Israelis & Palestinians

One of my activities is leadership in the Saint Paul Interfaith Network. Check out our website at www.spinterfaith.org. We just completed a series of 3 October Monday night conversations on Israelis and Palestinians. The first two sessions featured, first, two Palestinians, the second, two Israelis, and the third, an opportunity to listen to Ronald Young, who heads up the National Interreligious Leadership Initiative for Peace in the Middle East. Check their website at http://www.nili-mideastpeace.org.

I represented the church of which I am a member, Gloria Dei Lutheran in Saint Paul, Minnesota as we were a sponsor of this series along with Mount Zion Temple in Saint Paul, and the Islamic Center of Minnesota in Fridley, Minnesota. About 160 persons attended each session.

At the last session three of us, representing the sponsoring groups, gave a brief response and what follows is the response which I offered:

I am a Christian who has been a Lutheran pastor for 46 years. My parents were people with a strong social conscience and, in particular, made it clear to me that what happened to Jewish people in the Holocaust was an inexcusable tragedy. So, when Israel was founded as a nation in 1948 this seemed right to me. In 1994 the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, to which I belong, issued a statement on Jewish Christian relations which says, in part, “Grieving the complicity of our own tradition within this history of hatred, moreover, we express our urgent desire to live out our faith in Jesus Christ with love and respect for the Jewish people. We recognize in anti-Semitism a contradiction and an affront to the Gospel, a violation of our hope and calling, and we pledge this church to oppose the deadly working of such bigotry, both within our own circles and in the society around us.”

Especially in recent years I have also come to know what has happened to Palestinian people who have lived on that land for something like a couple thousand years. There are Palestinians there who are Christian and there is a Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land headed by Bishop Munib Younan. The Lutheran body to which I belong has a strong relationship with that church and with Bishop Younan. In addition, our Lutheran church has said, in part, “Palestinian Christians and Muslims have suffered the loss of their land and dignity, disruption of their livelihood, and lack of human rights. This land is sacred to three monotheistic religions, whose adherents have the right to safe and unfettered access. On the positive side, this common cause offers opportunities for interfaith collaboration. In terms of global politics, what happens in the Holy Land can either help resolve conflict in the Middle East or expand it into even more deadly conflicts.”

I believe that God stands on all sides of the conflict in the Middle East, in the Holy Land. To suggest that God favors one side over another is untenable. We are all God’s people, created in God’s image and created with God’s desire for peace and unity. Therefore I think that it is critical that while we may disagree on various aspects of this struggle, that we honor the people whose feelings and opinions differ from ours.

It is my hope that Israelis and Palestinians will find a way to live together in some way. In addition to the religious differences, there are also important economic and political issues that need to be addressed. I think that we need to encourage our own United States government to use its good offices to encourage peace in the Middle East and to use our financial resources in ways that assist all the peoples of what we call the Holy Land.

In the United States I think we have a very vital task before us to listen to one another. If we can do this, there may be a chance that we will learn some things we had not thought of before. I am deeply concerned about the situation we face in the United States in terms of interfaith misunderstanding and the unwillingness of so many of our people to appreciate the gifts of those whose religious, ethnic or racial tradition differs from ours. That is why I am involved interfaith work through the Saint Paul Interfaith Network and why I think this Israeli Palestinian series has been so important.

I am grateful for the work which Ron Young and others have done through the National Interreligious Leadership Initiative for Peace in the Middle East. Anything that we can do to support that effort will be helpful. I commit to seeing to it that our Lutheran church supports that effort in every way.