NC pastor: How can we sing holiday hymns this year with the horrors we’re seeing? | Opinion
This Christmas season, I am haunted by our holy songs.
As I wake up every day and read the stories of those who survived the terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, the pleas of those still desperately waiting for their loved ones to be returned, and I am stunned into silence by the horror of their ongoing grief and suffering.
How do we go on with our holidays, how do we observe our holy days knowing that so many families have been forced to flee their homes to seek peace? The horror of what happened on Oct. 7 is more than enough to silence all of our hopeful rejoicing songs.
But the Oct. 7 massacres are neither the beginning or the end of the horror. Even if we had the heart to sing at all in the face of the suffering of our Jewish siblings, how can we sing the cherished carols of this season given the ongoing catastrophic destruction of the Gaza strip and the slaughter of the innocents there? Because there are innocent lives in the Gaza Strip, just as there are innocent lives in Israel. If it was a crime against humanity for Hamas to attack families to make war against the Israeli government, and I believe it was, how is it not equally and manifestly the same crime to rain down bombs upon families living in Gaza?
And even if it were proportional to the Oct. 7 attacks, why is it acceptable to use proportional responses to a terrorist organization?
How is it humane to text families desperately trying to avoid slaughter in evacuation zones giving 10 minutes notice to flee before bombs fall? How, when there is not only no food, medicine or clean water, but also no power or reliable internet access in Gaza?
I know for many people expressing any concern for the safety of Palestinians is antisemitic and equivalent to supporting Hamas. I denounce Hamas’ violence against the Israeli people and I also do not condone the Israeli war against the Palestinian people.
The blood of 1,200 Jewish civilians, dozens of them children, shed on Oct. 7 is not avenged by the blood of 23,012 Palestinians, almost 10,000 of them children, shed since Oct. 7. The unfathomable suffering of the 233 men, women and children taken hostage on Oct.7 is not mitigated or resolved in any way by the unfathomable suffering of the nearly 2 million men, women and children currently besieged in Gaza.
There is no way that this war will make any kind of peace. The world knows this. The United Nations Security Council has called for an immediate ceasefire. But the United States vetoed that amendment and so the war rages on without any end in sight.
So I know the songs are the least of it. But right now we are planning for our Christmas Eve worship service, this night we gather to worship in the darkness, light candles and sing our holiest songs, and as a pastor, I don’t know what to do.
How can we sing lullabies celebrating the birth of a Jewish Palestinian child while bombs fall on the rubble of Gaza? How can we sing about the quiet calm of the ‘little town of Bethlehem’ while soldiers carry out deadly raids in that very West Bank town? How can we dare to sing of a silent night, knowing that no child in Gaza can possibly ‘sleep in heavenly peace?’ How can we make music proclaiming the holiness of a Palestinian child born in occupied territory without naming the sanctity of the lives of Palestinian children living in those same holy lands today?
In the third verse of ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem, we sing ‘O morning stars together proclaim the holy birth, and praises sing to God our King and peace to men on earth?’ How can we sing praises to God our King without crying out for peace on earth?
How can we sing praises to the infant we call Prince of Peace without also calling for a ceasefire?
Kate Murphy is pastor at The Grove Presbyterian Church in Charlotte.
