[This is a transcript of the Christmas Eve 2023 Sermon given in Bethlehem, Palestine (Occupied Territories), by Reverend Munther Isaac, the Senior Pastor at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem. This Church was commissioned and built by Augusta Victoria, the wife of William II, the German Emperor and King of Prussia, in 1893. This Sermon is also a message, born of great anguish and pain, to the collective West and to the Churches in the West; it is a message, I believe, that captures in essence the moral vacuity of Christians in the West who have stood silently watching the mass murder and genocide of Gazans carried live into their homes on televisions and the internet. As Reverend Issac says, Palestine will recover, but will the West recover from its hypocrisy and racism veiled in a Theology of the Empire? I chose to transcribe Reverend Isaac’s Sermon delivered at his Church on December 24 from the youtube video, which is also linked below, and make it available to be read, discussed, reflected upon, and not forgotten in our world where memory is fleeting. I made passages in the Sermon bold for emphasis.]
Sermon by Reverend Munther Isaac.
We are angry, we are broken. This would have been the time of joy, instead we are mourning. We are fearful. More than 20,000 children – thousands are still under the rubble. Close to 9,000 children killed in the most brutal ways day after day, 1.9 million displaced, hundreds of thousands of homes destroyed.
Gaza as we know it no longer exists. This is an annihilation. This is genocide. The world is watching. Churches are watching. The people of Gaza are sending live images of their own execution. Maybe the world cares. But it goes on.
We are asking would this be our fate in Bethlehem, in Ramallah, in Jenin. Is this our destiny here?
We are tormented by the silence of the West. Leaders of the so-called free lined up one after the other to give the greenlight for this genocide against a captive population. They gave the cover. Not only did they make sure to pay the bill in advance, but they veiled the truth and context providing the political cover. And yet another layer has been added, the theological cover with the Western churches stepping into the spotlight. Our dear friends from South Africa taught us the concept of the state theology defined as the theological justification of the status quo which is racism, capitalism, and totalitarianism. It is misusing theological concepts and Biblical texts for its own political purposes.
Here in Palestine the Bible is weaponized against us. Our very own sacred text—in our terminology in Palestine we speak of the Empire. Here we confront the Theology of the Empire, a disguise for superiority, supremacy, chosenness and entitlement. It is sometime given a nice cover using words like Mission and Evangelism, fulfillment of prophecy and spreading freedom and liberty.
The Theology of the Empire becomes a powerful tool to mask oppression under the cloak of divine sanction. It speaks of land without people, it divides people into Us and Them, it dehumanizes and demonizes the concept of the land without people again, even though they knew too well that the land had people and not just any people but a very special people. Theology of the Empire calls for emptying Gaza just like it called for the ethnic cleansing in 1948 a miracle or a Divine Miracle as they called it. It calls for us Palestinians now to go to Egypt, maybe Jordan. Why not just the sea?
I think of the words of the disciples of Jesus when he was about to enter Samaria, “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them,” they said of the Samaritans. This is the Theology of the Empire. This is what they are saying about us today.
This war has confirmed to us that the world does not see us as equal. Maybe it’s the colour of our skins, maybe it is because we are on the wrong side of a political equation. Even our kinship in Christ did not shield us. So, they say if it takes killing 100 Palestinians to get a single Hamas militant then so be it. We are not humans in their eyes, but in God’s eyes no one can tell us that.
The hypocrisy and racism of the Western world is transparent and appalling. They always take the word of Palestinians with suspicion and qualification. No, we are not treated equally, yet on the other side despite a clear track record of misinformation, lies, their words are almost always deemed infallible.
To our European friends, I never ever want to hear you lecture us on human rights or international law again, and I mean this. We are not white, I guess, it does not apply to us according to your own logic.
In this war the many Christians in the Western world made sure the Empire has the theology needed. It is the self-defence we are told, and I continue to ask how is the killing of 9,000 children self-defence? How is the displacement of 1.9 million Palestinians self-defence? In the shadow of the Empire, they turned the colonizer into the victim and the colonized into the aggressor. Have we forgotten that the state they talk to that that state was built on the ruins of the towns and villages of the very same cousins? Have they forgot that?
We are outraged by the complicity of the church. Let it be clear friends, silence is complicity. And empty calls for peace without a ceasefire and anti-occupation and the shallow words of empathy without direct action all under the banner of complicity. So here is my message, Gaza today has become the moral compass of the world. Gaza was held before October 7th and the world was silent. Should we be surprised that they are silenced now. If you are appalled by what is happening in Gaza, if you are not shaken to your core there is something wrong with your humanity. And if we as Christians are not outraged by the genocide, by the weaponization of the Bible to justify it there is something wrong with our Christian witness and we are compromising the credibility of our Gospel message.
If you fail to call this a genocide, it is on you. It is a sin and darkness you willingly embrace. Some have not even called for a ceasefire. I am talking about the churches. I feel sorry for you. We will be okay despite the immense blow we have endured; we the Palestinians will recover. We will rise. We will stand up again from the midst of destruction as we have always done as Palestinians although this is by far maybe the biggest blow we have received in a long time. But we will be okay, but those who are complicit I feel sorry for you. Will you ever recover from this?
Your charity and your words of shock after the genocide won’t make a difference and I know these words of shocks are coming and I know people will give generously for charity, but your words won’t make a difference. Words of regrets won’t suffice for you and let me say it we will not accept your apology after the genocide. What has been done has been done. I want you took at the mirror and ask where was I when Gaza was going through a genocide.
To our friends who are here with us, you have left your families and churches to be with us. You embody the term a companion, costly solidarity I think of the words of Jesus. We were in prison, and you visited us. What a stark difference from the silence and complicity of others that you are here. Your presence here is the meaning of solidarity and your visit have already left an impression that will never be taken from us. Through you God has spoken to us that we are not forsaken. As Father Ramy of the Catholic Church said this morning you have come to Bethlehem and like the Magi you brought gifts with you, but gifts that are more precious than gold, frankincense, and myrrh. You brought the gifts of love and solidarity. We feel it, we needed this for this season more than anything we were troubled by the Silence of God.
In these last two months the Psalms of Lament have become a precious companion to us. We cried out, “My god, my God, why have You forsaken Gaza? Why do You hide Your face from Gaza? In our pain, anguish, and lament we have searched for God and found Him under the rubble in Gaza. Jesus himself became the victim of the very same violence of the Empire when he was in our land. He was tortured, crucified, he bled out as others watched. He was killed and cried out in pain my God, where are you?
In Gaza today, God is under the rubble and in this Christmas season as we search for Jesus, he is not to be found in the side of Rome, but our side of the wall. He is in a cave with a simple family, an occupied family. He is vulnerable, barely and miraculously surviving a massacre himself. He is among a refugee family where Jesus is to be found today. If Jesus were to be born today, he would be under the rubble in Gaza.
When we glorify pride and richness, Jesus is under the rubble. When we rely on power, might, and weapons, Jesus is under the rubble. When we justify, rationalize, and theologize the bombing of children, Jesus is under the rubble. Jesus is under the rubble; this is his manger. He is at home with the marginalized, the suffering, the oppressed, and the displaced. This is his manger and I have been looking and contemplating on this iconic image, God with us precisely in this way. This is the Incarnation messy, bloody, poverty, this is the Incarnation, and this Child is our hope and inspiration. We look and see him in every child killed and pulled from under the rubble.
While the world continues to reject the children of Gaza, Jesus says just as you did to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me. Jesus not only calls them his own, he is them, he is with the children of Gaza. We look at the holy family and see them in every family displaced and wandering now, homeless and in despair.
While the world discusses the fate of the people of Gaza as if they are unwanted boxes in a garage, God in the Christmas narrative shares their fate. He walks with them and calls them his own.
So, this manger is about resilience, … and the resilience of Jesus is in his meekness, is in his weakness, is in his vulnerability. The majesty of Incarnation lies in its solidarity with the marginalized. Resilience, because this is the very same Child who rose up from the midst of pain, destruction, darkness, and death to challenge Empires, to speak truth to power and deliver an everlasting victory over death and darkness, this very same Child accomplished it.
This is Christmas today in Palestine and this is the Christmas message. Christmas is not about candles, it’s not about trees, and gifts and lights. My goodness how we have twisted the meaning of Christmas, how we have commercialized Christmas. It was by the way in the USA last month, the first Monday after Thanksgiving and I was amazed by the amount of Christmas decorations and lights and all the commercial goods, and I couldn’t help but think they send us bombs while celebrating Christmas in their land. They sing about the Prince of Peace in their land while playing the drum of war in our land. Christmas in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, is this manger.
This is our message to the world today, it is a Gospel message, it is a true and authentic Christmas message about the God who did not stay silent but said His Word and His Word was Jesus born among the occupied and marginalized. He is in solidarity with us in our pain and brokenness.
This message is our message to the world today and it is simply this genocide must stop now. Why don’t we repeat it? STOP THIS GENOCIDE NOW. Let us say it one more time, STOP THIS GENOCIDE NOW. This is our Call, this is our Plea, this is our Prayer, hear, O God!
Amen.
I appreciate you sharing this message. When I went to Bethlehem in 2009 and visited a Baptist church, the pastor asked our delegation of Christian "youth" (I was 34 and not that young) to not forget about them. He said Christians remember Israel, but the Arab Christian in Palestine stands somewhat alone. They get hassled by Israel at the border, he said, and the surrounding Muslims are even more oppositional.
The pastor said he had been shot at with nine bullets and three had hit the mark. He said he was the first Christian in his family, but his entire family eventually embraced the faith. His youngest brother was the longest holdout, coming to Christian faith 26 years after the pastor did. He was cut down by Muslims with machetes as he was doing evangelism in Arab East Jerusalem.
These believers are in a tight spot.
I'm a strict neo-Darwinian, so I don't have a dog in the theological wars, but I do have a different take:
What might save us, me and you
Is if the Russians love their children, too.
-Sting ("Russians" 1985)
This is not an unreasonable hope, both then and now. Russians are not uncivilized people. We have to believe that eventually, Russian mothers and fathers will tire of sending their sons anddaughters to die in Ukraine, and do something about it - in the longer run, to raise their children to reject participation in aggressive wars.
But that is not a reasonable hope with respect to Gazans. They unabashedly reveal their priorities in their political charter, and in their schools and mosques every day. Gazans believe that any and every sacrifice is worth making if it results in more Jewish deaths. Literally, not figuratively. The ghouls who butchered hundreds of innocent Jews on October 7th - and took hundreds more hostage - had to have known that this act would result in tens of thousands of their own being killed in response; they simply didn't care. They celebrated their barbarism with elation and jubilation - proudly live-streaming it to their folks back home and to the world. Nor were their folks back home horrified by the savagery of the attack they witnessed; indeed, there was universal joy and celebration in the streets of Gaza in the days that followed - brought to a fevered pitch whenever a Jewish corpse was present.
We know from decades of experience that Gazans do not love their children, not in any way that civilized people recognize as parental love. They regard their male children as future martyrs and their girl children as bearers of future martyrs. Hating Jews takes precedence over loving their children. One mistake a lot of people make is to assume that Gazans think like themselves, like you and me and Russians and nearly everyone else - that life is a precious gift. They do not; they regard their earthly life as expendable in the spiritual service of ridding the Middle East, and the world, of Jews and other infidels.
There has been a big hue and cry over the killing of "innocent Palestinian civilians" by Israel since October 7th. Every one of those deaths is on account of Hamas, which commits the war crimes of using human shields and employing non-uniformed combatants (making civilians unidentifiable as such). But there is another problem with this meme: You would be hard-pressed to find a truly innocent Gazan. The reality is that "innocent" Gazan civilians indoctrinate their "innocent" children into their death-cult ideology from birth. Gazan children lose their innocence at a very young age, in a self-perpetuating death spiral.
Death cults like that in Gaza normally do not have a long shelf life; they tend to burn themselves out in battles of attrition. Like the celibate Catholic priesthood, it would be impossible to sustain the Gazan death-cult without support from outside. But Gaza isn't a closed system, it isn't an "open-air prison." Gaza receives boundless support from outside, in the form of military aid from Iran (mostly), "humanitarian" aid from the rest of the world (quickly converted to military use), and political cover from the United Nations. Israel isn't allowed to give Gazans their wish of becoming martyrs to their cause - and so the unnatural danse macabre winds endlessly on.
The world has to smarten up and stop feeding sugar to this cancerous tumor in the Middle East. The world has to stop taking in "refugees" who are members of the death cult. The world has to stop tying the hands of Israeli forces removing the cancer, whether surgically or with chemotherapy. Compassion has its place; Gaza is not that place. The brass rule is the medicine that is called for on this sick patient: Do unto others as they do unto others.