The Things That Make For Peace (Lenten service sermon)

Scripture                               Luke 19:41-48

Our reading tonight from Luke’s Gospel is actually slightly out of sequence for Lent, because it takes place either at the end of Luke’s account of Palm Sunday or very soon thereafter – it’s sort of hard to tell, as it all runs together in the Gospel.  Jesus has entered the city of Jerusalem, where he knows he is to be killed.  He enters the city to the shouts and waving palms and the acclaim of the crowds.  Some of the Pharisees try to rain on his parade by telling Jesus to make his disciples pipe down, but Jesus replies, “If these folks were silent, the stones would shout out!”

In Matthew’s and Mark’s Gospels, the next things Jesus does is to curse a fig tree that did not bear fruit and to throw the moneychangers out of the Temple.  But Luke includes a scene not in the other two Gospels.  As he approaches the city, Jesus’ mood changes, darkens.  He becomes overwhelmed with grief and begins to weep.  Even though he knows that he will soon be killed, his tears are not for himself, but for those who would soon kill him:  If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”  He goes on to predict the destruction of Jerusalem, “because”, as Jesus said, “you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.”

That phrase, “the things that make for peace” snagged in my mind.  What did Jesus mean by that?  What are the things that make for peace, and in what way had Jerusalem missed out on them?

We remember that Jerusalem was a center of religious and political power – it had been so ever since King Solomon had built the Temple in Jerusalem, and then his own house almost next to it.  Religious and political power were intertwined.  Since Judea had lost its independence and fallen under Roman rule, Jerusalem was now only a local outpost of Roman rule, and the religious authorities by and large colluded with the Roman government, but still, political and religious power were centered in Jerusalem, extending out in a system of exploitation and domination over the region. And power corrupts. While the system had a veneer of law and long-held custom, ultimately, at least from a political point of view, might made right.  Or, you could say, they lived by Mel Brook’s version of the golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rules.  And while the Pax Romana – the Roman peace – held fast, it was a peace enforced by brutal suppression, with frequent crucifixions of troublemakers as a demonstration to would-be rebels of what would happen to them if they stepped out of line.  Indeed, lots of would-be liberators ended up on Roman crosses; but it is only the innocent and crucified Jesus that truly has the power to liberate us.

Jesus taught about a different kind of power, and a different kind of peace.  Jesus’ disciples repeatedly squabbled over which one of them was the greatest, and in response Jesus told them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.  But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.  For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”  Jesus taught, not about the kingdom of Rome, but about the Kingdom of God, which began small and in secret, like a mustard seed, but eventually spread and grew from the bottom up until it could overwhelm anything else growing in the field.

Two contrasting and mutually incompatible visions of power; two contrasting and mutually incompatible ways of life.  Rome and its allies among the religious establishment saw Jesus as yet another troublemaker, a threat to their power, and so they dealt with him as they had with so many troublemakers in the past.  As Jesus is quoted in John’s Gospel, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.  And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.”  It is striking that Jesus was put to death, not by the dregs of society, but by the cream of society, by the leaders of the Jewish faith and the representatives of Roman law, at that point the world’s greatest civilization.  Jesus confronted the best that humankind had to offer, and the best humankind had to offer put him to death.   “And that is the judgment, that the light came into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.”

What are the things that make for peace?  Rome enforced a brutal peace from the outside, from the top down, but the peace Christ offers begins from below and indeed from within.  Rome enforced its brutal peace in order to cling to its own power, its own privileges, its own priorities, but the peace of Christ comes from surrendering all of these to God’s will.  As Jesus said, “those who want to save their life will lose them, but those who would lose their life for my sake will save it.” 

Our society tempts us to grasp for so many things – bigger houses, larger incomes, more impressive job titles.  Most of all, we are tempted to try to have our own way, to impose our own will on those around us.  But do these things truly satisfy, truly bring peace – or are we, to tweak the old country song, “looking for peace in all the wrong places.”  Those who own large estates and control vast sums of money are rarely satisfied, but instead want even more – as oil tycoon H. L. Hunt said, “Money is just a way of keeping score.”  Jesus invites us to walk away from that kind of game and that kind of scorekeeping altogether.  Jesus told his followers, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.  I do not give as the world gives.  Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.”  To know Jesus is to know peace.  May we always be mindful of the things that make for peace, and may others experience the peace of Christ through our witness. Amen.