One of the most poignant images of Jesus’ passion often goes unnoticed, because of all the fanfare and celebration of Palm Sunday. It comes at the end of that memorable day. Only Luke Gives it to us:
As the came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.” (Luke 19:41-44)
His words and his tears are timeless, because peace is so elusive. Now we are in the days he laments. I saw with my own eyes last night a hollowed out and burning children’s hospital, with piled up corpses out in the street. I watch a father moan over his dead teenage daughter covered up by a blood soaked sheet. I see this morning a family of four laying dead outside their smoldering home. Tears come. Clearly, clearly, we still don’t recognize the things that make for peace. Clearly now peace is hidden from our eyes. There is so much to weep for these days.
Frederick Buechner moves the narrative close to our tear ducts, when he says “If Christ were alive in the world, his eyes would still have tears, and of course he is, and the tears are yours and mine.” We can distance ourselves because we are on the other end of the world, or because we locate this evil acted out by just one man, or because its all just too painful to hold onto. Tears might not come after all.
But that’s impossible if the suffering and dying love of Jesus is beating in our hearts.
A friend relayed her sorrow at the gas pump yesterday. She talked about how she lamented getting out of the car the expense, until she started to pump the gas, when she was overwhelmed with tears in thinking about mothers in Ukraine. Suddenly, she said on Facebook, “pumping gas, even at this price, and getting in my car to go to work, was a privilege, while I drove away with my heart breaking for those who are being needlessly slaughtered.”
This would be a good time for us, friends, to pump gas, and to go to work, and to drive back home with deep sorrow and tears for his dreadful war and suffering going on. As those who long for, and work for, and seek and speak peace, the peace of Christ, let our hearts be heavy and our prayers be many, and let weeping come. This is our way of loving and caring or the suffering of others; this is how we allow ourselves to suffer with them, even from here.
And here or there, wherever you are, “turn away from evil and do good. Seek peace and pursue it.” (Ps. 34:14). And “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you have been called.” (Col 3:15) And remember what Jesus said as you pump gas with tears in your eyes: “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”
Peter Hawkinson
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