Deny Yourself, Take up Your Cross, and Follow.

A Sunday Reflection 9-15-24

Since the October 7th attack by Hamas that killed 1200 Israelis, many of them young people at a music festival, I have been struggling with how to articulate my thoughts. The attack was horrific, brutal, and in addition, it seemed that it was designed to provoke exactly that reaction. I have long questioned the amount of money that the United States gives to Israel each year. Current appropriations give Israel 3.8 billion dollars each year through 2028. That amounts to a staggering $10,410,960 each day. Much of it, of course, is given by way of weaponry which is produced by US arms manufacturers that employ many people and are responsible for stimulating our economy. The weaponry is for the defense of Israel. As of today, more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza as Israel defends itself in response to the October 7th attack which killed 1,200 Israelis.

I was born in the post-World War II era, so I grew up reading about Anne Frank and learning about the Holocaust – a truly despicable time in world history. The terror that Jewish people lived through is unimaginable and unconscionable. Hitler remains to this day, an icon for evil. And, of course, Jesus was a Jew, so there has never been a place in my heart for antisemitism even though there are passages in scripture that have been interpreted in such a manner. I write all of this as a prelude to saying that I have not been able to figure out how to stand for justice in the middle east, in Palestine, without being cast as antisemitic. Everywhere that people have protested the overkill by the Israeli government, or asked for a two-state solution, or pleaded for a cease fire, there has been a backlash, with protestors deemed to be antisemitic if they do not unconditionally support the decisions of the Israeli military.

The Gospel reading for this Sunday is from Mark 8:27-35. Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” and then very pointedly, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answers the question by declaring that Jesus is the Messiah. Ched Myers explains Peter’s momentous answer this way. “It introduces into the story world for the first time the politically loaded term ‘Messiah’ (Christos). Jesus is not simply a great prophet; he is a royal figure who will restore the political fortunes of Israel. The revolution, Peter is saying, is at hand.” (Binding the Strongman, Pg .242) But, as Myers explains, Jesus immediately drops the Messiah title replacing it with the Human One (Son of Man) title as he begins teaching the disciples that the Son of Man will suffer and die as he challenges the authorities. This outcome was not what the disciples expected. They had clearly expected a Messiah in line with their tradition.

Jesus challenged the political discourse of his day by teaching his disciples that the Son of Man who challenges the powers that be will not prevail in triumph but by necessity will suffer because it is politically inevitable. (244) Nonetheless, that is the path that Jesus, the Son of Man, will take, and when Peter tried to challenge such an outcome, Jesus rebuked him saying, “Get behind me Satan. You are thinking not as God thinks but as humans think.”

Last Sunday I listened to a tough but informative presentation given by a Palestinian American and an American Jew. The history of the current conflict was given beginning with the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Palestinian land by Zionists who were making way for the State of Israel which was formed in 1948. As part of the presentation, the core of Settler Colonialism was described as the need to expel, assimilate, dominate, and/ or keep separate the native population. Zionists who claim the Palestinian land as their own based on Biblical history, came as settler colonists. But not all Jews are Zionists, in fact most are not. The Jewish presenter who was explaining Zionism was not a Zionist. A Rabbi once told me that the Biblical call to return to Zion, or Jerusalem was a spiritual call, not a literal one, and that when that was confused it created the same kind of chaos within the Jewish community as Fundamentalist Christianity creates for followers of Jesus. The Jewish speaker spoke and worked on behalf of the Palestinian people. She told us that when she worked for Biblical justice, justice that required her to stand with the poor, the oppressed, the hungry, homeless, and battered people of Palestine, she was called antisemitic. In her quiet statement I heard a response to my struggle.

When Peter challenged Jesus, Jesus went on to teach the disciples what it meant to be a disciple. “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.” As Ched Myers explains, “There can be no equivocation concerning the political semantics of this invitation. The ‘cross’ had only one connotation in the Roman empire; upon it dissidents were executed.” (245)

Jesus continued his teaching by saying, “Whoever wishes to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.” In other words, you can’t have it both ways. If I want to live in accordance with Biblical justice as a follower of Jesus, then I will have to take the risk of becoming an outcast just as those earliest disciples did. In the circumstances that are daily being presented, with US dollars funding what is looking increasingly like genocide in Gaza, even given the horror of the October 7 attack which deliberately shook the world, I must say ‘no more!” Stop the war. Stop the killing. Save the Palestinians. Give them their own land! Require a two-state solution or one inclusive collaborative shared state that reflects the best of both Jews and Palestinians. Think outside the box that contains only force and weapons!

And I must admit as a follower of Jesus, that it may not be possible to ask for Biblical justice in Gaza, without being called an anti-Semite. If that is my cross, I will take it up

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