Pray with the Middle East, April 20, 2025

Lectionary Selection: John 20: 1-18

Prayers for the Middle East

God of resurrection hope, as we frantically search for your comforting presence in places of death, we ask that you appear before us and grant us the vision to see you in the midst of the pain and loss that has become our daily bread. Cleanse our eyes and hearts from the depths of grief and despair we inhabit, and direct our tongues and feet to paths of witness and service. Though we are hard-pressed on every side by death, Christ Jesus’ life is also being revealed in us. Though earthly powers abuse and destroy your creation and your beloved creatures, in your justice, you will topple their thrones and exalt the downcast. This Resurrection Day empowers us to remain your faithful children, revived by the sight of our Savior and emboldened to go and share his Good News. Fill our mouths with your praises; fill our hearts with the message that compassion and truth, healing, and hope have not perished from the earth. This we pray in the name of Christ Jesus, our risen Lord. Amen.

Mission Moment from the Middle East

The Middle East is where hope was abandoned at the Crucifixion, but also where hope was born, in the Nativity as well as in the Resurrection of Christ. These days the descendants of those witnesses to the Nativity and the Resurrection, namely Middle Eastern Christians, are caught between these two realities once more: the darkness of the tomb on Easter morning and God’s promise to turn our “mourning into dancing”; the panicked confusion of trying to search for an “absent” God in the darkness, and the strange message of life and hope that God communicates through Jesus’ “impossible” turnaround.

But through these “many dangers, toils and snares,” there is the testimony of the hard-pressed church of the Middle East, demonstrating to the world its persistence and insistence on trusting God. Assyrian Christians in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey are being pressured to abandon their homeland; Armenian Christians face the continued threat of ethnic cleansing from Azerbaijan; minorities in Syria are filled with anxiety about their future; and Palestinian Christians and Muslims are enduring decades of destruction with little hope for reconciliation. These are but a sketch of what is weighing on the church in the Middle East.

Yet the church is not paralyzed by these frightening realities. The Middle East Council of Churches, a partner organization of the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), actively builds and reinforces bridges between churches and between religions in many Middle Eastern countries and also organizes programs to train youth and adults for Christian education, ecumenical witness, and service.

Haigazian University, jointly owned by the Union of the Armenian Evangelical Churches in the Near East and the Armenian Missionary Association of America, all of them partners of the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), engages its students in caring for those displaced by the recent war on Lebanon, while also bringing new perspectives to a worldwide audience. In March, its president, Rev. Dr. Paul Haidostian, traveled to the U.S. to address an audience of students, academics, diplomats, and clergy in a lecture at Columbia University on “Education, Peace, & the Bridge-Building Role of Middle East Christianity.”

The church in the Middle East is communicating Christ’s story of resurrection to those most in need of its transforming message. Will the church in the West add its voice to theirs, courageously facing those intent on keeping God’s hope embalmed and entombed and challenging them with the gospel’s living words of truth and grace?

Written by Rev. Nishan Bakalian, GM Mission Co-Worker with the UAECNE in Beirut, Lebanon

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