Holy Week
As I write this I come from a reading of the New York Times that describes the escalating violence (yes, again) in the lands occupied by Israelis and Palestinians. As I write, our Christian Holy Week is upon us with its backdrop of (yes, again) violence and the seeming absence of hope. It’s a time when our world desperately needs reminders of God and God’s purpose for us all. Elias Chacour, a Palestinian educator and pastor told a story a few years ago about a young Palestinian, far removed from any perspective of hope, who walked into a crowded marketplace in Tel Aviv and blew himself up. Sixteen Israelis were killed; eight-six were seriously injured. Obviously, it was a horrible and tragic and senseless act. But eight-six critically injured people are a lot, and blood supplies for transfusions ran dangerously low.
So Father Chacour contacted the Jewish hospital in Tel Aviv and arranged for a blood drive at the upper schools in Ibillin. Three hundred and fifty students and employees volunteered immediately. Fifteen ambulances from the Jewish hospital, staffed by fifteen Jewish nurses, parked outside the school and processed the volunteers. And then the fifteen ambulances delivered 350 pints of Muslim/Christian blood, and transfused it, giving life back to eighty-six Jews.
That reminds me of what Easter stands for. Easter is a reminder of God in whose image we’re created. God, whose divine pathos, whose unifying love, whose desire for the healing of the nations courses somewhere in our veins and is part of our very identity as human beings.
So, with our words, with our prayers, with the simple living of our daily lives, we’re called by God to make hope, that supposedly “most underrated idea,” come alive for ourselves and for those we encounter. Easter can be our guide to peace, to a hopeful perspective, and to a steady strength that comes from God, whose resurrecting power gave new life to Jesus and who gives new life to all who follow him. Christ is risen! Alleluia! Amen.
posted by Rev. Ralph Ahlberg
Rev. Ahlberg will be preaching Easter Sunday at 10:00am
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