"You are truly messengers of peace. I will make my people happy over you!"
Since Emmaus City Church formed in Worcester, Massachusetts a few years ago, we have wanted to embody the joy and justice of Jesus' Gospel locally, regionally, nationally, and globally in however He leads. One organization we have had the privilege to partner with that helps us do this globally is Preemptive Love Coalition, an international development organization based in Iraq that provides lifesaving heart surgeries to Iraqi children and training for local doctors and nurses.
The first and second City Notes on Preemptive Love, along with the final below, provide stories from chapters in co-founder Jeremy Courtney's book, Preemptive Love: Pursuing Peace One Heart at a Time. I recently had the privilege to hear Jeremy in Springfield, Massachusetts on Saturday, February 16 when he came to share with the Go Conference '19. While I can't quite capture the power of his prophetic call to love first at the conference, I hope some of these excerpts from his book on this blog will help you catch a glimpse of what it was like. If you resonate with what you read below, I encourage you to read the entire book and consider how you might partner with Preemptive Love Coalition.
Chapter 14 | The Remedy
Ahmed's uncle, Amo, and Ahmed were a living parable when they checked in at the hospital's security station, a testament to love and courage and enduring to the end after Ahmed's parents had suffered critical injuries and remained unconscious as a result of the tragic car accident right before Ahmed's surgery. Amo had set his hand to the plow for Ahmed and his brother's family and not turned back.
Ahmed was crouching on the ground with his legs pulled up to his chest, playing with an orange plastic bulldozer. I call it "first position" for kids with congenital heart disease. Somehow, without ever being taught how to do it, children around the world learn to squat into "first position" to compensate for the weaknesses of their broken hearts.
Ahmed's parents had worked for four years to gain access to "the List" so that their little Ahmed could travel outside for his much-needed surgery. With every passing day, Talib and his grew more in love with their son and stored up more memories in their hearts, not knowing if today's sticky-faced ice-cream kiss or yesterday's walk through the park might have been their last. One thing I will say about parents who walk the tightrope of death with their kids each day: they give hugs and kisses and color pictures and share snack time with their kids like they really mean it. Minutes together become a currency more precious than gold.
And now Ahmed had been safely admitted to the ward by his uncle, and his name was secured on the surgery list even though his parents were kept from being there with him due to their severe injuries caused by the accident. Outside in the general waiting area, hundreds of families were gathered, respectfully accosting us at the shoe-changing station each time we entered from the outside and were forced to stop at the bottleneck where we had to cover our shoes in plastic hairnets. There were kaffiyeh-wearing Shia Arabs from the south, Sunni Arabs in suits from the west, Turkmen from Diyala, Chaldean Christians from Mosul, and at least three different kinds of Kurds. They spent their days together talking, crying, and simply listening to one another. If a mother had to leave the room, the other mothers in the room quickly took up their responsibility of looking after her child as if she was their own. I had to say, in a country where the various ethnic and religious blocs were constantly threatening to secede or cordon themselves off from one another, the hospital looked more like a productive gathering of parliament than the dysfunctional party politics that hours before had been threatening to cut off aid at the city's borders.
And these kids were sick. Even with Dr. Novick, six foot huge, two parts Churchillian field marshal here to occupy your hospital and whip you into shape and one part Father Christmas bringing the gift of life and the assurance that none shall be forgotten to the remotest parts of the planet, and his medical team working around the clock, the hospital had only two operating theaters and limited ICU beds. Once the team had performed two or three surgeries per day a few days in a row, there was nothing to be done except wait for the kids in the ICU to be discharged before more surgeries could resume. There were far too many children to serve, at far too slow a pace, with far too many bottlenecks to get to all the children, parents, and grandparents who camped out in the hospital's waiting room. Within a few days of being in the hospital, Ahmed's surgery had already been canceled a couple times to accommodate more urgent children, and Amo was becoming anxious. ...
Preemptive love means putting your own blood on the line.
Finally the day came for Ahmed's surgery. The month of Ramadan and the widespread daytime fasting had caused a precipitous decrease in blood donations, as it did every year. But it was not every year that an international heart surgery team showed up and pushed the hospital to the edges of its capacity. Blood was needed urgently, or there was a grave risk these kids were not going to make it through their surgeries alive. Rizgar called the provincial director of health, who, in turn, called a press conference. With cameras rolling for the evening news, Rizgar gave an impassioned speech on his compatriots about the team, about welcoming Arabs and Turkmen to the city for surgery, about love and working for God. He then asked everyone to eat a hearty iftar meal and come out to donate blood so that we could finish these surgeries and save as many lives as possible.
When the cameras turned off, Rizgar was first in line to donate blood. The image of Kurdish blood pumping through the heart of a little Arab boy like Ahmed was not lost on anyone. Preemptive love means putting your own blood on the line.
In surgery, Dr. Novick and his team stopped a human heart, cut it open, patched the holes, reconstructed the valves inside, and made it beat again. Ahmed's surgery went past midnight, but he came through with flying colors. We were about to send a little boy back into the world, never again to fear his heart or dream small dreams. Amo sat by his bedside in the ICU, so grateful his nephew was alive and well. To celebrate, he returned a phone call he had received earlier in the day: "Talib? Brother? Your son is alive! The surgery went well, praise God! He's alive!" Talib and his wife had miraculously survived the tragic car accident that rendered them unconscious, in critical condition and on the brink of death, while their son was being whisked away to surgery at the hands of Kurds and Americans – people many of their neighbors might very well have called their enemies.
"You are truly messengers of peace. I will make my people happy over you!"
Ahmed's uncle, Amo, and Ahmed were a living parable when they checked in at the hospital's security station, a testament to love and courage and enduring to the end after Ahmed's parents had suffered critical injuries and remained unconscious as a result of the tragic car accident right before Ahmed's surgery. Amo had set his hand to the plow for Ahmed and his brother's family and not turned back.
Ahmed was crouching on the ground with his legs pulled up to his chest, playing with an orange plastic bulldozer. I call it "first position" for kids with congenital heart disease. Somehow, without ever being taught how to do it, children around the world learn to squat into "first position" to compensate for the weaknesses of their broken hearts.
Ahmed's parents had worked for four years to gain access to "the List" so that their little Ahmed could travel outside for his much-needed surgery. With every passing day, Talib and his grew more in love with their son and stored up more memories in their hearts, not knowing if today's sticky-faced ice-cream kiss or yesterday's walk through the park might have been their last. One thing I will say about parents who walk the tightrope of death with their kids each day: they give hugs and kisses and color pictures and share snack time with their kids like they really mean it. Minutes together become a currency more precious than gold.
And now Ahmed had been safely admitted to the ward by his uncle, and his name was secured on the surgery list even though his parents were kept from being there with him due to their severe injuries caused by the accident. Outside in the general waiting area, hundreds of families were gathered, respectfully accosting us at the shoe-changing station each time we entered from the outside and were forced to stop at the bottleneck where we had to cover our shoes in plastic hairnets. There were kaffiyeh-wearing Shia Arabs from the south, Sunni Arabs in suits from the west, Turkmen from Diyala, Chaldean Christians from Mosul, and at least three different kinds of Kurds. They spent their days together talking, crying, and simply listening to one another. If a mother had to leave the room, the other mothers in the room quickly took up their responsibility of looking after her child as if she was their own. I had to say, in a country where the various ethnic and religious blocs were constantly threatening to secede or cordon themselves off from one another, the hospital looked more like a productive gathering of parliament than the dysfunctional party politics that hours before had been threatening to cut off aid at the city's borders.
And these kids were sick. Even with Dr. Novick, six foot huge, two parts Churchillian field marshal here to occupy your hospital and whip you into shape and one part Father Christmas bringing the gift of life and the assurance that none shall be forgotten to the remotest parts of the planet, and his medical team working around the clock, the hospital had only two operating theaters and limited ICU beds. Once the team had performed two or three surgeries per day a few days in a row, there was nothing to be done except wait for the kids in the ICU to be discharged before more surgeries could resume. There were far too many children to serve, at far too slow a pace, with far too many bottlenecks to get to all the children, parents, and grandparents who camped out in the hospital's waiting room. Within a few days of being in the hospital, Ahmed's surgery had already been canceled a couple times to accommodate more urgent children, and Amo was becoming anxious. ...
Preemptive love means putting your own blood on the line.
Finally the day came for Ahmed's surgery. The month of Ramadan and the widespread daytime fasting had caused a precipitous decrease in blood donations, as it did every year. But it was not every year that an international heart surgery team showed up and pushed the hospital to the edges of its capacity. Blood was needed urgently, or there was a grave risk these kids were not going to make it through their surgeries alive. Rizgar called the provincial director of health, who, in turn, called a press conference. With cameras rolling for the evening news, Rizgar gave an impassioned speech on his compatriots about the team, about welcoming Arabs and Turkmen to the city for surgery, about love and working for God. He then asked everyone to eat a hearty iftar meal and come out to donate blood so that we could finish these surgeries and save as many lives as possible.
When the cameras turned off, Rizgar was first in line to donate blood. The image of Kurdish blood pumping through the heart of a little Arab boy like Ahmed was not lost on anyone. Preemptive love means putting your own blood on the line.
In surgery, Dr. Novick and his team stopped a human heart, cut it open, patched the holes, reconstructed the valves inside, and made it beat again. Ahmed's surgery went past midnight, but he came through with flying colors. We were about to send a little boy back into the world, never again to fear his heart or dream small dreams. Amo sat by his bedside in the ICU, so grateful his nephew was alive and well. To celebrate, he returned a phone call he had received earlier in the day: "Talib? Brother? Your son is alive! The surgery went well, praise God! He's alive!" Talib and his wife had miraculously survived the tragic car accident that rendered them unconscious, in critical condition and on the brink of death, while their son was being whisked away to surgery at the hands of Kurds and Americans – people many of their neighbors might very well have called their enemies.
"You are truly messengers of peace. I will make my people happy over you!"
Now, just a few days down the road, Ahmed was sprawled out on his bed with potato chips and candy wrappers all around him. He was breathing well on his own, his circulation was great. No more first position for him! His heart had been remade, and everything he could want still lay ahead of him: his family, his friends, his school, and soccer.
Over in the corner, a mustached man in reading glasses sat regally in what could have been a set of Brooks Brothers nighttime loungewear (a.k.a. grandpa pajamas). He turned out to be Chief Awad, an Arab tribal sheikh from the vice president's delegation of parents. His grandson was sleeping in the bed beside him, recovering from surgery like Ahemd. "You know, you guys – you Americans – don't have a very good reputation among our people these days." Chief Awad went on to tell the history of his area, providing greater context for the war stories and anecdotes about the ongoing American presence in Iraq. He talked about his hometown and the incredible history behind it. He spoke with pride, sharing what he loved about home and how strong and hope-filled his people were. We knew so little about his people and their place.
His hometown was ground zero for some of the earlier stages of the Iraq War, as the United States invaded from the southern port, fought through his area, and pressed northward to Baghdad. The fact that we were Americans would have normally made him standoffish and distrusting. I can only wonder what sort of counsel and support he had given in previous days to those who might have asked his permission to retaliate against Americans, both soldier and civilian. But he was not in his home element. He was still the chief of his tribe of hundreds of thousands – the kind of guy who could issue an edict and rally thousands of sons and cousins throughout his bloodline to do ill or do good. But no one in these parts recognized his authority or treated him with any special dignity. Except us. He was warm and clearly very moved by the week of surgeries an the obvious efforts to create an environment for life and peace. Some of the files of sick children I looked at that week had surveys from the most war-torn areas of Iraq with questions that broke my heart:
1. Where did you live during the bombings?
2. Were any of your residences bombed? Were you there?
3. Do you know if your house was attacked with white phosphorous or any incendiary weapons?
4. Were you or your family ever burned, wounded, or injured in bombings?
5. Have you ever searched and recovered survivors, corpses, cleaned and prepared bodies for burial, searched bodies for identification, or transported any of these people?
6. Did you clean up, recover your things from, or rebuild your house on the rubble?
7. Have your children played in bomb craters, buildings, construction sites, or collected materials salvaged from sites that have been bombed?
Cody spent a long time talking to the chief about how we could take steps toward creating postures of preemptive love with his people and across Iraq. Cody dreamed with him about a time and place where lions lie down with lambs, where there is no more war, and where heart disease never wins. "What if we could step into that place here, today?"
"You know, Americans don't have a very good name among our people. But you guys area unlike the Americans and Christians we constantly hear about." He paused. "I am a sheikh – the chief – so my people are sad when I am sad. And when I am happy, my people are happy. You have done so much for us here today. You are not like the others. I am going back happy. I am going back with a message of peace ... "
He took a look at his grandson Hussein and surveyed the effects of the most border-crossing, death-defying surgery-and-training effort to date in Iraq. Never before had a team so large and diverse descended to say yes to so many children in need of lifesaving heart surgeries. Never before had Iraqis been so widely gathered from across the lines that divide and sheltered in a safe place of healing. As Chief Awad surveyed the meaning of our inaugural Remedy Mission and our message or preemptive love, Ahmed and other "enemy" children from every warring faction in the country were laughing and playing together, recovering from lifesaving heart surgeries. "You are truly messengers of peace. I will make my people happy over you!"
Afterword
Where you are sitting in the world as you finish this story may influence how you interpret my idea of preemptive love. If you are in the States, you may think first in terms of American kindness toward enemy Iraqis. If you are in Iraq, however, you may be more quick to see the countless times in this story in which the Iraqis acted first, offering protection, intervening, or taking a risk to welcome us in, even though we were often cast as their enemies. The truth is, preemptive love does not begin in the heart of humanity. Neither Americans nor Iraqis are inherently better at loving first than the other. We are all tribal, programmed to protect our own.
Instead, preemptive love originates in the heart of God. The one who made the universe and holds everything in it is the first and the last enemy lover. And in the end, it is not our love that overcomes hate at all. It is God's. And preemptive love is not just something God does as a one-off transaction. Preemptive love is who God is, constantly overcoming our hateful rebellion and our lesser passions that belie the self-interest we suppose ourselves to be pursuing. In fact, if we were really self-interested, committed to our ultimate well-being, we wouldn't fill ourselves up, saying, "Eat, drink, and be merry." We would empty ourselves out and give ourselves away in service or sacrifice to others, just like Jesus did. That's where they real joy is. Whenever we spend our lives trying to preserve, protect, and shore up security for ourselves, we actually lose the very thing we were trying to save, as it daily flits away while we obsess over insurance policies, retirement plans, and dead bolts on the doors. We lose the joy of living for something bigger, something with meaning. But when we spend our lives trying to lose ourselves in love for God and love for friends and enemies, we actually gain life, no matter how much we lose in the process. This is the paradox of preemptive love!
But I would be so afraid! I could never do what you are doing! I hear that objection wherever I go, from Iraqis and Americans, Muslims and Christians alike. But preemptive love does not require the absence of fear. Jessica and I are not brave or courageous. That is not the take-away we want for you! If anything, we live with a chronic sense of fear: for our physical safety, for our kids, for our financial future, for our faith. In fact, even as I write this sitting in Iraq, I find all those fears pounding on my door after a group of thugs threatened me and insisted I halt publication of this book. As I weight the consequences of caving in to their bullying versus keeping my word and following through with the commitments I've made, I am afraid of the ways they can manufacture "evidence" that would ruin our work here once and for all and leave thousands of children without many of the immediate and midterm solutions they need to survive.
No, preemptive love is not about the absence of fear. We cannot avoid the foreboding storms that loom on the horizon, but we can learn to dance in the rain. And when we accept God's preemptive love, that Christ makes all things new, we can quit playing by everyone else's rules and pursue a long, risky journey with the God who loves his enemies – even enemies like you and me. What Jess and I learned in that broken-down neighborhood so many years ago is still true today: we don't need power to live in peace. Because even though fear, hatred, and violence conspire to unmake the world, preemptive love unmakes violence. Preemptive love fulfills the fears of fundamental fatwas, making children love their enemies. And preemptive love overcomes fear. And before all is said and one, the far country is the near-and-now country for all who enter the marathon, lean on love, and make it to the finish line.
Next post: Special City Notes '19 | Hermanas: Coming to Our Latina Family's Table w/ Lament & Listening, Led by Hope
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Christ is all,
Rev. Mike "Sully" Sullivan
