At this time last year, I was scheduled to go on a Holy Land pilgrimage with a group of Christian ministers in January of 2024. It was an all-expense-paid trip made possible through late parishioner Ted Harrison and one of the Masonic organizations to which he belonged. Unsurprisingly, the pilgrimage was cancelled after the attacks of October 7, 2023. Also unsurprisingly, it hasn’t been rescheduled.
Last week, I joined a few other clergy for a meeting with the Very Rev. Canon Richard Sewell, Dean of St. George’s College in Jerusalem. The College, which normally hosts pilgrims as a meeting place for Anglicans worldwide, is closed for the foreseeable future. Dean Sewell invited me to visit in the coming months but assured me that group pilgrimages to the Holy Land are a bad idea at this time. I think I’ll wait.
Earlier this week, the Rt. Rev. Matt Heyd, Bishop of New York, offered some statistics related to the Israel-Hamas war:
On October 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas took 251 hostages. 97 people remain in captivity; 35 are presumed dead. In the year since, 1,139 Israeli citizens have been killed and 8,730 have been injured.
Also in the year since, 41,870 people in Gaza have been killed and 97,166 injured. Airstrikes and ground attacks by Israeli Defense Forces have damaged or destroyed 60% of Gaza, including 50% of hospitals and 60% of roads.
The war in Israel-Gaza has made our local communities less safe. Reported antisemitic incidents increased by 360% and anti-Muslim /anti-Palestinian discrimination by 180% since October 7.
Bishop Heyd further noted that the war continues to widen. A just resolution continues to move farther away. (Click here for his full letter.)
There are millions, if not billions, of us praying for the war to end. Is God saying “no” to our prayers? Or “wait”? Or “I’m sorry, I can’t”?
God often says “no” to our prayers, and there are logical reasons for that. God will not override humans’ free will. Natural disasters adhere to the laws of nature and aren’t necessarily bad just because they’re bad for humans. God won’t heal every person every time because we all have to die at some point.
We might even trust in a less apparent reason for God to tell us “no.” For example, God might not save us from a trial because going through the trial will set us free – free from that habit, that person, that fear, that shame.
But such rationale can be cold comfort in the face of the tragic accident, the unexplained death, the dashed dream, the unfulfilled longing, the pain of war.
So, I offer you some recent wisdom from our Senior Warden, Susan Ridgeway. Susan is in our Education for Ministry program and says the deeper she goes into learning about her faith, the more she realizes she doesn’t know how God works in the world. BUT the deeper she goes into learning about her faith, the more she realizes how she is supposed to serve God in the world.
May we cling to that calling, keep up the prayers, and stand secure in the mysterious workings of our God. Even when we don’t know what those workings are, we can trust they are performed in love, for God’s greatest working in the world was sending us Jesus Christ.
Adrian+