An "online" friend of mine, "Peregrinata," recently posted this on the forum we both frequent. I asked her if I might repost it, and she's given me permission.
As I read the news from the Middle East, my heart is breaking with one question: Where is the Church? Where is the voice, the hands and feet, the love of Jesus while bombs fall in the Holy Land? Why are we silent while children die and mothers anguish in childbirth alone, without water, food, electricity or the hope of even the most primitive medical care? Palestinians say there have been over 1,000 deaths, nearly a third of them reportedly children. Five thousand more are wounded. Thirteen Israelis have also died, three of them civilians hit by Hamas rockets fired into Israel.
For weeks, the Israeli military has been waging war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, in retaliation for the qassam rockets Hamas fires with increasing range into southern Israel. Israel asserts its legitimate right to defend itself, while the Palestinians shout back that they would not have to fight if Israel would release its hold on their territory, open the borders and let them live in peace. Both people cry out that they want to live in peace, but their leaders have prolonged, rather than resolved, the conflict. Many of their arguments are circular and build recrimination upon recrimination.
My question , though, is for the Church, not the politicians or the military commanders: In this conflict, so horribly many of the casualties are civilians. One might protest that Hamas is to blame for putting fighters in the midst of civilians, but that is cold comfort to the women and children who are dying. They are innocent and they have nowhere to go. Unlike most wars, the innocent here cannot flee the fighting: The borders of Gaza are closed and the might of Israel’s army is on the other side.
For months, Israel has maintained a close blockade of Gaza, permitting little in or out. Even before this latest crisis (what a pallid word to describe the carnage), approximately 80 percent of Gaza’s people received food aid. Hospitals were chronically under-supplied and electricity and water scarce. Let us debate after how the fear on each side has led to hatred and anger and war. For no matter the how or the why this conflict escalated this time, the reality today is that bombs have been falling on the innocent, who are no longer assured of food, shelter, water, or medical care, who have no safe haven, no refuge, no escape.
This is not the Canaan of ancient Scripture, when God instructed Israel to leave no one alive. In Gaza, some of those suffering are the descendants of those who, two thousand years ago, walked with the man Jesus and pledged to follow Him. Those brothers and sisters are dying today, in part, because we the Church have not stood up and said, “Enough!” As the Church, we must base our response to the actions of Israel on the Jesus we know and follow--the Jesus who asks us to care for the least of these, to protect the innocent, to feed the hungry, to care for the hurting, and to clothe the poor. What we should not base our response on is theology filtered through the politics of the day or the patterns of this world.
Always before on issues of suffering innocents, I have been able to turn to my brothers and sisters in faith. I have looked to them for answers to the suffering, a way to serve, to pray with me, to search Scripture with me for God’s response. The Church has given me a place to bring my grief and bewilderment to the Lord and come away with a renewed spirit and strength to serve those who are hurting. I have sought guidance from those who are farther on their faith journey than I am. I have sought the wisdom of my elders in discerning God’s voice in the midst of the clamor of the world. I have sought the experience of those who serve in the hard places of the world to offer my own small gifts. On s^x trafficking, Darfur, famine, AIDS—I could find the Church in the midst of the fray, the banner of Christ aloft in the midst of terrible suffering, injustice, and war. And now?
Where is the Church? Where are the doctors booking flights to Tel Aviv to stand at the border of Gaza and demand to be let in to treat the wounded? Where are the emergency workers standing up to say, “Here I am, Lord. Send me?” Where are those who love children demanding that they be protected? Where are the storytellers among us pounding on the gates insisting they be allowed to tell the world what is happening? Where are the ships daring to run the blockade to bring medicine, food and water?
Put aside international law, though it rightfully demands safe passage for aid workers and care for civilians. Put aside discussions of the justness of Israel’s response or the horrors of indiscriminate rockets. Put aside arguments over whether Hamas is a political party, legitimate resistance movement or terrorist organization. That should not be part of the calculus when determining our response as followers of Jesus to the suffering of the innocent.
Jesus tells us he will ask where we were when we saw him sick and suffering, hungry and thirsty. Will we be able to say we cared for the least of these? Or will we say, “Lord, we thought them not worthy. We turned away. We did not want to see.”?
While bombs are falling on aid storehouses, ambulances and schools, while starving children huddle in shattered buildings next to the bodies of their dead mothers, while the Church in the West turns away, I will stand up. I will say, “Here I am, Lord. Send me.”
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