Facing the Limit of Words: Church at the Crossroads & Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac’s Call for an Embodied Response

By Ryan Pemberton

Much of my recent four-hour flight from Seattle to Chicago was spent reading Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac’s book, Christ in the Rubble: Faith, the Bible, and Genocide in Gaza—a book I’ve been meaning to read since its release, now thrust to the top of my reading list by a conference I’d be attending as soon as I landed. The Palestinian pastor and theologian begins Christ in the Rubble by asking, “Why would a pastor write a book exposing the horrific realities of Gaza?” His answer: “For me, speaking about Gaza is primarily a pastoral mandate.”

This pastoral mandate, as Rev. Isaac calls it, dovetails perfectly with the event drawing me to Chicago: the Church at the Crossroads. As someone who is relatively new to Israel / Palestine, and the tragic situation unfolding in Palestine, and who is looking for faithful models of Christian engagement, I was eager to meet and hear from those with on-the-ground experience in Palestine, and to learn from those engaging in peacemaking work across North America.

Looking for Hope in the American Church

The Church at the Crossroads event is advertised as a gathering for Christians—ecumenical in nature, with a mix of evangelical, mainline, and Catholics—who “recognize that the church stands at a defining moment.” The event’s website notes: “As violence escalates in Israel and Palestine, and some in the Church use Scripture to justify war, occupation, or silence, we must ask: Have we traded the gospel of peace for the false promises of security and comfort?”

The two-day gathering included nearly 600 in-person attendees and a couple hundred more virtual attendees hearing from theologians, biblical scholars, activists, and pastors from across the U.S. and from Palestine. Perhaps none of the event’s speakers are more recognizable than Pastor Munther Isaac. From the mainstage at Parkview Community Church, Rev. Isaac welcomed guests with a pastoral tone that was as sharp as it was compassionate in a message titled, “The Jesus Way.” Rev. Isaac began by noting that the Church in North America has lost its way.

“The American evangelical church is complicit in this genocide,” Pastor Isaac insisted. “I have come looking for hope in you, followers of Jesus. This is not the Jesus way.”

Pastor Isaac went on to note that Christian Zionism is centrally responsible for the unfolding violence in Palestine. Among other contributing factors, our theology about Jesus and the end times has misled us, with profound impacts in Israel and Palestine. For many Christians, Rev. Isaac suggests, Jesus has been replaced with a secular, genocidal state.

“The biggest problem with Christian Zionism?” Pastor Isaac asked. “It has no Jesus in it. When we read the Bible it points toward Jesus, not Israel as a nation-state. He is the One in whom all God’s promises find their Yes. The offspring of Abraham is Jesus, not modern Israel.”

When securing God’s promises comes through military ends rather than Jesus, the weight of loss is staggering. And here’s where so many stop or look away. But as those who seek to faithfully follow our crucified and resurrected Lord, we must begin with a refusal to look away from the pain of those who suffer, wherever it leads.

Silence in the Face of Genocide: What is Our Faithful Response?

In Christ in the Rubble, Rev. Isaac repeatedly affirms the divine image in each human and insists on the need to lament every human death. Further, he notes the painful silence among so many Christians in the face of the overwhelming number of Palestinians killed—not only since October 7, 2023, but in decades of systematic violence by Israeli colonial settlers and, most recently, by Israel’s government. This sentiment is echoed in a New York Times headline that caught my eye two days after returning home from the conference: “My U.N. Commission’s Finding: Israel is Committing Genocide.”

The September 16 op-ed written by Navi Pillay—Chair of the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory—confirms what was repeatedly shared from the Church at the Crossroads stage: Israel’s military is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Why aren’t Christians acknowledging it?

“The scale of destruction is devastating,” Pillay writes for the New York Times. “More than 64,000 Palestinians have been killed, including over 18,000 children and nearly 10,000 women, according to Gazan health officials. Estimated life expectancy in Gaza has collapsed from 75 years to just over 40 in a single year, one of the steepest declines recorded.”

My mind reels with these numbers. My brain cannot compute 64,000 deaths. The impact of growing famine and loss of infrastructure on daily life in Palestine is beyond what I can realistically comprehend. And, I am unable to hold all of the suffering of the many Israelis who have lost loved ones or whose lives were upturned as friends and family were taken hostage. Still, these losses are as real as anything in my experience, and they are growing by the day. In the wake of such widespread devastation and loss of life in Palestine, a growing number of Christians around the world and here in the U.S. are asking, What is our faithful response?

A Call to Return to the Heart of Our Faith

In response to the misguided eschatology of Christian Zionism, Rev. Isaac insists that “We must recover the way of Jesus in our ethics.” The way of Jesus means following the One who declared his mission publicly, even at great risk to himself:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

Because he has anointed me

To bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

And recovery of sight to the blind,

To set free those who are oppressed” (Luke 4:18).

Jesus blesses the poor in spirit, Rev. Isaac reminded those gathered, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (Matthew 5:3–6). The peacemakers receive Jesus’s blessing in his sermon on the mount, not those who enact war (Matthew 5:9). The American Church must return to this way of Jesus that prioritizes the suffering and the oppressed, Pastor Isaac insists, setting the stage for the Church at the Crossroads presenters who followed.

Facing the Limit of Words

Midway through my flight to Chicago, I set Pastor Isaac’s book down. Perhaps for the first time in my life, I felt the limit of words. Even now, I struggle to describe what a disorienting feeling this was, as someone who has built a career on words, spoken and written.

This dizzying experience was not for Rev. Isaac’s lack of eloquence, nor for a lack of relevant information. All of Pastor Isaac’s efforts to offer a vivid portrait of the vast loss of life in Palestine in painstaking detail is necessary for anyone seeking to understand what is currently unfolding and clarity on how to respond faithfully. We must be educated, certainly. It was not for a lack of craft nor of relevant information that I felt this limit of words, but it was precisely in the face of overwhelmingly damning data and compelling writing that I realized: words are not enough to move the Church in this moment. Something more than words is needed.

As critical and necessary as accurate reporting is, an overreliance on data can be misleading. Historical anthropologist François Richards notes this point when writing on the transatlantic slave trade: “turning the question of international slavery into a statistical exercise is not the most useful way to think about it, and sadly that legacy has clouded academic debates more than it has helped.”

When discussing the legacy of international slavery, one slave, we must note, is too much. Similarly, when considering the continued assault on human life in Palestine, one death must be named as too much. Behind every number is a life bearing God’s image. The sacred nature of each life must not be lost in a deluge of well-intended data and necessary reporting in the ongoing genocide in Palestine.

“Words create worlds,” Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel writes in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, noting that the Holocaust began not with tanks but with dehumanizing language toward Jewish bodies. Words create worlds, yes—their transformative power, for good or evil, is undeniable.

As Christians, the power of words finds its root in the knowledge that God spoke all things into being—light, waters, and living creatures of every kind (Genesis 1:1–27; Psalm 33:9; Hebrews 11:3). Sea creatures dwelling in the deepest portions of our oceans, birds who subsist in our highest elevations, as well as each human on every land, these are all God-spoken creatures, all God-breathed beings. Spoken into being, God’s breath dwells in each creature.

Recognizing the power of words for good or ill is necessary, certainly. But we also recognize that spoken words, on their own, are not enough. Our words must become embodied.

When the fullness of time came for God to reconcile all things to Godself, the Word of God became embodied. As Christians, we recognize Jesus as Christ, Lord, and the enfleshed Word of God dwelling among us (John 1:14). Not in the abstract, but in the flesh is how God’s love is made known and fulfills God’s reconciling mission on earth. The embodied Word of God is our Lord, our hope, and the one who says even now, Follow me.

At the Church at the Crossroads gathering and elsewhere, Rev. Isaac is calling the Church to faithfully respond to this call by embodying the sacrificial love and transformative way of its Lord.

“How do I follow Jesus in the midst of these difficult days?” Pastor Isaac asked. “We remember that the Jesus who calls His disciples to follow Him revealed an alternative to the way of empire: a life of sacrifice committed to the way of love, even to the point of death on a cross.”

Taking a Revolutionary Stance: Three Practical Steps

Following two days of hearing from presenters, participating in cohort-based breakout sessions, shared meals, and extended conversations, Rev. Isaac returned to the stage to conclude the gathering, noting his own awareness of the limit of words.

“I don’t know what else to say,” he confessed.

Recalling the words of another Lutheran theologian and pastor, Rev. Isaac concluded the Church at the Crossroads gathering by sharing Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s view that “Christianity stands or falls by its revolutionary stance against violence.”

What does such a stance against violence entail in this moment? Rev. Isaac offered three practical suggestions.

First, stop denying the reality of genocide. According to Article II in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the United Nations defines genocide as any one of the following acts that is committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group:

Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The United Nations, genocide scholars, and even Holocaust scholars around the world have all recognized that the ongoing killings of Palestinians in Gaza constitutes genocide according to this definition. “Yes, it is genocide,” Hebrew University scholar Amos Goldberg concluded in April of 2024. “We can no longer avoid this conclusion.” To continue to ignore such conclusions is to perpetuate and normalize rampant racism and violence.

Second, faithful Christians must name and address Christian Zionism for what it is: antithetical to the gospel. Eschatology that locates a particular people’s possession of the so-called Holy Land as a key tenant for God’s restoration of creation and established Kingdom on earth, at the alienation, exclusion, and even elimination of others, is directly opposed to the truth of the gospel of Christ as good news for all. As such, Christian Zionism must be wholly rejected, in our pulpits and in our life together.

Third, our Christian faith must lead us to action. In faithful, active pursuit of the One who says, “Follow me,” such action in our present moment should include taking costly steps—such as boycotting, divesting, and insisting on sanctions against those who are funding and arming the military genocide in Palestine. Every dollar we spend is a vote we cast for a future we desire. Such costly steps are ethical, even faithful steps for Christians in this moment.

What our neighbors need from us now goes beyond charity. What is required is embodied solidarity.

“Solidarity, by definition, is costly,” Rev. Isaac insists. “Yes, it will be costly. Not if, but when. Silence and inaction do not protect the church. They make the church irrelevant.”

Such solidarity should not be taken up as a cheap token of our image-conscious concerns, as Josiah Daniels has noted for Sojourners in his reflections on the Church at the Crossroads event, but as our embodied pursuit of our Lord who continues to call us to places of suffering and solidarity with the oppressed.

“Whatever you do,” Rev. Isaac concluded, “do it all in the spirit of prayer. We’re Christians. Let prayer be our catalyst! Prayer is about resistance: resistance to normalization of violence and suffering.”

“In our faith in a just God, we must hold firm to our faith that justice will be granted—pray without ceasing that justice will be granted! Because we know God’s character, let us continue to plead and demand for justice.”

Raising Our Voices with a Visible Chorus

One way Church at the Crossroads is inviting Christians to respond to the ongoing injustice in Gaza is to sign the CATX Declaration. The Church at the Crossroads leadership has set a goal of securing 20,000 signatures by Christmas as a testament to the Church’s stand against genocide, in solidarity with our Palestinian neighbors in Gaza.

“This isn’t about tallying names,” Church at the Crossroads leadership writes, “it’s about being the church and following Jesus in a dark and violent world. A visible chorus of Christian voices can open hearts, embolden leaders, and fuel progress.”

In addition to the above invitations that Pastor Isaac has offered, signing the CATX Declaration is another practical step we can take as Christians, when so much feels out of reach or insignificant. For those leading congregations, you may also consider adding this concern to your weekly congregational prayers, introducing space for an ongoing church conversation engaging the Palestinian genocide, hosting a documentary screening, or reading a book on this topic together. No matter how small they seem, our active steps in faith matter profoundly in this critical moment—for our own discipleship, for the future of the Church, and for our neighbors’ wellbeing.

A Blessing for the Seemingly Impossible

As Rev. Isaac concluded, he began preparing the elements of the eucharist, giving thanks for Jesus’ body and blood, and inviting those gathered to come forward to receive communion—a unifying experience for the hundreds of evangelical, mainline, and Catholic Christians that was itself remarkable. Pastor Isaac then offered the following Franciscan blessing for those preparing to make their return trip home:

“May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart. May God bless you with anger, with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom, and peace. May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer so that you would reach out your hand to comfort them and change their pain into joy. And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.”

As we seek ways to respond bodily to our crucified and resurrected Lord in these troubling days of ongoing violence, may such boldness become visible and transformative wherever the Church is found. For we know that even our smallest steps are sufficient when it comes to practicing justice, freedom, and peace for those who are suffering as we together embody God’s long promised, inbreaking Kingdom.

Sources & Further Reading

Munther Isaac, Christ in the Rubble (Eerdmans, 2025)

Navi Pillay, “My U.N. Commission’s Finding: Israel is Committing Genocide,” New York Times (September 16, 2025), accessed September 16, 2025: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/16/opinion/un-palestinians-israel-gaza-genocide.html.

Clint Smith, How the Word is Passed (Little, Brown and Company, 2021), 252.

“Palestinian Christians Have a Warning for the Church,” Sojourners (September 16, 2025), accessed September 22, 2025: https://sojo.net/articles/opinion/palestinian-christians-have-warning-american-church.

Cover photo: Matt Mansueto Photography, Inc