Lent 1: Jesus Weeps: If Only You Recognized the Things That Make for Peace
If only you recognized the things that make for peace!
Last Friday, 7 of us from SJMC joined about 200 Mennonites, and a few Palestinian and Jewish folks, to sing for peace outside Waterloo City Hall. I was one of at least 15 MCEC pastors in attendance. The event was organized by Mennonite Action, a mostly Mennonite young adult led grass roots movement that sprang up quickly in the US and then Canada in response to the ongoing war in Gaza. It was the second event in Waterloo, the first being a day in December where about 20 of these hymn sing protests happened across North America, followed in early January by one on Capitol Hill in Washington with several arrests of Mennonite singing protestors – a few of whom I talked to at Laurelville. I had debated going to the first event, but found myself conflicted between a desire to do something, and in a peaceful way like singing, but with some lingering questions about whether this was how I wanted to express my desire and commitment to peace. There is a political and very public element to this I needed to sit with awhile. Can something like singing, worship, be co-opted for someone else’s purposes? Would I feel in some way used? What does it mean to attend as a pastor? Does a group of Mennonites singing far away make any difference anyways? A recent editorial in the last on-line Canadian Mennonite by Ed Olfert captured some of my hesitations, when he wonders about protests and writes ‘If that same first and best energy is given to denouncing, there will be diminished creativity left for love.’ (https://canadianmennonite.org/stories/different-kind-yes-man)
I also know how complicated the conflict is and has been for decades in Israel-Palestine. There is such a long history and context for what we have witnessed in the last months since the brutal Oct 7 ambushes and hostage taking, and the utter devastation and humanitarian disaster of Gaza ever since – the Jewish Holocaust, the 1948 Establishment of the State of Israel and expulsion of Palestinians, known by them as the Nakba, the 1967 6 Day War, the Munich Olympic Games assassinations, the Camp David Accords and Oslo Accords, the Yitzhak Rabin assassination, the First and Second Intifada, the permanent Refugee camps and building of settlements all over the West Bank, The Building of the Wall, the various failed Peace Processes, the role of the US and the West, the huge power in-balance that some have compared to Apartheid, the ongoing violence, distrust and chaos of the Region on both sides. It is hard to sort all of this out. This did not just start on Oct 7. The latest printed Canadian Mennonite – A Prayer for an Impossible Peace, (January 26, 2024) gets at some of this complexity, and how to listen well to the many varied voices. I remember back to my January 1992 Learning Tour to Israel/Palestine, which included talking to Israeli’s settlers, being hosted so warmly for meals in Palestinian homes, visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, having rocks thrown at our bus by Palestinian youth in Hebron, visiting the disputed Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, spending a day in the Refugee Camps in Gaza, accompanied by UN personal, worshipping in Jewish Synagogues and Christian Orthodox places of worship, talking to Muslim organizers, and listening in awe to the stories and hopes and dreams and actions of Palestinian and Jewish peace activists, rooted in their deep faith commitments. Someone commented then already, that a visitor for a week to Israel/Palestine writes a book claiming the know how to solve the problems; someone visiting for a month, writes a small essay, and those who stay and listen and live there for a long time, do not write anything at all, knowing how complex and nuanced and challenging the situation is. What are the things that make for peace?
This time the invitation to the Waterloo Mennonite Action Hymn Sing came from MCC Ontario, with the integrity of their 60 plus years of working as a peace organization with Palestinian and Israeli partners, who were pleading for advocacy for an end to the violence. (for MCC’s Response to Gaza see – https://mcc.org/what-we-do/initiatives/disaster-response/palestine-and-israel?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ON%20-%20Mennonite%20Action%20to%20churches%20Feb%209&utm_content=ON%20-%20Mennonite%20Action%20to%20churches%20Feb%209+CID_21a8421671ee2dae573af9d5bb930564&utm_source=CM&utm_term=click%20here)
Mennonite Action named this day as a gathering ‘to sing hymns, deliver petitions, and to demand support for a permanent ceasefire, a release of all hostages, an end to Canadian arms exports, and a lasting peace for all Palestinians and Israelis.’ (https://actionnetwork.org/event_campaigns/canadian-mennonite-day-of-action-feb-9th) I could get behind that, although I am not as comfortable with the demand language. While I still carried many questions, and everything might not be done exactly how I would do it, after many months of watching the unbearable situation in Gaza continue, I wanted to do something, to sing with others who desired peace for this troubled place in our world – to find a place to simply join others in lament – that was my deepest desire – to lament, to have tears. And so we gathered, we prayed, we heard from Christian, Jewish and Muslim voices, and we sang. There were lots of people I know and love and trust from the broader Mennonite community. There were lots of Mennonite young adults. I sang in community. There was this humble spirit that gathered voices in lament – ‘Lord, listen to your children praying.’ (VT 682) For me, this is where it begins – with lament, with tears, with crying over the lack of peace in our world. To lament. To cry. Maybe that is where it all starts. That is why I went to sing last Friday.
This Sunday we begin the season of Lent, and our worship series on ‘Fighting like Jesus – How Jesus Waged Peace Throughout Holy Week.’ We will slowly walk through the last week of Jesus’ life, day by day, with this lens of waging peace. We are basing this series on the book by that same name by Jason Porterfield (Herald Press, 2022). For him, it all comes down to tears and lament. He begins the Preface of his book by sharing his experience as a young naive peacenik in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside – Canada’s poorest urban neighborhood – thinking he could make a difference, and instead finding himself totally inadequate and overwhelmed by the huge issues and brokenness all around him. One Palm Sunday he dragged himself to church with his last ounce of energy, and then couldn’t bring himself to participate in the festivities, upbeat hymns and processional cheering. He was too depressed to celebrate with all the waving branches of children and Hosannas that have traditionally accompanied this day.
So he read his Bible instead – and he didn’t stop at the Palm Sunday processional into Jerusalem, but continued into the next paragraph, all part of the same story – the weeping of Jesus over Jerusalem – the section we rarely read or connect to Palm Sunday. As he writes ‘Amid all the excitement, nobody seemed to notice that one person was not celebrating. He was not rejoicing. He was not smiling. He was not having a good time. In fact, he was crying. The gospel of Luke tells us that while the crowd shouted cheers, Jesus shed tears.’ (Ibid, p.19) Jesus was overwhelmed with grief. Not only that, but it tells us why he was crying – ‘If only you knew on this day the things that make for peace.’ Jesus knew what was ahead, and he was lamenting the path ahead for him, the path the world always seems to take – a path that would be about human violence, when he longed for peace. His most fervent desire was for his followers to understand the way of peace, and this way of peace was demonstrated on each day. This was the primary objective for the whole week! Jason Porterfield’s bold claim is that this passage is the interpretive key to Holy Week. Holy Week is a struggle for peace and a campaign for peace and a waging of peace that would consume his final days. Each day Jesus is correcting the misguided methods us humans use to make peace. The cross becomes the ultimate way Jesus makes peace. As he writes – ‘If you want to learn how Jesus makes peace, there is no better place to look than Holy Week.’ (Ibid, p.23) And it all starts with lament – a lament over a city that still cries out for peace even until today!
So, how does this play out on Day 1 – on Palm Sunday itself? How does Jesus wage peace on that day? I borrow much of this from Porterfield’s book (Ibid, pages 26-40). Imagine 2 different processions coming into the city of Jerusalem, which means City of Peace. From the West comes the imperial power of Pontius Pilate, complete with cavalry on horses, foot soldiers, leather armor, helmets, weapons, and a golden eagle mounted on a huge pole. He has come to keep peace at Passover – afterall, in 4 BC a group of frustrated Jews revolted at the temple and killed some Roman soldiers. This show of power will quell any thoughts of resisting Rome. Revolt is futile. Dreams of independence are crushed! Peace and order will be maintained at any cost. The crowds follow this procession in awe and fear. From the East word comes of another procession, of someone who has taught and healed and raised someone from the dead – there must be power there. The crowds rush over to that side of the city. The crowd shouts Hosanna – Save Us! The expectations are high. You lay coats down before a king. Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord. The crowd remembers 167 BC and Judas Maccabeus, the ‘Hammer’, and his violent and somewhat successful political rebellion. When he entered and recaptured parts of Jerusalem, the people waved, guess what? Palm Branches. They minted their own coins with the symbol of the Palm Branch on them – the same kind of meaning a separatist flag would have today. Surely Jesus would stand in that tradition?
But here Jesus goes and gets a colt to ride – so different than the War Horses. He comes from the Mount of Olives, which means he would have come in through the Sheep Gate. This was the gate used when people would bring lambs for sacrifice. Is there symbolism already here of Jesus offering himself up as the ultimate Pascal Lamb? A lamb rather than a hammer. A donkey rather than a war horse. Two processions so different. The people expected, hoped for, a violent revolutionary clash of this Jesus with the power of Rome. Instead it would be a collision course, a confrontation of two competing visions and ideologies and incompatible approaches to making and maintaining peace. (Ibid, p 10) Jesus does move towards conflict, but as the Lamb and not the violent hammer – a vision we are called to follow, ‘to embrace the way of a sacrificial lamb.’ (Ibid,p.40) This is how Jesus wages peace, right from the start. While the expectant crowds are waving their palm branches, and shouting Hosanna, Jesus, enters on a colt, a donkey, through the Sheep Gate, and he starts to weep – ‘If you, even you, had only recognized the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.’ It comes back to the weeping, the tears, the lament over Jerusalem, and a people, a crowd, who cannot see the Jesus way of peace.
One of the hymns we sang last Friday was the hymn just before the sermon today – Let There Be Light, O God of hosts! (VT 714). It was in this song that I had tears – especially when it got to the last verse – ‘Let woe and waste of warfare cease, that useful labor yet may built its homes with love and laughter filled! God, give your wayward children peace!’ – that line got me – homes with love and laughter filled – there are so many homes being bombed and lives being destroyed, and children suffering and dying, and families scattered – and I longed for love and laughter in Gaza, in Israel, in the West Bank – of children, of families, and even of strangers and enemies agreeing to build up, rather than destroy, to live the way of peace modeled by Jesus and found in each of the faith traditions that are there. We need to start with weeping, with cries for justice and peace, with the vulnerability to seek the welfare of our neighbour and our enemy – to wish a world filled with love and laughter. God, give your wayward children peace! Let this be the posture we take as we enter this season of Lent. If only you recognized the things that make for peace! Amen.