Thirty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time, November 5, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Maintain a space for peace
Have we not all the one father?
Has not the one God created us?
Why then do we break faith with one another,
violating the covenant of our fathers?
This same Father brought forth Ishmael, and then Isaac, and then when Father Abraham passed on his blessings, each boy felt both slighted and respected. But since then they have had trouble with the respect part.
In Time Magazine last week, historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari implores all of us to resume that respect, and leave the slights alone. That is, above all what he calls “the world’s job during the war.” How do we do that, those of us who are not ripped apart by anguish, loss, pain, death in our own small family circle?
Outsiders who are not themselves immersed in pain should make an effort to empathize with all suffering humans, rather than lazily seeing only part of the terrible reality. It is the job of outsiders to help maintain a space for peace. We deposit this peaceful space with you, because we cannot hold it right now. Take good care of it for us, so that one day, when the pain begins to heal, both Israelis and Palestinians might inhabit that space.
“Take good care of it for us.” I imagine this request is centuries and millenia old. One day those who have cultivated everything but love will hear a different call, and Mr. Harari wants us to have something, a “space for peace,” ready to hand over to them.
In you, Lord, I have found my peace. My heart is not proud. I have stilled and quieted my soul, like a weaned child. In you, Lord, I have found my peace.
In his article Mr. Harari remembered his friend who lived near Gaza.
Aviv Kutz (54), a member of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, his wife Livnat (49), and their three children Rotem (19), Yonatan (17) and Yiftach (15), have lived in Kfar Aza for years. Every year the Kutz family organized a kite-flying festival, meant to create a small peaceful space in the war zone. Colorful kites—some displaying peace messages—were flown near the border fence with Gaza. This year’s kite festival was planned for Saturday, 7 October. “Kite festival 2023,” said the invitation, “we will meet at the football pitch at 16:00 to decorate the sky.” A few hours before the festival began, Hamas terrorists invaded and occupied the kibbutz. All five members of the Kutz family were slaughtered.
A month later our Empty Nesters Sunday School class will, for the second week, take up the topic of “Israel and the Last Days.” Of course we prayed for both sides. We prayed especially for the children on both sides to find schools where they will learn together and play together. These prayers keep us from “lazily seeing only part of this terrible reality.”
We prayed to experience God’s sadness, which is always sadness for each individual person on both sides.
You received not a human word but, as it truly is, the word of God, which is now at work in you who believe. Call no one on earth your father; you have but one Father in heaven.
 (Malachi 1, Psalm 131, 1 Thessalonians 2, Matthew 23)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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