Editor’s note: David Andrews is the Rector of Saints Andrew and Matthew in Wilmington DE.  We met on a course at St. George’s College in Jerusalem and have run into each other at the 2006 and 2012 General Conventions.  He recently returned from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and wrote this reflection for his parish to begin Holy Week.  While you’ll be reading this on Maundy Thursday or later, I invite you to pray and reflect along with him in the days to come.

One of the lasting impressions I have been reflecting on since we returned from the Holy Land is the stark contrast between rich and poor and how Jesus came to relieve the suffering of the latter while calling to account those of the former.  It is easy to see how this disparity continues in the land where Jesus was born and gave his life.  The state of Israel is held up by the world as a model of democracy when in reality it is anything but that.  Israeli citizens who are Jewish can move about freely to work, to school and to synagogue.  They travel on well paved roads and are able to vote in elections when they occur.  There is another side to Israel that the government does not want the world to see.  These are the settlements that have been built on land that belongs to Palestinians.  Palestinian Christians and Muslims who do not live in Jerusalem must apply for a permit to visit the Holy City.  Those who live in Bethlehem are cut off from the rest of their land by a huge security wall. Many live in refugee camps in the West Bank and have been separated from their families for years.  In order to go to work, many Palestinians are forced to leave early in the morning and are subjected to long waits at checkpoints where they are harassed and questioned before being able to enter Jerusalem, if they are lucky.

Let me state that I believe in the right of Israel to exist, but what they are doing to Palestinians is wrong and the world must not continue to tolerate this form of apartheid any longer.  Many who live in the Holy Land and are followers of Jesus are weary and their spirits have been broken by years of emotional and spiritual abuse.  Christians are leaving the Holy Land because they cannot worship, practice their religion and easily educate their children.

As we begin Holy Week, please keep in your prayers the people of the Holy Land.  Pray that Peace will one day take hold on Jew, Christian, and Muslim.  That soon Israeli Jew and Arab and Palestinian Christian can sit down and listen and learn from one another and find a way for a lasting peace.  Pray for understanding so that swords can be beaten into plowshares and the people of the Holy Land may live without the threat of war or invasion or security walls and refugee camps.

I invite you to enter into the events of Holy Week and open yourself to be moved and changed by the story that we begin telling this Sunday.  Come and watch and pray this week as we walk with Jesus. Pray that we might die with him in order that we might be raised with him.

I leave you with this image as we enter Holy Week.  Just as Jesus tends to us as the Good Shepherd, we also tend to him as His followers.  I love that image of each one of us who knows the love of Jesus returning that love to the one who gave His life for us.  How might we tend that love with one another, with our friends and with folks who this night in the city of Wilmington will go to bed not knowing if a loved one will be shot, or whether tomorrow they will have a bed to sleep in or food to eat.  Let us, this Holy Week, tend to the love so freely given to us by Jesus and pray for Peace in His Land.