“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” -Abraham Lincoln

In response to the failure of US led negotiations for peace in the Middle East, Pope Francis took the initiative in hosting a Vatican prayer summit. He and the Orthodox Church’s Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I were joined by Israeli President Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. With the Pope’s guidance, the representatives of four great traditions shared scripture and prayers and afterward planted an olive tree in a shaded garden of Vatican City.

In his second inaugural address, Abraham Lincoln with a heart burdened with the greatest conflict his nation might ever see, addressed American families split by moral ideals pitting brother against brother. In that moment he surmised the great mystery of conscience and conflict when he lamented, “The prayers of both could not be answered”. Bearing witness, our eternally optimistic nation memorialized its charge from the potentate to heal its rifts, forgive the treasons of racism, and reconstruct a society ensuring the domestic tranquility civil rights. For some, our national memory justifies our internalized history as marchers taking progressive strides towards protestant utopia but our uneasy tension between conscience and conflict binds our limbs as tightly as ever. For the moment we manage a fragile peace hoping the best for our children and way of life.

Our modern protestant view is shaped by our historical perspective and we would do well to learn from the narrative we have crafted for ourselves. Our history, as Lincoln reminds us, is shaped by circumstances we do not fully understand. Is it feasible to enforce democracy in Viet Nam? How will the leadership of nation survive the assassination of its visionaries? Can our young men become who they are locked away in a Southern California prison-yard battlefield? Any current revelation of God’s work in our religion and country has been hard won with the suffering and blood of our countrymen. Can we not also with humility and single-minded compassion recognize the struggle of our brethren overseas and help bind the wounds they bear?

Many argue that even a similar peace in that epic and contested foreign land is beyond our means. The region has a seemingly eternal bent for strife that is often viewed as self sustaining and self-perpetuating. Even within our churches, leaders will dispense mythic fatalistic views of human nature that justify our detachment from their troubles. Others may speculate with Lincoln that war is a divine judgment for some ancient and forgotten transgression. Many more will extrapolate an entitled defense that God has some mystical claim over the land and has a stake in specific river front territory. What these people of faith overlook is God’s claim over all creation’s lands and temples.

What the Pope’s initiative demonstrates is the power of a nominative solidarity with what Roman Catholics at Vatican II described as their “Separated Brethren”. With modern ecumenical spirit, the papacy has the authority to capture our American protestant imagination and speak prophetic truth to power in spite of our nescience. By example, we are being called out from our provincial spiritual jingoism that helps insulate us from the suffering of our own geographically separated brethren. Even if the United States is unable to deliver on its commitment as leaders to, and of enforcers of, world-wide justice, Providence is still able to work according to what Lincoln calls the “Almighty’s own purposes”.

While God’s vision may be fully formed and eternally realized, what we see is still dimly lit. Christians may conceitedly credit humanity with a general sense of that vision for the human narrative but we are all certain it is not conflict. As prime initiator, God is neither hurt nor helped by our actions on Earth. As Redeemer, God has suffered on creation’s behalf and with grace saves our world. Even with the future in God’s hands, we still have the opportunity for choice and our actions remain our own. Who we help and who we hurt is up to us.