Praying for Peace and Justice on December 21, 2025
Let us pray.
We pray as Seekers Church for the coming of the one whose name Emanuel means “God with us.” We pray with the people of Palestine and Gaza “Ya Rabbal Salam. Lord of Peace, rain peace upon us. Lord of Peace, fill our land with peace.” Pray with me. Ya Rabbal Salam. Ya Rabbal Salam.
We pray for peace, we pray for justice, we pray that in future years we will not need to put other Christ Children within rubble in our front window, that they will no longer live in the rubble within Lebanon, Yemen, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Congo, Haiti, Myanmar, between Afghanistan and Pakistan, within Ukraine, and within Russia. Ya Rabbal Salam.
Amen.
Background
In November of 2023, Rev. Munther Isaac, pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem, in the West Bank governed by Israel, along with all of the patriarchs and heads of the churches in Jerusalem, decided that their churches’ Christmas celebrations would be limited to prayers. No Christmas trees, lights, or decorations, no scout troops’ musical processions. The media in western Europe and the U.S. screamed, “Christmas is being canceled in its birthplace” and wanted to know why. Reverend Isaac insisted that the canceling of Christmas was NOT the headline. RATHER, THE GENOCIDE IN GAZA WAS THE HEADLINE. Sadly, it STILL IS the headline.
Rev. Isaac and his church in Bethlehem decided to change the creche they always put in the church to what our Seekers Racial and Ethnic Justice Ministry Team has replicated in our large window downstairs – “Christ in the Rubble.” He said, “It is possible that it takes away the joy of Christmas. But, he argued, “this is precisely the meaning of Christmas.” I quote from his book, Christ in the Rubble:
This manger teaches us the meaning and importance of Christmas in more than one way. With death, destruction, and rubble defining and shaping our reality, this is how we welcome Jesus into our world. And if Jesus had been born in our land today, I wonder, would he have entered our world any other way? …The circumstances of Palestine two thousand years ago were not very different from the circumstances in Palestine today. Then, Palestine was under the Roman occupation, and there were revolutions, and even children were massacred. When Jesus was born he was not born in Rome, but in Bethlehem, with those under occupation. He was not born into conditions of comfort or luxury. His birth was very difficult. The story began with a census ordered by Augustus Caesar. It is a colonial method par excellence, meant to locate and control, just like Israel today uses magnetic cards and colored identities to control Palestinians. Because the Holy Family was from Bethlehem, they had to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem, so that each could be counted in their city of origin, similar to our experience today as Palestinians when we apply for these magnetic cards in the military bases, each in the region where he or she is registered…. When Jesus was born, another ruler, Herod, went mad, and in his obsession with power ordered the killing of the children of Bethlehem…. As for Jesus’ family, they took refuge in Egypt (out of all places) and miraculously escaped this massacre. They were displaced. They became refugees in Egypt, similar to the fortunate Palestinians today who were able to escape Gaza to Egypt. The Christmas story is a very Palestinian story! Its vocabulary is census, control, empire, occupation, Caesar, Herod, military refugees, pain, exhaustion, and massacred children (not trees, lighting, or Santa).
Christmas is the birth of Jesus with us, specifically in our distress and pain. It is the coming of Jesus to be born with the “afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down… It is God being with the lowly to exalt them and the hungry to satisfy them…. It is that Jesus came in order “to proclaim good news to the poor, liberty to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed.”… This is the true meaning of Christmas.”