Rachel Weeps For Her Children

Preaching at a Methodist Covenant service is an interesting and painful challenge this year - to use the Jeremiah passages about good news for people in exile should be a helpful strand, but the readings about the old covenant talk again and again about peace for Isreal and how she will overcome her enemies. As the world watches Israel again sends tanks and bombs against communities that are struggling for water, food, decent hospital care and where people cannot work because their jobs are on the other side of the walls and blockades built (as throughout history) in the 'name of peace and security'. Hamas is not right in the way it is striving for what it wants, there are other more appropriate groups in Palestine. But as the British Government did on Bloody Sunday in Ireland, the Israeli Government is creating a whole new generation of 'freedom fighters' and suicide bombers. And in Gaza Rachel cries for her children, because they are no more.