Almost precisely ten years ago, I preached a sermon about the conflict between Palestinians and Jews over the disputed land variously known as Israel and Palestine. At that time, when violence between Israelis and Palestinians was at its height and dozens of people, mostly Palestinians, were being killed every month, I told stories about Jewish peace activists who are reaching out to Palestinians and challenging the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. I focused on Jewish efforts because so often opposition to Israeli policy is branded as anti-Semitism. In fact, as any Palestinian will tell you, Palestinians are Semites as well, and it is neither anti-Semetic nor anti-Jewish to care about Palestinians. While some Jews read the story of the Exodus as God taking sides with Jews against their opponents, other Jews read it as God taking sides with slaves against their oppressors to bring them to freedom, and realize God's justice is narrowly focused on Jewish people, but broadly focused on people anywhere who experience injustice. In fact the Jewish rabbis tell a story about God weeping after the miraculous crossing of the Reed Sea. The angels were surprised: "Why are weeping? You should be rejoicing! Your children the Hebrews have been rescued from certain death." God replied, "Yes, but my children the Egyptians are drowning in the sea!" That God cares about people suffering oppression is central to Jewish and Christian faith. That God loves Palestinians should not be news to any Christian or Jew. And so, ten years ago, on September 2, 2001, I spoke about a fledgling international movement among Christians working closely with Jews and Muslims "in order to promote non-violence, challenge Israeli government policy and pressure Palestinians and other Middle Eastern nations to recognize the legitimate security needs of the state of Israel."

And then, nine days later, a group of Muslim fanatics, mostly Saudi Arabian, hijacked airplanes and used them as guided missiles to strike symbolic targets in the United States. And as a result, any effort to stand in solidarity with Palestinian Arabs was doomed to be perceived as solidarity with terrorists. Ten years later, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is just as intractable as ever. Israelis continue to occupy the West Bank, confiscate Palestinian land and water sources, build settlements and defy Security Council resolutions and international law. Hamas, which denies any right for Israel to exist won its election in Gaza and as a result Gaza has been blockaded by Israel for nearly five years. And as a result, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to poison relations between the Muslim world and the West. If there is one thing that could be done to end the threat of radical Islamic terrorism, it is to reach a just peace in the Middle East. Without such a peace, none of us will live in peace, because, as St. Paul wrote, when one suffers, we all suffer.

Most Palestinians are Muslim, or Druze, but a small percentage are Christian: belonging to branches of the Orthodox, Catholic, Coptic, Maronite, Lutheran, and Anglican churches. In 2009, theologians from many of those churches calling themselves Kairos Palestine drafted a joint statement calling for a non-violent response to the sixty-year old problem of Palestinian dispossession. Kairos Palestine is a conscious reflection of Kairos South Africa, a group of South African theologians who more than twenty years earlier had challenged the theological basis for apartheid and provided a rallying cry for non-violent action against the apartheid regime.

The Kairos Palestine statement is called "A Moment of Truth: A Word of faith, hope and love from the heart of Palestinian suffering." "A Moment of Truth says that now is an opportune moment for the Christians of the world to rally around a non-violent campaign to bring about a just peace between Israel and Palestine. Since its publication, many Christian groups, including the United Church, have recognized the statement as an authentic voice of Palestinian Christians and commended it for study and response. I think it is worth sharing with you this morning because its reflections on Christian witness in a conflicted situation can offer guidance to us both in relation to the Middle East, but also in relation to other conflicts, from the conflicts within our homes and communities to other international conflicts. It also serves as a concrete example of the kind of approach to conflict which Jesus advocates in the gospel reading this morning.

When I travelled to Israel in 2006, our tour guide was a Palestinian Christian named Shamir. It took me a while to figure Shamir out because he kept saying these odd things. I finally realized that he was hinting that he did not believe that the Nazi holocaust had actually happened. He believed that maybe 600,000 people in total died in Nazi concentration camps, while most mainstream scholars believe there were 6 million Jews and another 6 million gypsies, homosexuals, communists and political prisoners who were killed. Because the state of Israel was a response to the destruction of European Jews, many Palestinians and their Arab supporters believe that they have to challenge history in order to challenge Israeli oppression of Palestinians.

So I was pleased to read in the Kairos Palestine statement an acknowledgement of the holocaust: "The West sought to make amends for what Jews had endured in the countries of Europe, but it made amends on our account and in our land. They tried to correct an injustice and the result was a new injustice." [2.3.2] Those two sentences offer a succinct and accurate historical appraisal of the Middle East conflict. I was also pleased to read a condemnation of racism in all its forms, including anti-Semitism and Islamaphobia. The statement calls on Muslims to reject fanaticism and extremism, calling on the world as well to neither stereotype Muslims nor caricature them as terrorists, but as persons who can be lived with in peace and engaged with in dialogue. [5.4.1] It reaches out to Jews saying that despite the conflicts of the past "we are able to love and live together." [5.4.2]

"A Moment of Truth" is at heart a theological document, reflecting on the Palestinian reality of occupation, domination and separation in the light of the good news of a just God who loves all people. The document rejects fundamentalist Christian theologies which justify injustice in their uncritical support for Israel. It offers reflections on the land of Israel/Palestine as a land with a universal mission, hope that transcends human possibilities, the mission of the church in a situation of conflict, and the call to love neighbours, even enemies as a fundamental ethical imperative of the Christian faith.

"Love is seeing the face of God in every human being," the document says. "Every person is my brother or my sister. However, seeing the face of God in everyone does not mean accepting evil or aggression on their part. Rather, this love seeks to correct the evil and stop the aggression. The aggression against the Palestinian people which is the Israeli occupation, is an evil that must be resisted." [4.2.1] "The Israeli occupation of Palestinian land is a sin against God and humanity because it deprives the Palestinian people of their basic human rights, bestowed by God. It distorts the image of God in the Israeli who has become an occupier just as it distorts this image in the Palestinian living under occupation." [2.5] To love is therefore to resist sin, occupation and aggression. "Resistance is a right and a duty for the Christian. But it is resistance with love as its logic. It is thus a creative resistance for it must find human ways that engage the humanity of the enemy… we cannot resist evil with evil." 4.2.3 - 4.2.4]

Non-violent civil disobedience, and international campaigns of divestment, economic and commercial boycott of everything produced by the occupation, meet the test of love, because their aim is to "free both peoples from extremist positions of the different Israeli governments, bringing both to justice and reconciliation." [4.2.6]

The document does not go into detail about what such a campaign might look like. It is a bit ambiguous about whether this is a boycott of products produced in the occupied territories or a boycott of Israel itself. The point is not to detail what non-violent resistance should look like, but to provide a statement of first principles on which Christians might agree and then work with others to implement and flesh out. The purpose of "A Moment of Truth" is to make clear that the purpose of resistance is not vengeance, but reconciliation. Non-violent resistance is the foundation on which a just peace can be established. In this, the Kairos Palestine document is very much in line with the tradition of non-violent resistance articulated by Ghandi in India, Martin Luther King in the United States, and Desmond Tutu in South Africa.

My purpose today is to inform you of what I see as a hopeful step in what has been a long and bitter struggle. I invite you to read "A Moment of Truth" in full. There are a few copies at the back of the church, and I will also include a link in the on-line edition of this sermon. I invite you too, to reflect on how you feel called to participate in international campaigns to support peace and reconciliation in the Middle East.

Israel and Palestine is a long way away, but as we discovered ten years ago next Sunday, the world is too small for anything but brotherhood. When one suffers, we all suffer together; when one lives in fear, none of us are safe. And so we must be advocates for justice everywhere, for peace everywhere, for if it is absent anywhere, it is in jeopardy everywhere. Amen.