The Holy Land

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The Holy Land  ̶  sacred to Christians, Jews, and Muslims  ̶  is torn apart by conflict, death, and destruction.

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Where is God in all this? The loving Yahweh, the God of the Jewish people, the father of Jesus Christ, called ‘Allah’ by Muslims (for whom Jesus is a prophet)  ̶  where is he in this sad Holy Land?

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I do not know.

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Does our Christian faith help us to understand: the basic answer is surely ‘no’. But without taking sides (for inevitably there are moral faults on any side of a war) it is appropriate to give a brief consideration of what theologians from the time of Augustine in the fifth century called a ‘just war’. Put simply, war should only be undertaken for a just cause, such as self-defence, and conducted in a manner that is proportionate: non-combatants should not be harmed if at all possible and any response to attack should be proportionate.

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How well these criteria are met in the current fragile Middle Eastern situation is inevitably a matter of personal opinion, based on a careful analysis of political, religious, military, and humane considerations.

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We, as individual men and women, and as the praying church, can only commend the Holy Land and its distraught people to the God ‘who is the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life and whose service is perfect freedom’.

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‘Pray for the peace of Jerusalem; they shall prosper that love thee’

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Deacon Douglas MacMillan

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The Collect

 

O Lord, we beseech you mercifully to hear the prayers

of your people who call upon you;

and grant that they may both perceive and know

what things they ought to do,

and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil them;

through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,

who is alive and reigns with you,

in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, now and for ever.

Amen.