As war goes on, church leaders in occupied Palestinian territories share messages of hope for peace. The following article was published in the January-February 2024 issue of NewsNotes.
“We are angry. We are broken. This should have been a time of joy; instead, we are mourning. We are fearful.”
So begins the Christmas Eve Vigil sermon by pastor Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac at the Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, which has received international attention for a nativity scene depicting the baby Jesus wrapped in a keffiyeh and placed in a pile of rubble.
“If Jesus were to be born today, he would be born under the rubble in Gaza,” explained Rev. Dr. Isaac, who condemned using theology to justify Israel’s killing of innocent civilians. “If we, as Christians, are not outraged by the genocide, by the weaponization of the Bible to justify it, there is something wrong with our Christian witness, and we are compromising the credibility of our gospel message.”
“We look at the Holy Family and see them in every family displaced and wandering, now homeless in despair,” he said. “This is Christmas today in Palestine.”
Rev. Dr. Isaac was in Washington, DC in late November, hosted by Churches for Middle East Peace to meet with the White House and members of Congress. Reflecting on the Christmas decorations he saw on the city buildings, he said “I couldn’t help but think: They send us bombs, while celebrating Christmas in their lands. They sing about the prince of peace in their land, while playing the drum of war in our land.”
“Christmas in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, is this manger,” Rev. Dr. Isaac said, referring to the Christ figure in the rubble on the floor of the church. “This is our message to the world today. It is a gospel message. It is a true and authentic Christmas message about the God who did not stay silent but said his word, and his word was Jesus. Born among the occupied and marginalized, he is in solidarity with us in our pain and brokenness.”
The Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem wrote a Christmas greeting to the faithful around the world, drawing comparisons between the time of the birth of Jesus and the current “dire circumstances” in the Holy Land, where “hope seems distant and beyond reach.”
“Yet it was into such a world that our Lord himself was born in order to give us hope,” the group said in statement released Dec. 21. The group includes of the heads of the Latin Catholic, Greek and Syrian Orthodox, Lutheran, and Episcopal churches.
“It is in this spirit of Christmas that we, the Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem, denounce all violent actions and call for their end. We likewise call upon the people of this land and around the globe to seek the graces of God so that we might learn to walk with each other in the paths of justice, mercy, and peace. Finally, we bid the faithful and all those of goodwill to work tirelessly for the relief of the afflicted and towards a just and lasting peace in this land that is equally sacred to the three Monotheistic Faiths.”
The Justice and Peace Commission Assembly of the Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land also released a Christmas message that began with disturbing news about indiscriminate killing by Israel in Gaza:
“As we prepared to enter the novena before Christmas, we received the horrific news of the attack on the Holy Family parish in Gaza. At midday on December 16, an Israeli sniper murdered Naheda and Samar, mother and daughter, in the church courtyard. Seven more were wounded as they tried to protect those in the church. That morning an Israeli missile slammed into the home of the Missionaries of Charity, wreaking destruction and putting the lives of the 54 disabled residents in even graver danger. Lord have mercy!”
[According to a Politico article on Dec. 21, Catholic Relief Services staff shared the coordinates of the church and convent with Senate staff who added them to a list of Christian facilities given to the Israeli military to be flagged for protection, back in October. The compound was later struck by Israeli rockets and snipers.]
The church leaders went on, recounting other incidents of killings, arrests, and destruction by the Israeli military in Gaza, Bethlehem, and the West Bank, and asked “what is [the] deeper meaning?”
“As people of hope,” the church leaders said, “we await the birth of the Prince of Peace. And we remember that we are never alone, for God chose this place in which to enter into the darkness as Emmanuel, God with us.”
Faith in Action
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Photo of Palestinians inspecting the damage following an Israeli airstrike on the El-Remal aera in Gaza City on October 9, 2023, from the Palestinian News & Information Agency (Wafa) in contract with APAimages via WikiMedia.