Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord's hand
double for all her sins.
Isaiah 40:1
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, her penalty has been paid.
When it comes to Israel and Palestine these days, there is not a lot of space for tender words. There is judgment. Anger. Invective. Hate. Mockery. Tears. Pain. But very little tenderness.
Perhaps, to borrow from Otis Redding, we should try a little tenderness.
In this small piece of land live around 7 million Jews, the largest concentration in the world, with the United States not far behind. Those 7 million are European, African, Arab, and Asian. In addition, there are another 2 million or so Arabs of other religious backgrounds in Israel proper, and another 5 million in the West Bank and Gaza. There is a broader population of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and here in the United States who are in some status of exile or self-exile.
Fighting over this piece of land does indeed go back to Biblical times. These words from the prophet Isaiah speak of the pain of the people of Israel being held captive in Babylon and their yearning to return home. It has been variously conquered and colonized by Muslims, Christians, The Ottoman empire and the British. Since the founding of the State of Israel after the Holocaust there have been peaceful times and there have been violent times, and it must be said we are in a very violent time.
I do not write today to try and convince or convict you to take one side or the other in this conflict. I do not write to prove how one side has the superior claim to the land, or the better human rights record, or to prove who has suffered the most.
I also do not write with a grand proposed solution of how this all should work out. You could draw up a hundred different plausible scenarios but the real people involved would have to actually be willing to talk to each other to make any of that happen and right now that is not the case.
I write simply to encourage you, to encourage us as Christians, to try a little tenderness. Have compassion for an occupied people with corrupt leadership. Have compassion for a people who experienced a massive terror attack on civilians, where everyone knows someone who has died, and are now in the midst of a 2 month long hostage crisis. On one side of the fence people feel they have no home because it is no longer safe, on the other side they feel they have no home because it is no longer there. A population who feel it is a miracle they even survived a holocaust, and a people who feel like it will be a miracle if they can survive the night.
People who, on both sides, feel like no one believes them, no one listens to their story.
People who have been so hurt they see their neighbor as their enemy.
Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her
that she has served her term,
that her penalty is paid.
There were no simple solutions to the Middle East conflict before October 7th. Things certainly have not gotten simpler since. But one thing we can do is to offer words of comfort. To reach out to people that we care about and listen to their stories. To hear their voices. To share the work of peacebuilders- like the Arava Institute, or Roots, or the Gaza Youth Committee, or the work of the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem. Reaching out in love, especially across barriers of time and distance and difference, will have a much bigger impact than getting angry with people here.
Speak tenderly to those who are hurting right now. Be a bridge not a wall. This is the work that Christ calls us to do.
