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Good morning. I’m glad to see you here.
As I mentioned last Sunday, the topic on the table today is Gaza. I know this probably won’t be a sermon that meets everyone’s expectations. In fact, I’ve already received a pile of emails with opinions and information to “help” guide the direction of this sermon… Last time I’m going to announce the topic ahead of time.
Actually, I’m grateful. This is a conversation. We are a family, which means we’re in it together. And it’s in the conversation, in the way we rub up against each other, that something deeper is revealed. If we’re acting as a community that believes we are put here together by God, then the friction becomes holy. It allows us to be full and complete together. And most importantly it helps us to stay alert.
Echo chambers put us at risk of isolating ourselves and isolation is not part of God’s design for creation. C.S. Lewis’s book The Last Battle captures the absurdity and futility of echo chambers in the final scene when the dwarves sequester themselves in a hut, sitting in darkness chanting “the dwarves are for the dwarves,” while other characters in Aslan’s Kingdom look upon them and wonder why they would choose to live in darkness.
The Gospel and the Epistle today call us to be alert, so as not to stumble into the hut of darkness where despair and anger grow, and where people can convince themselves how bad someone else is, or how horrible other communities are. And when that happens, it can lead to “the end worlds.” Like it ended the world for six million Jews in the Holocaust; and it is ending the world for people in Gaza today.
So, let’s begin with a gritty overview of how we got here. It began with the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, during which Israel declared statehood. Over 750,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes. In 1967 Israel launched a preemptive strike on Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, leading to the occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, Gaza, Sinai, and the Golan Heights, an occupation that remains central to the conflict today.
In 1973 Egypt and Syria launched the Yom Kippur War to reclaim lost territory, but failed. The First Intifada began in 1987 as a Palestinian uprising against Israeli’s occupation. The Second Intifada erupted in 2000 after Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount. In 2006 Hamas won elections in Gaza as a response to the failure of the Intifada’s to end occupation. Israel then launched operations into Gaza in 2008 (Cast Lead), 2012 (Pillar of Defense), 2014 (Protective Edge) to quell violence. In 2018-19 peaceful Gaza protests were met with lethal Israeli Government force. In 2021 an 11-day war erupted and by 2023 settler violence and military raids in the occupied territories had escalated dramatically.
The death toll since 1948 is staggering: around 30,000 Israelis have been killed: 20,000 were military people. Over 100,000 Palestinians have been killed. 70,000 of which were civilians.
Then came October 7, 2023. Hamas attacked Israel in yet another battle in this 77 year war killing 1,200 Israeli’s, including 40 children. Since then, Israel has bombed Gaza relentlessly killing over 38,000 Palestinians, including at least 17,000 children. Today famine is swallowing up Gaza.
I bring this history to bear to give us a sense of the magnitude and momentum of this on-going conflict, and the death and trauma it has caused.
Over the past 20 years, I’ve been to the Holy Land seven times. One pattern I’ve seen is the perpetual push for separation. Walls, checkpoints, military zones: structures designed to keep people apart and reinforce fear.
The first time I went to Bethlehem to visit the birthplace of Jesus, I was shocked. It is surrounded by a 26 foot high concrete wall, with guard towers, and signs warning Israeli Jews not to enter. It looks like a prison… Jesus’ birthplace inside prison walls.
There are other, more subtle examples of division. The license plates are color-coded: yellow for Israeli citizens, including settlers, green for Palestinians. The color tells you who is driving and where they are allowed to go.
The water tanks on rooftops tell another story. White tanks on Israeli homes, tied to solar systems, provide consistent water. Black tanks on Palestinian homes, need water to be delivered by trucks.
And trash pickup in the Old City is another subtle form of separation. In the Jewish quarter it is picked up a few times a week, but in the Arab quarters it is picked up irregularly; leaving the impression that Arabs are dirty.
In other words, there is more than meets the eye when considering the dynamic that foments the conflict between the State of Israel and occupied Palestine. To be aware is to be alert.
Which is my message today: be alert. The first letter of Peter says it this way: “Be alert. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith.” (1 Pet 5:8-9)
The theology I want to point to, to help us stay alert, is incarnation. Incarnation is presence in place and time. This offers us two levers for engagement: one, the Jesus filter; and two, our place, our context in this moment… not in the past, not in the future, not in the minds or intentions of others, but in our own context. When we leave our own context we can get wholly lost in “whataboutisms” like the dwarves in the dark hut.
So, with that in mind, it’s important that we look at Gaza as it is today: not as it was when Israel occupied it in 1967, nor when Hamas was elected in 2006, not even as it was October 8th 2023: but today, as starvation spreads across that tiny, densely populated, piece of land, upon which people live upon the rubble of despair. This isn’t hyperbole, it is the context right now.
So, to be alert requires that our perspective changes as things change; that we see what is happening in front of us, that we are not distracted, as Peter says, by the devil. He is, after all, one of the greatest propagandists.
You hear his voice in the chants of the settlers in the West Bank today who borrow the words of Prime Minister Golda Meir in 1969 when she famously said: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people.”
Palestinian’s have their own slogan borrowed from the Old Testament, ironically… “From the River to the Sea” (Gen 15:18).
The devil is slippery and happy to throw flames from either trench. So be alert. The devil wants us to make it easy to “other” someone else, because if we can “other” them we can dehumanize them, and then kill them, excusing it as “tragic” collateral damage.
Incarnation does not permit this. We know this because of the Jesus filter which allows us to find moral clarity. The question is always: “what would Jesus say about this”… whatever “this” is right in front of us?
Moral clarity doesn’t come from headlines or algorithms. It comes from really wondering what Jesus would say about a particular situation. We are lied to a lot by media personalities, politicians, and political action committees, and it’s only getting worse with the manipulative power of artificial intelligence.
So, be alert, and let what you see in the moment inspire action. For no matter the context of our lives, we can do something. Protest. Write. Pray. Give. Listen. Encourage.
From dorm rooms to senior centers, we are called to see this crisis, and ask: how might we make things better?
Alertness is not a solo journey, incidentally. We are a community formed by God. We worship together side by side, soul to soul, with people who carry different perspectives, different burdens, different abilities, all of whom are welcomed outside the hut where the people of hope gather.
Which reminds me of a story. I have a friend of Arab descent, who for years has been an active protester for peace in the Holy Land. In 2009 he was out in the streets protesting the Israeli Government incursion into Gaza. He was there again in 2012 and 2014. Many who knew him dismissed his passion as a natural outcome of his ethnic identity.
He told me the other day, now, as he witnesses young people taking to the streets, particularly college students, alert to the crisis in Gaza, he is filled with hope… a hope rooted in the clarity of incarnation.
These are young people for whom this is their first crisis, which makes it a foundational one in their moral formation, and sense of agency in the world, and responsibility for the world. For many, this is the moment when their eyes are opening to the deeper currents of injustice and suffering.
I recounted earlier the long and tragic history of violence between Palestinians and Israelis. These are “end of world” moments. And across the globe, and across time there have been many “end of world” moments. Every generation comes to maturity within a particular crucible of crisis that forms their moral conscience… Vietnam, apartheid South Africa, famine in Ethiopia.
For our young people, this is theirs. It is everywhere on-line, in real time. And the clarity they see, the compassion they feel, it’s real. It’s authentic.
To dismiss their moral outrage as simply antisemitism, or to reduce them to tools of Hamas, is to deeply misunderstand what it means to be young in a broken world, awake to suffering, awake to power, and beginning to recognize they have a role to play in something bigger than themselves. It is their first time out of the hut built by their parents, their culture, their country.
They are the reason my friend feels, for the first time in his life, hope for peace in the Holy Land. Not because things are getting better, they’re not; but because suddenly the world is alert!
As people of hope, as Jesus followers, we believe change is possible because we believe every soul matters to God: Palestinian and Israeli, Muslim and Jewish, kid and old person. We act because we see through the Jesus filter.
And even if we don’t live to see the end of conflict in the Holy Land our work still matters. Because, as Paul wrote, “Who hopes for what is seen?” “We hope for what cannot yet be seen.” (Rom 8:24-25)
So, we stay alert to this moment, not stuck in the past, nor spinning out into the future, or attributing intent to someone else, but meeting the present as it is – with compassion, just as Jesus would.
And so, I leave you with this reflection on Gaza, its history, the work of the devil to distract and divide, and the invitation to be alert.
Because if we are alert, whatever our capacity, whatever our context, we can still be part of the hope that bends the arc of history toward justice and further reveals the kingdom of God.