God under the rubble
Where is God in the midst of the conflict between Israel and Palestine?
These days it’s been hard to be a pastor at Bethlehem’s Christmas Evangelical Lutheran Church.
What do you say on Sunday after the bombing in Gaza on Friday night, when we didn’t sleep all night trying to get news, fearing the worst? Seventeen people were killed in one bombing, including the sister of one of my parishioners.
There is a strong sense of despair. Everybody’s tired of the images of death.
I’ve never seen people crying in church the way I’ve seen in the last three weeks – is it my awful preaching? Everyone is tired. We’re broken.
We’re broken by the silence of the world, the complicity of the Church who justify [the bombing] using Christian Zionism or Just War theory or by adopting the narrative that this is self-defence. I’ve never been so angry at the Church for not calling for cease-fire.
We continue to pray, but He doesn’t seem to listen. We feel forsaken by God. We’re going through a faith crisis here in Palestine and Israel. Where is God in the midst of this?
What helped me wasn’t a philosophical answer; rather, it was Jesus himself who asked the very same question on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Today I remember that Jesus was the victim of severe injustice, physical pain, torture and a brutal death.
Where is God in the midst of all this? He’s under the rubble. He’s with the people in the hospital. He’s the victim of that very same violence. I’m grateful for Lamentations. But it’s not self-pity [in Lamentations], it’s anger. Anger should lead us to action. There is a genocide happening right now and we need to be angry about this. […]
I think we all would have loved to see Jesus come out of that showing off in front of those who crucified him, but he didn’t. And we’re called to follow that Jesus.
