palestine activism & building a peaceable community

[Jesus said to his disciples,] "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father…. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.” 

John 15:12-15,17

In May 2024, at the peak of student protests, I went to visit the student encampment at Princeton University. The encampments had been popping up at universities all over the country: Students were spreading tarps and tents across college quads and lawns, hanging banners and Palestinians flags, and camping out there for days–refusing to move, even with the threat of police brutality and expulsion from school. 

With all the varied depictions of these protests that I had seen online, I really didn’t know what to expect as I made my way into downtown Princeton. It was quiet downtown–the same normal, peaceful Nassau Street I have walked down a hundred times in the last few years. I made my way onto campus, where students were reading and strolling on the front lawn. Where was the commotion? Where were the signs?

Then, turning a corner around a building, I saw it: a couple police officers standing guard, looking over a quad strewn with tents, tarps, piles of blankets and belongings, banners and flags. 

And, of course, students–but not the loud, angry ones I had seen depicted in the news. Instead, I saw students sitting in circles chatting with one another and laughing; some students hunched over laptops or books working on schoolwork; others lay on tarps in the shade. It was remarkably quiet. Peaceful.

At one end of the camp were a dozen folding tables covered in snacks and bottled water, where community members served hot meals every day. Nearby was an art-making station, where people could draw their own signs; just past that was a makeshift lending library, a couple of bookshelves where students had brought books on liberation and justice to share with one another. 

Seeing some people I recognized, I made my way through the maze of tarps and joined a group. I quickly befriended a Princeton senior who filled me in on all the efforts behind the scenes. “Faculty and students were uniting and organizing together,” he said. “Hundreds of students and staff, united. That gives me hope,” he told me.

“We are building a peaceable community,” another student chimed in. 

“We could do this every day,” another said. “It doesn’t just have to be during a protest. We could have community like this every day.”

Watching the students gathered there, I found myself thinking about friendship–about the unlikely friendships springing up here between students of different student groups, different departments, different races, different religions. Spending hours upon hours outside together with nothing but time, these students were becoming friends. Equals and partners working towards a shared purpose.

This is how Jesus saw his disciples as well: “I do not call you servants any longer… but I have called you friends,” Jesus tells his disciples. Equals, partners, working towards a shared purpose.

He speaks these words at the Last Supper as he is sharing his final lessons with them–lessons he wants them to take with them after he is gone, lessons he wants us to take with us into the Easter season.

“This is my commandment,” Jesus says, looking around at his friends, “that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.”

It is a famous commandment, one we have heard many times. We know it foreshadows what Jesus is about to do: Literally lay down his life for his friends, as he puts his body into the hands of the Roman imperial guard who brutalize and execute him. This, we think, is the ultimate example of love: a willingness to put one’s own life on the line for the sake of others. Love: to place one’s body at risk of being harmed by soldiers or police in order to stand up for the lives of others.

But I wonder, sometimes, if we misunderstand this commandment. No one has greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. So often I have heard it to mean: Lay down all of your needs to take care of others. Sacrifice yourself until you have nothing left. 

This is a conversation I have had over and over again in ministry and in my own life, with family and friends: Is our job to give everything we have in order to care for others? Are we ever allowed to stop and take care of our own needs?

This kind of intense caretaking at the cost of our own needs is sometimes called codependence. It is when we get so caught up in caring for others’ needs that we forget our own, often ending up with imbalanced relationships that leave us frustrated and exhausted. In the book Codependent No More, author Melody Beattie writes, “Sometimes, codependent behavior becomes inextricably entangled with being a good wife, mother, husband, brother, or Christian.” We think that taking care of others endlessly–even if it leaves us resentful–makes us good Christians. But is that really what Jesus asks of us?

I think this is a question we have to ask as we read this passage. Does laying down our life for our friends mean giving up all of our own needs? Does it mean doing things for others until we resent them? Does it mean never saying no? Does it mean feeling responsible for other people’s choices or wellbeing, even as we neglect our own?

As we ask these questions, we might turn to the rest of Jesus’ words to his disciples, as he says: “You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.” 

You are my friends. Not my servants. It’s an important distinction, and one that we can easily gloss over if we don’t stop and really think about the difference between the two. The Greek word for “servant” in this passage can just as easily be translated to “slave”, a person who is entirely subservient. One Greek dictionary defines this word as a person who is “devoted to another to the disregard of one's own interests.” Sound familiar? A servant disregards their own needs for the sake of others. Why? Because they are in a relationship that is not equal, that is not mutual. 

A friend, on the other hand, is a person who is an equal, whose needs matter just as much as the other. And the relationship between friends is mutual: they take care of each other–perhaps different amounts at different times, depending on what the other is going through, but still there is balance. 

The model of friendship that Jesus describes offers us an alternative to codependence. While codependence entirely disregards one person’s needs, friendship shows us interdependence: Both people’s needs matter equally. As I watched students becoming friends at the Princeton University encampment, I found myself wondering: Might this be a different model of what it means to “lay down one’s life for one’s friends”?

These students are giving up their time and their air conditioning and their comfortable sofas and beds to sit outside on behalf of those in Gaza. Some are staying out all night to maintain the encampment. Some are even willing to risk arrest. 

Yet even as they do this, they are maintaining relationships of equality, of mutuality. They are taking care of each other’s needs, bringing books and food and guest lectures. Community members, including therapists, are coming in to offer them emotional support. They are interdependent: caring for one another.

Early in the week, Princeton Seminary students brought bread and juice to the camp, and they served communion to the protestors gathered there. Take, eat: this is my body, given for you. 

In the communion bread and cup, we witness Christ’s body laid down for us, to nourish us and sustain us. Not just to nourish and sustain others: but to receive nourishment and care for ourselves. 

After all, this is what follows Jesus’ words at this Last Supper: He hands the disciples bread. He pours them wine. He feeds them and cares for them in ways that nourish them more deeply than they can understand. He promises to give them the spiritual food they need to sustain them for the long journey ahead.

As we the Church continue to take this bread and cup, we take them together, in community. We are not islands, taking care of ourselves on our own. We are not servants, taking care of others’ needs at the expense of our own. We are interdependent, caring for one another. We are friends, equals, partners in the journey. May it be so.

Modified from a sermon preached at West Trenton Presbyterian Church on May 5, 2024