First Reading: Isaiah 50.4-9a
The Lord GOD has given me a trained tongue, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens, wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. The Lord GOD has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious; I did not turn backward. I gave my back to those who struck me and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. The Lord GOD helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore, I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; because my Champion is here. Who will contend with me? Let us stand in court together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me. It is the Lord GOD who helps me; who will declare me guilty?
Gospel: Luke 19.28-40
After he had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. When he had come near Bethphage and Bethany, at the place called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of the disciples, saying, “Go into the village ahead of you, and as you enter it you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ just say this, “The Lord needs it.'” So those who were sent departed and found it as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?” They said, “The Lord needs it.” Then they brought it to Jesus, and after throwing their cloaks on the colt, they set Jesus on it. As he rode along, people kept spreading their cloaks on the road. Now as he was approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”
Palm Sunday is a hard day, Jesus rides intentionally toward his suffering and death. Our guest, Issa Amro, is from Hebron; Hebron, in Arabic, Al-Khalil, from Khalil al-Rahman, “Friend of God,” referring to Abraham who’s buried there. For our friends in the land of Jesus today, every day is Palm Sunday. I’ve stood atop the Mount of Olives maybe 30 times in the last quarter century – we’ll be there again in a few weeks – looking out over Jerusalem’s Old City, and there hasn’t been a time when I didn’t hear Jesus’s words ringing in my ear – O, and remember, it was the Pharisees, it was the religious leaders who told Jesus to silence them – Jesus’s words ringing in my ear, “I tell you, if these people were silent, even the stones would cry out.” Yet, there are some churches, some Christians we wish would just keep their mouths shut.
Two weeks ago, Palestinian Christian leaders issued a Statement denouncing the US Catholic Bishops Conference for their recent “Translate Hate” document. The bishops disregarded overwhelming evidence by organizations like the Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International that Israel is an apartheid state committing ethnic cleansing. The bishops also suggested that even criticism of Israel is antisemitic. They didn’t mention the devastation in Gaza, the tens of thousands of Palestinians dead, hundreds of thousands wounded, displaced, even ignoring the Pope’s own lament, “So much cruelty. Children machine-gunned, schools and hospitals bombed.” The first Palestinian Christian signatory criticizing the US bishops? Their brother, retired Jerusalem Catholic bishop, Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah.
Last month, two Religious Right groups, American Christian Leaders for Israel and Council of Presidents of Christian Organizations in Support of Israel, part of the President’s religious inner circle, advised him when he formulates his Middle East policy, all of the land is “biblical Israel,” that Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Hebron, are “Israel’s Bible Belt,” that “God is giving Israel a blank check.” Newly approved Ambassador to Israel, pastor Mike Huckabee, denies there’s such a thing as a Palestinian and he supports the President’s policy of “population transfer,” ethnically cleansing the entire population of Gaza as well as non-Jews living in Israel and the West Bank “for their own good.” These Christians interpret the Bible to say replacing non-Jews with Jews in Palestine will result in the final war (not a spiritual war, they’re praying for a literal war with Syria, Iran, Iraq, and others with US support, of course), the sign of Jesus’s return. That’s why when they were in Israel, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, and other evangelicals signed their names to Israel’s soon-to-be-dropped-bombs on Gaza. Onward Christian Soldiers.
There were over 100,000 people who turned out last Saturday in the nation’s Capital to denounce the President’s policies of division and fear and ignoring the rule of law, over 1200 in Fort Wayne. I couldn’t make the one here, I was hosting a nationwide Zoom meeting with Daoud Nassar from his Tent of Nations farm in Bethlehem – its motto, printed on a stone at the farm, “We Refuse to be Enemies.” He showed us pictures of the hundreds of fruit trees the Israeli military uprooted and a road the soldiers are bulldozing through their 100-acre farm his grandfather bought 106 years ago. He has the deed.
I had two reactions to the demonstrations. The first – it was so gratifying to see such large numbers turn out raising their voices in protest. The second – Where was the outrage, the marchers, the placards the last 18 months in the face of genocide right before our eyes, carried out in our name, with our money, with our missiles? We can’t say we didn’t know.
Our country – complicit. US Catholic bishops – complicit. The Christian Right – complicit. Most progressive Christians and their churches – “it’s complicated,” silently complicit. The problem isn’t knowledge; the problem is will. We don’t have the luxury of being bystanders, we can’t observe Holy Week and ignore the Holy Land and the people who live there. In Palestine, every day is Palm Sunday. For us, too.
I’ve often been criticized, “Mike, there are other issues besides Palestine; there’s increased militarism, disdain for the rule of law, what’s happening to the economy, to people of color and LGBTQ+ friends, the environment and more.”
Why do I say that Palestine is the defining moral issue of our day? My top five (there are more, but these will do for now):
One. Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, thumbing its nose at international law and our government’s support, it exposes the injustice all these other issues raise – Israel’s ecological degradation of Palestinian towns connects with environmental justice; the Israeli military trains police forces in US cities increasing their militarization connecting it to Black Lives Matter and racial justice groups, just to name two. Palestine isn’t one issue among many, it connects us with all other liberation struggles.
Two. By equating Judaism with Zionism and weaponizing antisemitism to include criticism of Israel, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that in the end increases real acts of antisemitism and makes Jews more unsafe.
Three. If your red line isn’t genocide, then you don’t have a red line.
Four. For Christians, this is being done in our name. We used to think the Left Behind folks were just cranks who had a crazy theology, but they’re voting in droves and they’re in think tanks and they’re judges and they’re in Congress and they’re running our foreign policy and they’re taking us into war. And we can’t simply live in denial behind the walls of our churches and our theologies and act as if the politics don’t matter. Their theology has become our politics. For these people, the President is a Messiah figure because they don’t like the values of the real one; they believe, that loving the poor is weak and loving someone different is woke.
This is all being done in the name of a white, exceptionalist, macho-misogynist-militarist Jesus. Which means we can’t simply “agree to disagree,” as if we simply differ on some minor issue. This is Christian heresy and it must be called out as such. Jesus is being crucified again today in the Holy Land and on the altar of a racist Christian nationalism in our country, and if we who want to bear his name want to be true to him we simply cannot remain silent. “Because if we are silent, even the stones would cry out.”
Five. And finally – and very personally – our sisters and brothers in Christ, our Muslim sisters and brothers, our sister and brother Jewish voices of conscience in Palestine are urging us, they’re pleading with us to stand with them when no one else will.
Church resolutions aren’t yet solidarity. Our feeling bad for them isn’t yet solidarity. Our “thoughts and prayers” aren’t yet solidarity. These are all important, and they’re helpful first steps, but they aren’t yet solidarity. Solidarity is costly, it’s measured by the price we are willing to pay. We know what’s right; our hearts are in the right place. Issa is here with us today. We support Zoughbi in Bethlehem. Mennonite Action is at the forefront of activism in DC. A few of you have been with me to Palestine; come with me next June. How else shall we respond?
Once again today, Jesus is heading into the breach. And we are, too, in our country, in our churches. Costly solidarity. The good news is in our first reading, Isaiah 50. This part of Isaiah is written in exile, to a faithful minority surrounded by money-grubbing and power plays and betrayal – sound familiar, no wonder this seems so relevant. A new God is revealed here, a “servant God” who through suffering – his own costly suffering with his people who are suffering themselves – brings justice to the nations. Like Daoud Nassar at Tent of Nations, like Zoughbi Zoughbi in Bethlehem, like Issa Amro in Hebron, like all our Palestinian friends who cry out for justice, like we ourselves as we walk with Jesus to the cross, here’s the prophet’s faith, Issa, I was thinking of you here, “Let them spit at me, let them beat me. Who are my adversaries, let them confront me. The Lord God helps me, therefore, I have set my face like flint, I did not shrink or hide my face.” I love that. “I have set my face like flint,” the kind of flint you make fire with, he says, “because my Champion is here.”
Because the cause is just, because the cause is of God, “if we’re silent, even the very stones will cry out.” But the stones won’t have to if we have the courage to “set our face like flint.” Our Champion is here, my friends, this Holy Week. In Palestine every day is Palm Sunday. For us, too.