Pray for the peace of Jerusalem

‘If you only knew today what is needed for peace! But now you cannot see it!’ That was Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem as he entered the city on Palm Sunday (Luke 19:42). On that occasion he was weeping because of the destruction he knew was coming on the city and on its inhabitants. Psalm 122:6 exhorts us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. We may legitimately spiritualise this and pray for the peace of God’s church (please make use of this psalm to do so!), but it is also entirely appropriate that we should pray for the peace of the geographical city of Jerusalem.
 
We cannot – and should not – pray for the peace of Jerusalem without also praying for Gaza. On a number of occasions last year, rockets were fired at Jerusalem from Gaza, both before and after the terrible attack on Israeli settlements that took place on 7th October. Israel’s reprisal has been deadly and catastrophic for the region. Their assault on Hamas is said to have resulted in tens of thousands of civilian casualties and has left children dying of malnutrition as the population of Gaza now faces the real prospect of famine. While the debate rages as to whether Israel is acting in self-defence or with genocidal intent, scarcely a week goes by without a credible report emerging of a fresh atrocity committed by the IDF.
 
So, does Jesus weep now for the people of Gaza? If the Lord wept for Jerusalem in his grief for their suffering, then I suspect that he weeps for Gaza too, and his tears are all the more bitter because the suffering in Gaza is being inflicted by his own people. God’s love for his people does not place them beyond censure: on the contrary, just as a father disciplines his child, so the Lord rebukes those whom he loves (Proverbs 3:12). Loving someone does not mean you have to approve of or endorse whatever it is they do - quite the opposite, in fact.
 
Paul says that all Israel will ultimately be saved because the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable (Romans 11:28-29), and the patriarchs are the reason why God loves and has elected a rebellious and obstinate nation. God keeps his promises to Abraham. Yet here and now, as Israel stumbles in disobedience to God, those promises are fulfilled in Christ. When God called Abraham, he promised that he would bless those who bless him and that in him all the families of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 12:3). Paul traces that line of blessing down through Isaac, not Ishmael, and through Jacob, not Esau (Romans 9:6-13), down to those in Christ who receive the promise of the Spirit by faith (Galatians 3:14-16). In this way the promise of Genesis 12:3 is fulfilled in us.
 
What, then, of God’s ‘everlasting covenant’ to give all the land of Canaan to Abraham’s descendants ‘for an everlasting possession’ (Genesis 17:7-8)? There is no doubt that an awareness of this promise played a crucial part in the thinking of many of those who campaigned and fought for the establishment of Israel as a nation state within the boundaries of their traditional homeland. At one level, this was an amazing development, but if you are inclined to see the hand of God at work in that political decision, you should not allow that perspective to blind you to the devastating impact it had on those Palestinians who were forced off their land and who lost their ancestral homes.
 
And when we turn back to the New Testament, we see that, in the light of the Christ event, Paul reinterprets God’s promise to give the land to Abraham and his descendants, so that now the promise that they would inherit the world comes to those who are descended from Abraham because they walk in the footsteps of Abraham’s faith and that is what makes them his children (Romans 4:11-13). So, it’s complicated… But even if some of us would want to claim that the promise of the geographical land of Israel still holds good for the nation, that cannot be used to justify expanding the controversial programme of building Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank: it’s a policy which even the United States has condemned as illegal, and inconsistent with international law. The ends do not justify the means.
 
We could all point to injustices and incidents of violence perpetuated on all sides of the ethnic conflict in that land. There are valid reasons for anger, hatred, enmity and mistrust that go back for generations, in a culture which still prefers the practice of taking an eye for eye rather than offering forgiveness. Who knows what is needed for peace today? Yet the search for a path that leads in the direction of peaceful co-existence must go on: there can only be peace where Israel’s right to exist is recognised and accepted by its neighbours, and where Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are also able to find independence, security and prosperity. It would be easy to despair of a solution ever being found – but that is precisely why we need to keep praying, for the peace of Jerusalem – and Gaza.
Tim Carter