More specifically, faced with the bulldozing of Palestinian houses in the occupied territories — and with walls that bear a strange resemblance to the concentration camps of Hitler that brought the survivors of Auschwitz and Buchenwald to Israel as a refuge and Jewish homeland — what word do American disciples of the Jewish Jesus speak?
This is the conundrum faced by the recent General Assembly as it considered the Report on the Middle East and its proposed recommendations for action in support of the Palestinian people.
Hearing the cries of the homeless here in American cities and everywhere else in the world, Jesus’ disciples hear the voice of the homeless One for whom the world could find no room. Standing in the hallways of the Holocaust Museum among the horrifying photographs of the emaciated corpses, the followers of Jesus see Jesus himself lying there among his later Jewish brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews. Hearing now the cries of the people of the occupied Palestinian territories and listening to our Christian brothers and sisters behind the walls that enclose Bethlehem, our hearts break. What do we do?
Ask a Presbyterian what it means to follow Jesus in daily life, the Scripture often cited is from the prophet Micah: What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:8).
Justice, mercy and humility provide a framework for the church’s ethical discussion.
Justice would require the correction of injustice. Justice calls the church to advocacy for the widow, the orphan, the sojourner, the oppressed. It requires more than the alleviation of suffering (Matthew 25); it means exposing the principalities and powers — the institutional powers, ideologies, and images of the good life — that create and maintain systems of injustice.
Mercy (Hesed), however, re-interprets justice by casting a different light. God makes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends the rain on the just and the unjust … . You, therefore, must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matt. 5:45, 48.) Compassion requires empathy and a vast patience because God is patient.
Eight years at the Legal Rights Center, a public defense corporation founded by the American Indian Movement and African American activists in 1970, taught me to see something I might not have seen otherwise. Often those we defended in court were returning veterans from the Gulf War. Their crimes were acts of violence and cruelty — domestic assault, battering of their wives, their lovers, their children — often committed during times of inebriation in which they had sought to drown their memories of the horrors of war.
At 9 a.m. on a Monday morning I sat with one of the disinherited, a homeless American Indian Vietnam War veteran, who had stumbled his way into the Center after a hard weekend, still under the influence of a binge.
We sat next to each other at a table with our coffee. He is moving in and out of the places Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder takes a person. He stares off into a place I cannot see. “I didn’t kill that white guy! Kill all the white guys!” Then he catches himself, takes a moment, reaches his hand over to mine, and says, “But you’re okay. You’re a white guy, but you’re okay.” The scene repeats itself for two long hours, a mere grain of sand on the shore of the multi-generational trauma and the Vietnam War experience that sat next to me over a cup of coffee.
Looking now at the violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories, I see two peoples suffering from the Post Traumatic Stress of the Holocaust, on the one hand, and of the Nakba (displacement from their own land), on the other.
Only the path of mercy (healing) can lead to justice for Israelis and for Palestinians alike.
Humility. And finally, we are called to walk humbly with God. When we look at Israel and Palestine, we who follow Jesus can make no claim to righteousness. The blood of Jesus’ later brothers and sisters has soaked the ground because the followers of Jesus have refused to recognize that Jesus was and always will be a Jew.
American Christians must begin with this humble confession. We must be sure that any word of advocacy by Christians for the Palestinians does not light Jewish funeral pyres. In addition to the continuing confession of the hidden anti-Semitism that sends chills down the spines of our Jewish brothers and sisters is our own responsibility for the destruction of Iraq and the continuing war in Afghanistan. There is a huge log in our own eye — a whole people plunged into homelessness, mass death, destroyed infrastructures and economies with the difference that the ancient homeland we have destroyed is not next door to us. Out of sight; out of mind. But no less real even if the people are not just across the border.
We who would do justice can claim no righteousness. We need our own defense attorney in the divine court. And the good news of Micah — and of the Jesus who cried from the cross Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do! — is that the God Who is our Judge has the merciful character of the defense attorney.
As the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) seeks to make its way through the vexing issue of how to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly on this and other issues, we do well to begin and end with the late Kosuke Koyama’s opening address to the Eighth Assembly of the World Council of Churches:
Rejoice in hope! How strange this sounds. How are we to “eat” this message (Jer. 15:16)? We live in a world so shattered and broken by violence. …
The call to “rejoice in hope” begins with the “impassioned God” (Ex. 20:5, Jewish Bible). There is a painful relationship between the world and this God who embraces it. Through the ancient prophet Hosea, God says: “My mind is turning inside me. My emotions are agitated all together” (Hosea 11:18, Anchor Bible). Israel is found to be unfaithful. God refuses to give it up. The world is unfaithful. God refuses to give it up. God is caught in a dilemma. God is in distress, a distress sharpened by love. The mystery of our theme, “rejoice in hope,” is hidden in this extraordinary story of God’s inner life.
This space is nurtured and maintained by the Spirit of God Whose name is Compassion.
That Spirit of God seemed to breathe a fresh breath upon this year’s commissioners. They together sought do what the LORD requires: to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with their God.
Gordon Stewart is stated supply of Shepherd of the Hill Church in Chaska, Minn. www.shepherdofthehillchurch.com, host of First Tuesday Dialogues, and a frequent guest commentator on MPR’s All Things Considered.
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