Lords Prayer for Palestine
The Lord’s Prayer for Palestine
God – Our Father and Mother,
Creator of all of us in your wonderful, diverse human family,
loving all of us as your children, men and women, black and white, Palestinian and Jew,
sending Jesus who resisted empire, paid with his life,
and was resurrected to empower all of us with life in abundance,
inspiring us with his creative and prophetic spirit;
Hallowed be your name –
You revealed your name in a blaze of fire from the midst of a bush,
calling Moses to liberate his people from the oppression of slavery,
to face Pharaoh with God's word of warning.
You revealed your name as “hearing the cry of the oppressed,”
as “God being with them now and in the future,” Yahweh;
Your kingdom come –
Your new just world, where no one fears a checkpoint,
where no woman is stopped on the way to the hospital,
where no child is taken in the middle of the night,
where no farmer is violated by colonists,
where no peaceful protester is shot by a military sniper,
where no citizen is hit by a rocket;
Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven –
Your will, revealed in the Torah, in the words and deeds of Jesus' and the Apostles,
in the Qur'an, the book of our Abrahamic brothers and sisters,
your world of love and justice and mercy and care,
inspiring Jews, Christians, Muslims and people of all faiths to resist injustice, racism and inequality and to work for peace, healing and a new beginning,
and for the common future of Jews and Palestinians in the Holy Land.
Help the Jewish people heed the prophets of justice in antiquity and today,
guide the West to stop supporting Israel’s violation of international law and human rights;
Give us this day our daily bread –
Let no one die of hunger,
with enough food for everyone.
Liberate the Palestinian economy from the strangulation of occupation.
Lead us to a financial and political order directed towards the well-being of people and earth, cooperative forms of working, sharing and caring;
And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors –
Break the dominance of the owners of capital and weapons, pushing whole societies into the slavery of debt.
Empower us to discover the power of forgiveness, a new beginning in all dimensions,
forgiving the oppressors and establishing new lines of communication,
loving even enemies, enabling their liberation from the evil of dominance and oppression;
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil –
All of us are tempted by the lust for power:
men over women, parents over children, white over black, educated over non-educated, politicians over civilians, and all other forms of domination;
At this moment we are tempted to lose hope,
as the Israeli government, together with the power of empire,
violates international law by annexing, once again, land that is not theirs,
deepening the apartheid system in the Holy Land, heaping violence upon violence;
May civil society and the governments of the West awake to this lawlessness
and cease their financing of the occupation through military aid and trade agreements;
Let cooperation proceed only when international law is followed and human rights restored,
strengthening the hope and resilience of the Palestinian people;
Especially we pray for Christians and the churches around the world
to hear this Cry for Hope and Call for Decisive Action.
May they realize that We cannot serve God and the oppression of the Palestinians.
Grant that their silence end, that they act faithfully for the rights of the Palestinians,
that they stand up against the misuse of the Bible for justifying the theft of Palestinian land.
For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.
Amen