The dividing wall of hostility – and the Crucified God

I've just watched news pictures of massive explosions in residential Gaza, fired by Israeli aircraft. Then I watched a doctor wipe blood and remove fragments of shrapnel from a child's face. The photos are available on the Internet – I see no acceptable reason to exhibit them here – such anguish. When tears and blood mingle on the wounded face of a child, I find the political rhetoric and the mutual recriminations and vengeance talk of Hamas and Israel evacuated of all moral justification. And I find it the more outrageous that our own Government has so far offered only words, and muted uncommitted words at that.

I don't mean I want to hear words of condemnation directed at either side or both sides. I mean that I want those who represent me to stop the impotent camera viewed hand-wringing, and speak up on behalf of that child. Want? No, I require. I require of those who represent me that instead of hiding behind the undeniable political complexities, ancient enmities, religious and ideological hatreds that make this war an arena of violent despair, I require that my government cease all arms trading with any and all of those engaged in this conflict. The history in recent years of millions of pounds worth of weapons sold to Israel may well mean that some of the ordinance being so graphically demonstrated as if in a sick sales pitch, came from British manufacturers. Hard to do multi-million pound arms deals and still retain any credible moral authority to say in open and unambiguous terms, that the blood and tears of children, in Gaza or Ashkelon, is always intolerable and must not be deemed inevitable let alone acceptable.

In one of the finest older protest hymns in our hymn books, Harry Emerson Fosdick urged, "Save us from weak resignation, to the evils we deplore…Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the facing of this hour." Amongst the virtues absent from much political theatre today, is wisdom and courage. Repeated calls for a cease fire on both sides, when dealing with two intransigent combatant peoples, will require more than mere repetition. So far I've searched amongst the various statements and announcements, without much success, for wisdom and /or courage from those whose veto could stop this.

Meantime, I am on the side of that child, and her brothers and sisters on both sides of that obscene Gaza wall, that "dividing wall of hostility." (Ephesians 2.14 and see Colossians 1.20) Two of my favourite texts, not least because they speak of Christ the peace maker, who through the blood of the cross, demolishes dividing walls of hostility. So while my political representatives use words to avoid causing offence, I'm into another kind of speaking – I'm still praying, for that child and her family, and for other families whose homes and lives are being obliterated on both sides of that, I use the word advisedly, that bloody wall. Because I don't believe for one milli-second, that the blood and tears of that child and all those caught up in this cycle of rage and outrage, are meaningless to the Crucified God who makes peace by the blood of His cross.

Save us from weak resignation

to the evils we deplore….

grant us wisdom,

grant us courage

for the living of this hour.

P.S. My friend Jason points to John Pilger's article, The Death Of Gaza. This is journalism with a conscience, words used as articulated anger and moral scorn, and the heartening refusal of some to be silenced in the face of what are by even the most diluted and qualified definitions, and despite all the politico-ethical gymnastics, war crimes.