"LAND ON FIRE"

 “LAND ON FIRE”

John the Baptizer does not make it into Matthew’s version of the Christmas story, but he plays a prominent part in Luke’s.  Luke’s version of the birth of Jesus begins not with Jesus but with the backstory for the birth of John the Baptizer.  John’s conception is not quite as stunning as Jesus’ conception, but it is miraculous nonetheless.  The mothers of John and Jesus are cousins, and the boys become cousins, with some scholars arguing that Jesus becomes a disciple of John the Baptizer.  Other Gospel accounts, like John’s, portray them as rivals, but whatever their relationship, all four Gospels see John as the precursor for Jesus, as one who prepares the way for Jesus.

John the Baptizer was a man on fire.  He took the warmth of the love of God and channeled it into a burning call for repentance and justice and equity.  He challenged the Temple as a site of renewal and religious sanctity.  He offered the idea of baptism in the river as a source of renewal and repentance.  By “repentance,” he didn’t mean only the ceasing of doing bad things – he meant a complete re-orientation of our will and imaginations, a re-orientation towards God and not towards the powers of the world.  It was here, in this idea of death and rebirth that is part of the ritual of baptism, that people could find the fire to renew their lives.

John not only used fire as image of renewal – he used it also as an image of consequences and punishment.  His sermon went like this in Luke 3, as he chastised the religious leaders who came out to hear him:  “You children of snakes!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?......Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees;  every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”  When the leaders and the people asked him what they could do to escape this kind of fire, he told them to share food and clothes with the poor, to refrain from cheating people and to stop robbing people.  For John, the warmth of God’s love was a fire that burned for justice and for equity.

As the fences were cut and people slaughtered by Hamas in Israel on October 8, and as the bombs drop and the fires rage among the Palestinians in Gaza, I think of John the Baptizer and his fiery prophecy.  Israel was established as a nation in response to 20 centuries of horrors against Judaism by Christians, culminating in the still unfathomable Holocaust.  Unfortunately, there were people already living in the lands where Israel was established as a nation, and those people were removed in what is remembered as “Nakba,” or catastrophe.  They were not compensated or given land.  They are now called the Palestinians.  In the right wing movements that seem to sweeping the world, Israel now has a leader who seems determined to kill his way to the decimation of the Palestinians, not unlike what my European ancestors did to the people living in this land.  Thousands and thousands have died and will continue to die until some semblance of justice is established.

What would that justice look like?  It is complex, but at least two elements must be present for there to be a foundation of peace with justice.  First, the state of Israel must be recognized.  Jewish people rightly feel that they must have a state, a safe haven to protect at least some of them from the 20 centuries (Yes, I said centuries) of death and persecution at the hands of the world, persecution influenced heavily by the followers of Jesus the Jew.  The idea of a Palestinian state from the river to the sea is not a possibility that will lead to peace.  Antisemitism is embedded deeply especially in the West, but indeed throughout the world.

Despite there being no Palestinian state from the river to the sea, the second element for peace with justice is that a Palestinian state must be carved out somewhere in the area.  The horror and brutality of October 8 arose out of the cries of injustice and suffering on the part of the Palestinian people.  Hamas was not acting as savages, although they did incredibly savage things.  That fury grew out of the suffering and anger, and though the Palestinians do not have the firepower to match the Israelis, they do have that same deep well of suffering and injustice, a well that will always feed groups like Hamas until some justice is established.

The Holy Land is now a land on fire, as John the Baptizer predicted.  I don’t know what John’s thoughts on the current conflagration would be, but he clearly gives us the answers to end the burning and bombing and slaughter – do justice, share kindness.  Because the suffering is so deep on both sides, establishing justice will require people of faith and endurance and commitment to make difficult decisions.  They must be made, however, lest we all fall into the pit of fire.