it away to others.  Jesus wept. 

We should weep too.  Weep for the massacred, the people looking to dance, the children trying to go to school.  And in the midst of those tears may we find the courage of positive peace.  Destroying Gaza will satisfy the desire for vengeance, it may recreate some security, but not a lasting peace. 

Gaza is unique in its complexity and density, but it is not difficult to see how common it is, how it is the violence we can never seem to lose, the propensity for wrath that never seems sated, the ease at which we discard peace for blood.  If you raze Gaza, it will rise again.  Like Lazarus it will be cast once again into misery. There always seems to be time to weep.

That the dead walked the streets of Jerusalem is an amazing thing, shocking and strange.  That the living would walk the streets of the Gaza in peace, that this is more amazing to me, that it's harder for me to imagine, is a sad truth. To imagine Gaza made a place of wonder, as a place of peace, not a place of misery: this seems too fantastic to even speak out loud.

Please pray for Shadi Najar, the Baptist pastor in Gaza. He and his wife Ghada and their two children are in a desperate situation.  We can.  We can pray they make it out alive.  We can pray that the Israelis don't fall into the trap of vengeance, the type of trap where the losses are unimaginable.  Yet, I imagine the prayer Shadi Najar is hoping to hear, the prayer my friend Andrew makes from the streets of Bethlehem is that we build a positive peace, have the courage to work for peace without violence.

We can pray that we lose the propensity for violence and the readiness to hate.  We can pray that it is not the dead who walk the streets of Gaza, but the living.  Pray that Gaza is not brought low but lifted up.  Amen.