Israel-Palestine: For Human Values in the Absence of a Just Peace | Page 15

Israel-Palestine: For Human Values in the Absence of a Just Peace
communities of reconciliation, we have shaped communities of exclusion. Rather
than making impartial judgments, we have favored those closest to us, those loudest
around us, and those whose perspectives best mesh with our own. When acting this
way, we have exacerbated problems rather than resolved them. A fundamental step
in participating in God's mission of reconciliation is to confess our complicity in
systems and patterns of behavior that oppress and injure. Having recognized our past
complicity, we must then act to amend it and to support those who have been
oppressed and injured.

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Solidarity with Those who Suffer. Following the commandments and example of its
Lord, the church is called to attend to, care for, and stand in solidarity with those who
suffer. God's great self-revelations--at Sinai, to the prophets, in the incarnation-begin with "I have observed the misery of my people . . . Indeed, I know their
sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them" (Exodus 3:7-8). And God has
enabled and commanded the church to participate in that divine work as a central part
of its ministry of reconciliation. So the church is called to both stand with and offer
its resources to those who suffer. It stands with those who suffer in order to
understand the conditions in which they find themselves, to recognize its own
location in those conditi