Dear saints,
I imagine that you have felt, as have I, a measure of helplessness and despair watching the news emerge from Israel this past week. We are bearing witness to a tragedy of broken human relations. Thousands of innocent people have lost their lives. Hundreds of thousands live under the shadow of death. People have done truly terrible things to their fellow human beings, and I fear more terror is to come.
And in the midst of all of this, a hospital—an Anglican ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem—has been hit with reportedly hundreds killed and injured. It is heart-wrenching. To say the least, we are far from the broad land of solidarity that God intends for humankind to live in.
To live a life of faith is to live trusting that certain things hold true; trusting that God's vision for humanity is one we can live by at the best and worst of times. That vision tells us that all life is sacred. One of the great scandals of Christian theology is the insistence that we should love our neighbor, seeing Christ in them, no matter who they are or what they have done. We are called to love perpetrator and victim alike. We are called to pursue all that leads to peace no matter the pain of loss. We are called to love our enemies.
Christian ethics are not apolitical because they are deeply invested in the political world, in the world of today's strife and hope. As followers of Jesus, our call is to offer to our beloved siblings in the lands of the Holy One our best political selves as we lend our voice, our prayer and our material support to their plight.
Each of us must decide how we will respond to the horror unfolding before us, yet all of us can draw strength from a faith that asks us to trust in the goodness and power of God's grace and love. For though we are many upon this Earth, let us remain committed to being one body in the name of the God who made us all.
Peace,
Simon+
