I am sending my personal greetings to you during this holiday season and my gratitude for your compassion and solidarity with the Palestinian people during these dark days.
Thank you for attending or registering for our program Christmas is Cancelled: What Would Jesus Do for Palestine?
The recording of this sacred space of sorrow can be viewed here.
USCPR Action toolkit www.uscpr.org/StopGazaGenocide
Shut it Down Toolkit from NSJP National SJP Winter Break Toolkit
Find MORE Holiday songs for a permanent ceasefire: Ceasefire Holiday Remix_December 2023
Minister Jessica Anderson of Washington, DC offered this sermon
that we reproduce in whole for you here:
Our query this Christmas.
What would Jesus DO for Palestine?
Maybe Jesus would be proud for Palestine
Jesus swaddled in a keffiyeh in a manger
Jesus surveilled by the state but marked safe
Jesus’s breathing body a testimony that Palestine lives
Christmas is canceled
Not because revolutionaries are not worth celebrating
But because if Christmas is about the story of a Palestinian child in danger
Then Christmas is not a holiday, it is a freedom politic, a posture,
A prayer that invites us as Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac says,
“To see the image of Jesus in every child killed and pulled from under the rubble.”
Maybe Jesus would be a poet for Palestine
Maybe he would recite
If we must die by Claude McKay
O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us
And then Jesus would recite Refaat Alareer
If I must die
YOU must live
to tell my story
to sell my things
to buy a piece of cloth
and some strings,
(make it white with a long tail)
Maybe he’d say we are sanctified by our solidarity. Maybe he’d speak of Black and Palestinian organizing and write Movement Psalms for us.
Maybe Jesus would be a preacher for Palestine
Who would bring us a sermon of Christmas woes
Woe to governments who spend millions on genocide and theft
Woe to a world where there is no place at the inn for the oppressed
Woe to nonprofits who hoard aid but then call you the thief
Woe to clergy who forget the politics of the beatitudes
Blessed are the poor in spirit
Blessed are those who mourn
Blessed are the peacemakers
Blessed are those who are persecuted
Maybe Jesus would be press for Palestine
Jesus,with two different accounts of his birth,
Knows the value of telling your own story before it is
Copyedited by your oppressors
Jesus, Wael, Motaz, Hatem, Plestia, Lama, and Bisan
Said “there are snipers outside of the church”
And Christmas is canceled in Bethlehem
But Jesus Christ,
The One born to a teenage Mary
Who knew that God’s favor was not just birthing an activist
But favor is being called to care for the oppressed
Who was so committed to ceasefire
That she created sanctuary for her Palestinian baby in her womb
Is not canceled.
What would Jesus do for Palestine?
Maybe Jesus would be proud, a poet, a preacher, press, but our hope today is that
Jesus, Immanuel, would be in Bethlehem present, protesting, and praying with us in the rubble.
Amen
In sorrow and determination,
Sandra Tamari, Executive Director
Adalah Justice Project