Iraq

You are invited to travel on a mission trip to Lebanon and Syria this fall to meet fellow-Presbyterians from Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. This venture is organized through the Iraq Partnership Network and the Syria-Lebanon Network of the PC(USA) and is sponsored and facilitated by The Outreach Foundation. The church governing bodies in the region, namely the Assembly of Presbyterian Churches in Iraq and the National Evangelical Synod of Syria and Lebanon have worked closely with the networks to finalize and bless these plans.

Riding the bus the other day, I was struck by how different worldviews play out in the smallest, as well as largest ways (you decide which is which). In the U.S., you enter the bus from the front, bringing you face to face with the driver and your obligation to pay the fare - maybe there's a machine you drop your coins into; maybe the driver takes your money himself; maybe there's a ticket you've already bought . . . but however it works, the very first thing you do is pay your money. No money, no entrance.

Now don't misunderstand - in Iraq, you must pay as well. But how the transaction takes place is instructive:

We, the National Middle Eastern Presbyterian Caucus, are grieved by the barbaric bombing of 8 churches in Iraq (7 in Baghdad, 1 in Mosul) on Sunday, July 12, 2009. We denounce the cowardly aggression of militants against innocent and peaceful Iraqi civilians. We emphatically deplore all violence, in particular violence in the name of religion or political ideology, targeting Christians and minority groups, and all hostilities aimed to dehumanize, terrorize, persecute, and murder people in the name of God or any political cause.

And how is it that we hear . . .? --Acts 2

It is Pentecost. The Team gathers for prayer and leaves the apartment to conduct a training in non-violence and reconciliation with people from the Kurdish and surrounding governorates. They have come from Tikrit and Mosul and Kirkuk. They have lived in Baghdad and the villages of Kurdistan. A few speak English, most Arabic, and some Kurdish, and one of us, Cantonese.

Three hundred Christians worship and witness together, twenty arrested in an act of nonviolent direct action in front of the White House, as President Obama held his “100 Days” press conference inside.

As more than three hundred Christians worshipped together at National City Christian Church in Washington on Wednesday night, April 29, they heard a rousing call from Tony Campolo to put an end to the war in Iraq. Campolo shared the story of the fourth century Monk Telemachus who was martyred when he entered the Coliseum in Rome during the fights of the gladiators and demanded “In the name of Jesus, Stop.” After he was killed, a hush fell over the crowd and the Coliseum slowly emptied. The tradition of Gladiators fighting for sport had come to an end. Campolo suggested that, similarly, Christians who take the Bible seriously must be prepared to take the greatest personal risks as they demand, “In the name of Jesus, stop the war.”