I write this new content on November 7, 2023. I have carefully chosen to take down everything I wrote on November 2, not because I don’t think or feel much of what I said, but because my words have caused unnecessary pain, and because what I truly meant to say about an agonizingly divisive crisis did not successfully make its way into the post. I am sorry for the hurt I caused. Like many of us, I am following a steep learning curve as I grapple with all of this.
This much I will say, with confidence:
My heart breaks for thousands (now more than ten thousand) of human beings who have been killed in the many catastrophes in Gaza and Israel over the past month. I do not discriminate in my heartbreak: I grieve all of the innocent dead. And I pray for everyone involved: everyone. I pray for those who are killed, injured, displaced, abducted, or traumatized. But I pray also for all who are guilty of these crimes, no matter who they are. I pray that they will repent from their behaviors and, as the One at the center of my faith said so memorably, “put their sword back into its sheath.” And finally I pray for all who are inspired by these catastrophes to say or do anything that fairly can be called Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism, or antisemitism. All three of those sins have all too easily been committed by members of my Christian faith for uncounted generations, and I take seriously my call as an Episcopal priest to examine my own conscience for evidence of these in my thoughts, feelings, words, and actions.
Jesus of Nazareth was an innocent Judean Palestinian. He was a son of Abraham, who is the father of many nations. Jesus was executed by the imperial state, in the Land of the Holy One. I pray to him for mercy, for courage, and for peace — for every human being on this one earth.