March 16, 2025

On the Road to Calvary: The Things That Make for Peace

Today, I continue our Lenten Pulpit Series: On the Road to Calvary. And this morning we stop with Jesus at the gate to the holy city in the heart of Israel.

These days, Israel is in the headlines. we’re all aware of the deadlocked hostility between Israel and Palestine that is the touchstone for much of Arab resentment and retaliation around the world.  The epicenter of the righteous rage is Jerusalem.  And “ground zero” is a holy place in the Holy City which Palestinians call “al-Haram al-Sharif” (or, “the Noble Sanctuary”) and Jews hallow as the “Temple Mount.”  It’s like a vortex in the midst of swirling emotions; it is a supremely revered center of holiness, sacred to both Muslims and Jews, and it is the eye of the storm of hatred and violence that led to a Hamas attack on Israel, engulfed the West Bank and Gaza, and percolated into Lebanon, with Iran now threatening to get involved.  Now, much of the world is waiting and watching to see how far the conflict might spread.  Jerusalem lives as a symbol of something very ancient and sacred in the hearts of people throughout the world, and it often resides on the front pages of our newspapers as a seat of terror.  It is a place of violent passion, and yet its very name, Jerusalem, has long been popularly regarded to mean “vision of peace.”  It is the capital city of holiness and hatred.

But we also know that none of this is new.  Thus it has been for as long as there is a human record.  Almost two thousand years ago as Jesus approached the Holy City he lamented over it: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!”  He looked upon the city “named for peace” and wept, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace!”  Jesus’ lament is ours as well.  He shared our sadness about the city, and our discouragement.  He said, “See, your house is left to you.”  In other words, the fate of the city is in the hands of the people; the Lord Almighty has given up.

How does such a thing happen?  How does that which is so sacred become such a center of bloodshed?  I don’t presume to be an expert on the Middle East, or to be able to comprehend or speak intelligently about the many personal, political, and social ingredients in this long and painful conflict.  But I do believe that it is at the core of much of the violence, terrorism and war that plague our world today.  And there is something at the heart of that ancient center of conflict that is terribly important for people of faith everywhere to grapple with.

Jesus broached the subject for us when he approached the gates of the Holy City and spoke to Jerusalem through his tears: “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace!”  He said that those things that make for peace were hidden from the city’s eyes, and they seem to have remained hidden for two thousand years.  I would not be so bold as to claim that I alone know what they are, but I would like to think aloud with you today about his challenge, and ask: what are they?  What are “the things that make for peace?”

I believe the beginning of an answer lies in a central lesson drawn from the ancient conflict that emanates from the “Noble Sanctuary” of the Holy City.  It is this: holiness and hatred are not the polar opposites that we may regard them to be.  They are intimately bound together, and we ignore the relationship between them at our peril.

It is very easy for us to stroll through our days with the comfortable assurance that our faith is a source of peace and makes us people of peace.  But the truth is nothing separates people, or pits them against each other, quite as powerfully as does religious belief.  And the more firmly wedded we are to our beliefs the more susceptible we are to animosity and intolerance.  We may not think about it, but how easy it is for Protestants to have anti-Catholic sentiments brewing under the surface, or for Christians to harbor a silent anti-Semitism.  It can take the form of a simple sense of pride, or a deeper feeling of resentment.  Even within our own circles, within Protestantism or within a community, we often find that those who are the most passionate about their faith are often at odds with others about religious and moral questions.

I would suggest to you that there is at the heart of this perplexing problem the same paradox that we see in the Holy City consumed by violence.  The righteous passion that pits people of faith against each other is partly an evil, and partly a necessity.  It is, in one respect, a thing to be avoided at all costs, and in another respect, unavoidable.  The very language of Jesus reflects how unsettling is this paradox.  On one occasion he said, “judge not, that you be not also judged,” and “take the log out of your own eye, then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your neighbor’s eye.”  But at another time he said, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.  For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother. . . .”

As hard as it may be to accept, religious faith not only draws us to each other in loving community, it also compels us to take stands for those things we believe in and puts us in opposition to each other.  There is no easy way around this paradox.  It is a fact of religious life.  The extremes of this principle may be played out in broad and grotesque ways in the Holy Land, but on a different scale, the dynamic is the same for us.  There is something in the nature of Divinity, and of holiness, that draws us into both peace and conflict, inner conflict and outer conflict.  I may recoil at this truth, but I cannot change it.  There are things worth contesting; there are principles and values at the heart of religious conviction that one is compelled to take a stand in defense of.  But the bloody record of religious history teaches us to be extremely cautious in naming those things, and even more cautious in deciding how to defend them.

The same principles apply to those other sources of conflict: economic disparity (both the defensiveness engendered by greed, and the aggressiveness brought on by injustice), perceived threats, and personal and national interests.  It falls to those who hold power to continually re-examine their motives and consider what it means to be a global citizen – what is worth defending and what is better yielded, what is worth protecting and what is better shared.

These are not simple questions.  They are not even questions most of us care to take seriously most of the time.  To do so is to question our own motivations and standards, and we ordinarily do that only under extreme pressure.  But the place to begin is with a tacit recognition that conflict is inevitable.  If we are open to such a perspective we may even discover that, as Gandhi said, “the most important battles are fought within.”

So, one of the things that make for peace is, in my opinion, a shared and wide-spread, sacred intention to exercise the utmost caution in considering what is worth standing for and standing against.

But that leads to another question: once we have decided something merits a strong defense, how do go about defending it?  The testimony of Jesus’ entire ministry as well as the appeal to common reason tells me that we are compelled to choose the least violent means possible in any circumstance.  Interpersonally that means thoughtful consideration of the perspectives of others, and negotiation before launching into righteous tirades and sharp put-downs.

The same principle applies to nations.  It seems to me that war becomes an easier choice for those who refuse to see it for what it is.  War is not a glorious and noble undertaking, it is not a natural and ordinary part of human life, it is not a morally neutral tool of foreign policy.  War is hell.  War is perhaps the most despicable horror humanity has invented.  If a nation takes the step of entering a war, it must do so in recognition that it is choosing a great and terrible evil, and it must only do so to avert an even greater evil.

I’ve heard much discussion in the media from time to time about post-traumatic stress disorder, about the disruption in so many lives and families of our combat soldiers: the high divorce rate (about three times the national average), the rate of alcoholism (about four times the national average), and the sky-rocketing number of suicides.  So many of the military professionals I’ve listened to speak about this as if it were a troubling and unexpected development that everyone is scratching their heads trying to find ways to “fix.”  Listening to them, I begin to think that they see the life of combat as something a human being should be able to take on like any other job, and with only enough training, supervision, and resources, soldiers should be able to handle the work of warfare with the same balance and stability of mind and body that an electrician displays in wiring a house.

I believe that we make war more inevitable when we see soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen as simply those doing another job in society.  I thank the Good Lord for our military personnel, but soldiers are not bankers or plumbers.  They are, out of a sad and terrible necessity, being trained as killers, and being prepared to go into the very belly of hell to be involved in unspeakable human terror, a terror that will change them, injure them, emotionally disrupt them, and kill many of them.  We can do what we can for them, train them, support them, counsel them, but we cannot make the horror in which we ask them to participate into some readily manageable routine.

One of the things that make for peace is, I believe, an intentionally preserved and diligently reinforced honesty in all of our hearts and minds about the true nature of war.

Perhaps what is most needed in the Middle East and elsewhere right now is the capacity to discern what battles are worth fighting, and for what purposes, and a lot of deep reflection about how to fight those battles.

And, as for that ancient conflict centered in the Holy City, the bloody and regrettable history on our own continent might be ample evidence to our Israeli and Palestinian brethren that the claim to such things as “birthrights” and “divine destiny” are rarely the work of any power higher than ourselves and our own greed or fear.  In truth, the struggle to draw a new map, shape a new humanity, and bring about a new peace may be the most difficult and challenging battle of all.  It could pit “son against father and daughter against mother,” but it could be far more worth giving one’s life to than the objective of voicing rage against the infidels.

These are also the questions you and I face day by day.  The question of faith is not “how can I avoid conflict?” but rather, “where is the Holy Lord’s battle for peace raging, and how do I sign up?”  The hope is not “how can I get what I want?”  It is “how can I help make the Divine vision for humanity more real?”  The challenge is not, “who must I oppose and put down?”  But it is, “how can I, even I, discern this very day the things that make for peace?”