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Easter

Middle East

Resurrection

War & peace

29 March 2024

7 min read

The Friday world of the Middle East at Easter

Violence begets violence in a zero sum world.

Todd Deatherage

Todd is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Telos Group. It forms communities of American peacemakers across lines of difference and conflict, including Israel/Palestine.

A family look at the concrete shell and remains of a bombed building.

Christian Aid.

What do the events of Holy Week and Easter---these seminal events in Christianity-- have to say in a time of slaughter and now starvation in the Middle East? The closer we get to Easter Sunday, the most sacred day in Christianity, the more I’ve wrestled with that question.

I’m neither Palestinian nor Israeli, and so my connection to the historic tragedy continuing to unfold is not as visceral or as obvious as some. But as an American and a Christian, I’m deeply bound up in all of this. The realization of my own implication led me back in 2009 to co-found a nonprofit whose mission is to help Americans better understand the modern Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the American role in it, and to learn about the difficult work of honest peacemaking. These past five months are a nightmare I can’t wake up from, and of course they’re more than a nightmare for the people in the south of Israel and the West Bank, and they’re an absolute hell on earth for the people in Gaza today.

For more than 20 years I’ve lived in a set of deep relationships with both Palestinians and Israelis. The horror and barbarity of the Hamas attacks on October 7th and the horror and devastation of the slaughter and starvation taking place unabated in Gaza even this Holy Week have left me begging God to intervene and begging our leaders to do whatever we can to stop the madness.

Sometimes there’s a lot more of the darkness of Thursday and Friday than the joy and light of Easter Sunday morning.

In most of the 65 trips I’ve led to the Holy Land over the years, after we’ve had our heart broken by the stories we’ve heard and the experiences we’ve shared with people on all sides, we visit the place on the Mount of Olives looking at the Old City of Jerusalem where Jesus stopped, looked at the city, and wept. It is here, just as he entered what we call his Passion Week, that he said “Jerusalem, Jerusalem if only you’d known the things that make for peace.” If only you’d known. If only we’d known. If only we knew.

I need this story to be in the Bible. Many times I’ve had to fall back on Jesus weeping for the mess we’ve made of our lives, the way we allow our fears and our hatreds or our indifference to guide how we treat our neighbors, how often we use violence and power to deny the way they too bear the image of God.

This is one of those times. The worst of those times in all the years I’ve been involved in Israel and Palestine. I’ve found myself weeping privately, in conversations, and sometimes in public places. And I’ve spent so much time asking God to intervene. To comfort the terrorized and afraid, to feed the starving, to silence the guns of war, to rescue and deliver those who are dying.

And the answer I keep getting has felt like silence. Deafening silence.

At times like this, the Christian life feels like a Thursday night in a garden when your friends can't’ stay awake to help you and even God is not answering your prayer. Or it feels like a Friday afternoon in Jerusalem when all hope has died and you can’t imagine how the world will ever be better. Sometimes there’s a lot more of the darkness of Thursday and Friday than the joy and light of Easter Sunday morning.

The work of justice and mercy make for peace. Revenge and violence do not.

But Lent and Holy Week have given me another answer, beyond God’s silence--the reminder that the people in Israel and In Gaza, even those this very night who are displaced and starving, are not alone. God is with them. And he weeps for them. And he weeps for us. If only we knew the things that make for peace. If only we knew how to love God and to love our neighbor and to love our enemies. If only we knew the limits of violence to achieve good ends. If only we knew the connection between peace and justice.

And the fullness of this Holy Week also brings me to this reminder that if God does not seem active maybe it’s because we are not listening to his call. My friend Bill Haley says this:

“The actual invitation of the Christian faith is not just to believe in Jesus or be like Jesus or tell others about Jesus (as right as these thing are), but actually to be the presence of Jesus in the world, our hands his hands, our feet his feet, our heart his heart, our bodies his very body... By this does the reality of the risen, living Jesus continue to be displayed, visibly and tangibly, in and around the world (and yours and mine), day after day.”

To do this we first seek to know the things that make for peace (and equally important is to know the things that don’t make for peace). The work of justice and mercy make for peace. Revenge and violence do not. The embrace of our mutuality and interconnectedness make for peace. Tribalism and dehumanization of our neighbors do not. Justice and respect make for peace. Systems of domination and ideologies of hatred do not. Respect for the sacredness of life and the inherent dignity of all as made in the image of God make for peace. Brutality, murder, and starvation do not. Acts of love and service make for peace. Fear and self-centeredness do not.

The Friday world is zero sum. Justice and peace are separate things. Some lives are more important than others.

In a Good Friday world, to live as if these “things that make for peace” are actually true is a costly endeavor. Jesus paid with his life. Others like Martin Luther King have also. For most of us, it may just be the way our reputation suffers, or how certain relationships are strained. There may be some economic cost or sacrifice of our time and attention required. But if it says anything, Holy Week teaches us that incarnational living is costly. Reconciliation comes at a price. The crucifixion wasn’t just something that happened to Jesus on the way to resurrection. It is central to it.

And yet, believers in Jesus know that Holy Week and the shame, humiliation, brutality and injustice of the crucifixion were not the last word. To borrow from the legendary Black preacher S.M. Lockridge, we live in a Friday world, but we know that Sunday’s coming.

In a world of Fridays, violence begets violence. The Friday world is zero sum. Justice and peace are separate things. Some lives are more important than others. There is minimal cost to looking away from people who are hungry and imprisoned. Religion is used to baptize injustice. We live in a Friday world. But we are Sunday people. And we are called to live as best we can as reminders that in a Sunday world we are responsible for what we know, responsible to each other, and responsible before God. To quote Dr. King again, in a Sunday world, "darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

Sunday people are Easter people. And Easter people have a mandate to live as peacemakers in a world riven by conflict. To be purveyors of light and hope in a time of devastation and despair. Frederick Douglass said “I prayed for freedom for 20 years, but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.” As we pray for peace, and we have to be people who pray for peace, let us also be agents of God’s peace. Let us be those incarnational Easter people who pray for peace with our legs. Let us do the urgent work for a lasting ceasefire, for a release of all hostages, and for food for hungry people. And when the guns are silenced and the hungry are at last being fed and the wounded and traumatized are given space to heal, then the greater work begins. Let us learn the lessons of how we got here and let us commit ourselves to a different path forward, one grounded in the sacred dignity of all the people of the land, Palestinians and Israelis alike. Let us support all those who seek justice and peace and security through the path of mutual flourishing. These are the things that make for peace.

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Hospitality

6 April 2023

5 min read

How a nation opened its arms to refugees

Fascinated by Polish hospitality extended to Ukrainian refugees, Tory Baucum delves into its nature.

Tory Baucum

Tory Baucum is the director of the Benedictine Center for Family Life, Benedictine College, in Atchison, Kansas.

A helper in a yellow vest reaches up to a open train carraige window while offering a bottle. The side of the carraige is covered in graffiti.

A Polish volunteer hands water to Ukrainian refugees at Przemyśl, Poland.

Mirek Pruchnicki, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How does one explain three million refugees in Poland but not one refugee camp? Even the experts find it hard. Dr Marc Gopin of the Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution at George Mason University, and a world expert on refugee crises, says in 30 years of work among refugees he has never seen anything like it.

In December 2022 I was visiting early responders near the Ukrainian-Poland border. One man (whom I’ll identify as Slawomir) was particularly heroic in his efforts to whisk fleeing Ukrainians to safety. Upon introduction, he asked if I wanted to know how he did it. I replied,

“What I really want to know is why? Why did you risk your livelihood, even your life, to rescue people whom you did not know? Indeed, even people with whom you share a hard and sometimes bitter history?”

He had no answer. He could only manage a shrug and murmured,

“I just had to.”

This conversation, with variations, could be told repeatedly. By all the accounts I’m aware of Poles are acting inexplicably heroically. It merits investigation and understanding beyond the anecdotal.

So why then has Poland played such a heroic role in this global crisis?

One answer I’ve by given Poles, is that they have experienced what the Ukrainians themselves are now going through. Their own history of PTSD has primed them to empathize with effects of the shock and awe of an aggressor’s invasion - indeed, of Russian invaders. A scholar at the Jagillonian University said to me of their two 20th Century invaders - the Germans and Russians - most Poles preferred the Germans. Having just visited Auschwitz I found that incredible. “Oh, the Nazi’s were wicked, but they were civilized in their wickedness. Russians show no constraint whatsoever,” she said.

Poles also know abandonment, such as when they fended for themselves as the neighbourhood bullies took turns pounding them. The 1944 Warsaw Uprising, ending in the razing of Warsaw, could have been averted if the West had intervened. But Poles were betrayed by those they believed were friends, or at least, allies. We weren’t. So, Poles are constitutionally unable to simply stand by and watch atrocities. But other European neighbours can and still do.

So what makes the Poles’ response so extraordinary beyond its rarity?

As we probe deeper - beyond collective experience - we hit Polish character. Character is durable. Ever since the late 18th century when Poland was partitioned by three neighbouring Empires (Prussian, Russian and Austria-Hungarian), Poles have been in survival or nearly survival mode. In the 1770s Swiss political theorist Jean Jacques Rosseau wrote an epistolary tract warning the Polish government that if these empires succeeded in “eating you then you must never let them digest you.” For nearly two hundred years the Poles learned that culture and faith keep a people together when even the state buckles. Culture and faith make a people indigestible. These lessons, learned in the crucible of multiple failed uprisings and even death camps, steel the Polish people to do the truly remarkable deeds the world now witnesses.

Poland’s long partitioning and occupation baked in their collective experience. At his recent visit to Kyiv and Warsaw American President Joe Biden singled out the Poles for their heroism. It was a first in this particular crisis.

But can we dig deeper still for an answer to why Poles have acted in such a remarkably generous manner?? For it’s not only singular and durable but it’s also a theological response. This answer requires a little history to absorb.

Many Polish people possess a heroic - even radical - hospitality. The ultimate cause of Polish homes, hostels and hotels welcoming the stranger can be proffered: their faith in God. The Poles have a saying:

“When a neighbour is under your roof then God is under your roof.”

In the 12th century Boleslav the Bold had Bishop Stanislav murdered while celebrating mass (let the English understand). The Poles turned against their king and embraced Stanislav as their martyr and patron. To be received back into the good graces of his people, Boleslav placed a Benedictine foundation in every Cathedral of the land. Rule 53 of Benedict’s Rule states that monks are to receive every stranger as Christ. The common saying of the Poles (if a neighbour is under your roof then God is under your roof) has its roots in this ancient act of royal penance. This Christian practice of hospitality was the core strategy of the Christianization of Poland. In the history of Benedictine evangelization through Christian hospitality we’ve finally hit the bedrock of the Polish response.

They understand people need not only justice but also transcendence in order to flourish. Or even survive.

However, it would be a stretch to say the Poles’ extraordinary response to their neighbours in need of shelter is simply the triumph of the distinct Benedictine character or even more genetically of Catholic sensibilities. Nothing this complex is that simple. All these factors are integrated in this moment. But after five visits to Poland since the third day of the initial invasion, I’ve concluded the Poles are, by and large, a uniquely virtuous people. Not morally virtuous - original sin is distributed evenly, even amongst Poles. But they are theologically virtuous: they are people shaped by faith, hope and love. They understand people need not only justice but also transcendence in order to flourish. Or even survive.

Their great 20th Century saint, Pope John Paul II, during the Stalinist occupation, taught them the practices of Domestic Church. The domestic church is nothing less than the family faced outward in love. Christianity began as a domestic movement. Writing to residents of Rome, St Paul greets the Christians who gather weekly in each other’s homes). In moments of great distress Christians have been known to revert to these root realities, these primal instincts. Not always, of course. But in February of 2022 and for the many following months they have. In Poland.

We are sitting on the most amazing story the world has mostly not heard about. I’m grateful to tell the world what I’ve seen unfold before my very eyes. I wish my telling was adequate to the Poles’ heroism. For as they modestly tell it “we just have to.”