Moving forward on that road from Jerusalem to Gaza (EPF PIN)
A Note from Donna Hicks: The Rev’d Lisa G. Fischbeck is Interim Associate Priest at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Durham NC. She preached this sermon on Sunday 22 October 2023. She calls us to a way forward in these days of war in Israel and Palestine.
The sermon can be found at this link and it begins around the 25:56 marker.
In the Name of the Creating, restoring, and transforming God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…
So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them.
That is what we believe.
That is what we Christians believe.
And Jews, too.
And Muslims.
God created humankind in God’s image,
in the image of God, we were created.
In the Gospel story we just heard, Jesus is being challenged by the Pharisees, who are trying to get him to stake a claim on whether the people should pay taxes to the Roman Empire, or not.
Jesus, aware of their trickery, says,
“Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?
Show me the coin used for the tax.”
And they bring him a coin.
Then he says to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?”
They answer, “The emperor’s.”
He says to them:
“Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s,
and to God the things that are God’s.”
The image of the emperor is on the coin. Yes.
And the image of God? ….
God created humankind in God’s image,
in the image of God, we were created.
The image of God…
In the Latin, Imago Dei.
Just what it means for us humans to be created in God’s image
has been the focus of theological discussion and debate for thousands of years.
Is it physical likeness?
Not likely.
Despite centuries of God being depicted as a guy in the sky
there is no sense of God looking like a human being.
What we look like does not reflect what God looks like.
Maybe the Imago Dei means that human beings created in the image of God share certain characteristics of the Maker. Creativity, rationality, morality, perhaps.
Or maybe it means that we have been created by God to be God’s agents in the created world,
doing the things that God would have us to do.
Or, maybe being created in God’s image speaks to a particular and wonderful relationship between and among God and human beings.
Whichever we settle on, being created in God’s Image calls us human beings to regard other human beings with
a certain respect,
a certain dignity.
a certain beauty, even.
Imago Dei.
I once heard about a group of kids being guided to create two lines with a space between them. They were given percussion instruments to bang and banners to wave. And they each took turns individually walking between the two rows while the others in the rows on either side of them banged and waved and shouted out,
“Make way for the image of God!”
“Make way for the image of God!”
What a difference it would make to our own sense of worth,
as well as our own calling in this world,
if we truly could see in ourselves and in one another,
The image of God.
Jesus said, love your neighbor.
Jesus said, love your enemy.
Victor Hugo, in his novel-that-became-a-musical, Les Misérables, wrote:
“To love another person is to see the face of God.”
Ah.
Perhaps this is why so many of us come to Church this morning with a certain queasiness.
a certain heartache,
a certain uncertainty
about what is happening in Palestine and Israel,
in the halls of our government and
in the munitions manufacturing plants of our nation
at this very moment.
Because we see the face of God in the children, the parents, the injured, the suffering, those who are living in uncertainty and fear.
How do we respond?
Some time ago,
The people of St. Philip’s embraced three words for our life together.
Worship. Love. Action.
Wonderfully enough, these three words can guide us in our response to the sorrow and helplessness we feel.
First, Worship.
This means we turn to God in prayer.
We turn to God with all our heartache, confusion, anger perhaps, and yearning.
We turn to God and we pray:
For those who are fleeing, O God, provide Sanctuary,
For those who are staying, O God, provide Safety,
For those who are fighting, O God, provide Peace,
For those whose hearts are breaking, O God, provide Comfort,
For those who see no future, O God, provide HOPE! *
For those who have power, O God, give wisdom and restraint.
For those who want to help,
like us,
give insight and courage.
We worship.
Second, we love.
Which means that we care, yes.
and part of that caring is to learn the stories of others,
the history of others.
So that we can better understand.
In love, we learn.
what is the Temple Mount and why is it so important to Jews?
what happened to Mohammed there to make that same place so important to Muslims?
We may know that the State of Israel was formed in 1947 out of the literal horrific ashes of World War II
as a haven for Jews.
But do we know what Israel did,
almost immediately,
to the Palestinian people
who dwelt in that land and had been dwelling there for over 1000 years?
Palestinians call it the Nakba, which is Arabic for “the disaster”.
And it informs why Palestinians might be especially reluctant to leave their homes in northern Gaza today.
In love, we learn what “the Occupation” means for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza
And why the word “Apartheid” is being used to describe the experience of Palestinians in Israel.
In love, we learn what the “Jewish settlements” are,
why they are increasing,
what they mean for Jewish life
and what they mean for Palestinian life.
In love,
we discipline ourselves not to turn away,
But to read and/or listen to
the stories of the heartache and grief,
Being experienced by Israelis and Palestinians alike in this season.
Learning the stories, the history,
is a way of love.
We worship. We love.
And we take action.
This is perhaps the hardest part.
Because we feel so far away,
And we are.
And we feel powerless to make any difference.
But we are not!
Once we have prayed and listened and learned,
out of that worship and study we may form opinions, even passions.
And we are called to make them known.
Not in a bullheaded, shut-down-the-conversation kind of way.
But in an earnest, faithful kind of way.
Listening as well as sharing.
As the Ethiopian eunuch said to St Philip:
“How can I know unless someone guides me?”
We are called to be guided as well as to be the ones who guide.
And as long as we live in a democracy,
we need to let our elected officials know what we have discerned.
We can start our sentences with “As a Christian, I….”
If enough of us do it,
It will make a difference.
Eventually.
We can also offer three words.
As a mantra.
Peace, Salaam, Shalom.
Peace, English, our language,
Salaam, Arabic, the language of Palestine,
Shalom, Hebrew, the language of Israel.
Peace, Salaam, Shalom.
Say it, pray it, post it, sing it.
In the days following September 11, 2001
Two American women Pat Humphries and Sandy Opatow,
put these words to song.
And in singing them,
Our worship,
Our love
Our action
All come together.
Peace, Salaam, Shalom.
Sing it into the stratosphere,
Peace, Salaam, Shalom.
From our mouths to God’s ear,
Peace, Salaam, Shalom.
From our mouths to God’s people, everywhere.
Peace, Salaam, Shalom.
AMEN
adapted from a prayer of the Poor Clares of Galway