“They have treated the wound of my people carelessly, saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace.”
As beloved children of God who proclaim that every life is precious, we thank God for a ceasefire, confessing how unlikely it is to hold.
As followers of Jesus we pray for peace, declaring that this is God’s desire for all creation.
As believers in human rights for all, once we have prayed for peace, we pray for justice, acknowledging that true shalom depends on promoting the well-being of every person.
As US Americans, once we have prayed for justice, we pray for forgiveness, confessing that we are complicit through our tax dollars and biased foreign policy.
As human beings, once we have prayed for forgiveness, we pray for reconciliation, knowing that we require a grace beyond anything we can will into existence on our own.
As leaders, members and friends of the Disciples Peace Fellowship, we mourn and rage over the recent violence in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel. We lament each life lost and every heart traumatized by this violence. We condemn the attempted expulsions of Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem. We deplore the attacks on worshipers at the Al Aqsa Mosque. We reject the cynicism that arises from realizing how much this current suffering is rooted in cold-hearted, political maneuvering by leaders desperate to hold onto power. And we name that these provocations were not the beginning of this conflict.
We call on all Christians on Turtle Island to denounce the racist settler colonialism that has shaped Israeli policy toward Palestinians for decades, that has displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, and caused indescribable suffering. We issue this call confessing our own sinfulness, living ourselves on stolen land, our homeland the result of an earlier, yet ongoing genocide.
We urge all Christians on Turtle Island to educate ourselves on the roots of the current situation, which Israeli and other human rights groups have named as apartheid. We invite you to join us in speaking up to shift the narrative about this conflict in our country, whose policies are so intertwined with the suffering there. We encourage all Christians to reject the pernicious heresy of Christian Zionism.
We encourage everyone to contact their elected officials and ask them to stand for Palestinian human rights. Ask them to support HR2590, which would stop US assistance from supporting the demolition of Palestinian homes, the annexation of Palestinian land, and the detention of Palestinian children in Israeli military prisons. Ask them to demand conditions supporting human rights for all on US military aid to Israel. Ask them to stop the sale of more arms to the Israeli government.
We also urge supporting Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. We can work for peace and vote with our dollars by boycotting companies like Pillsbury, Sabra, Puma, Hewlett Packard, Ahava and other companies that profit from the Israeli occupation.
We commend the work of Week of Compassion to all Disciples and encourage designated gifts to WOC for the work being done by partners on the ground in Gaza, including Ahli Arab Hospital. We give thanks for the witness of Global Ministries, whose partners have long stood alongside Palestinian and Israeli peacemakers.
We ask your prayers for Rachel Shomali and Minerva Halteh, the missionaries-in-residence who worked alongside our Peace Interns in the summer of 2016, and for their families, as they go about their lives in the West Bank.
As we pray that the ceasefire will hold, for a just peace, for forgiveness and reconciliation, let us confess that we must live out our prayers with action and advocacy. May we not find solace in superficial calls for “peace” that treat the wounds of God’s people carelessly by neglecting to address the roots of the conflicts. May we never again assume this is someone else’s problem, but rather a crisis impacting our own family.