A prayer for the 77th anniversary of the beginning of the ongoing Nakba
By, Rev. Marietta Macy, PJN co-moderator
Today on May 15, Palestinians and their siblings mark 77 years since the beginning of the ongoing Nakba, or “catastrophe”, that started in 1948. The “catastrophe” being the creation of the state of Israel on top of Palestine under the British Mandate, resulting in more than 750,000 Palestinians being forced from their homes and having their communities destroyed. The Zionist state used massacres, bombings, and terror to displace Palestinians and dispossess them of their lands, urban and agricultural alike. As we mark this somber occasion today, we are witnessing the most brutal behavior yet in this ongoing Nakba for Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank all these years later. Please join us in prayer and reflection on this occasion and listen to how God is calling you to love one another in the face of such evil.
Scripture Readings:
Revelation 21: 1-6 & John 13: 31-35
Prayer
Holy One, the commandment seems so simple - love one another, just as you loved us. But have you seen this world lately?! It’s such a mess, on a scale Rome never could have imagined. The ability to wield death like a club with no repercussions is breaking the hearts of your compassionate people in ways we don’t know how to survive anymore.
77 years since the beginning of the Nakba and it feels as if things have only gotten worse. The pictures are in color now, the bombs are guided by A.I., and the bodies of our Palestinian siblings are in so many pieces the dead can’t be counted. Our news and social media feeds show us weekly, daily, hourly accounts of death, starvation, dismemberment, and horrors that should be beyond our capacity to even imagine. How much longer God? How could anyone cause such harm to another? How do we even speak of “love” in times like these?
Protest as we might, by living in the heart of empire we reap the benefits of the immoral use of our nation's political power around the world. Forgive us for the ways we have been complicit in these atrocities through both our involuntary participation in systems of injustice and for our willful inaction. We have been too quiet over these decades of Nakba anniversaries to think that our hands are clean. But it is from this unique position that you call us to advocate for justice and an end to colonial empires that derive their power from the oppression of others.
You call us to love radically and publicly, because that is how everyone will know we are your disciples - by the love we have for one another. When this feels like too much, you remind us that we are not alone. Emmanuel, God With Us, you have lived and dwelled among us; rejoicing and grieving, growing and dying just like us. You do know how hard this is. You are familiar with the mess. You have suffered the depths of human pain at the hands of those to whom you still offered love and forgiveness.
Like your faithful prophets and friends who have walked this sacred earth before us, give us the courage to speak and act in ways that advance justice for our Palestinian siblings after all these years of catastrophes. Make our voices strong and clear, our labor fruitful and lifegiving, and our communities supportive and nurturing. When we are too focused on the impossibilities of the world as it is, lift our heads, dry our eyes, and speak to our hearts of the times you have in store when, “death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.”
Alpha and Omega, on this painful anniversary, reinspire us to see where you are at work, making all things new. Reinvigorate us to move and act in the world as your body. As we await your return, in your place, may we seek to give water to the thirsty, food to the hungry, shelter and safety to the displaced, and justice to the oppressed. Guide us always in building a world that knows none of us are free until all of us are free.
Amen.