The Things That Make For Peace

O that my head were a spring of water, and my eyes

A fountain of tears that I may weep day and night.”

Jeremiah 9:21

As he came near the city, he wept over it, saying, ”If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But they are hidden from your eyes.” Luke 19:41-42

         "Upon hearing the news of the wedding party turned to tragedy by collapse of the building in Jerusalem, my shock and sadness were intense. It only got worse and turned to tears when I later saw the video footage and read about the alleged construction problems. The video footage reminded me of the footage of my sister's wedding. I was touched by the ordinariness and beauty of this event and then the tragedy that ensued. I grieve for the victims and my thoughts and prayers are with the families and with you all. Please accept my sincerest and humble condolences.

         I am a Palestinian American who works for human rights, including the Palestinian refugees' right to return to their homes and lands. I believe that all people of Israel/Palestine must and will eventually live in one democratic and secular state with a constitution that protects all its citizens and treats them equally. We are so similar and it is a shame that political ideas (Zionism and other forms of nationalism) divided us. In 1967, as a 10-year old child in Beit Sahur, I witnessed something that still touches me to this day - a reunion between my grandfather and his Jewish best friend from high school. Two old folks who had not seen each other between 1948 and 1967. Two old folks who cried like children. Both are gone now. I thought of this, and how much I miss the wisdom of my grandfather as I saw the recent events and the tragedies and the victims of violence in our homeland (From February 16 blog post, http://popular-resistance.blogspot.com).

         This letter by Dr. Mazin Qumsiyeh, Coordinator of the Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements, was published 11 years ago in the Jewish newspaper, The Haaretz. Our ability to share someone else’s suffering is one of the ways we show compassion, stay human. It is one of the ways we make for peace.

         In our Gospel story this morning we celebrate Jesus’ wonderful theatrical entrance into Jerusalem. It is a street demonstration complete with palms and songs. And yes, the Roman soldiers are standing by in their riot gear looking anxious incase this protest rally spills over into something more troubling like a real uprising. The scene is dramatic, full of tension and expectation.

         Jesus has just walked over 100 miles on a campaign of nonviolence from Galilee to Jerusalem. He has wept with his friend Martha over the death of her brother Lazarus before raising him from the dead. He has also just been anointed by an unknown woman for his own tomb experience to come.

         The crowd is with him and continues to testify that he is the one who can save them all. In the midst of all the shouting as he draws near to the city he begins to weep. He weeps for his Jerusalem saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”  He sees the inevitable destruction to come.  He grieves over the city even when most do not even know it is dead. He weeps over her but does not give up on her.

         Over the years I have come to really appreciate this ability of Jesus to be moved to tears and then I realized that he comes from a long line of weeping prophets, the most famous being Jeremiah who wept with Rachel at the city gate as they watched the deported exiles on their way to Babylon. 

         Walter Bruggemann says that empires live by numbness, that in their militarism, they expect numbness about the human cost of war so they can continue their war making. Jesus, like the prophets before him, penetrates this numbness with compassion, “making visible the abnormality that has become normal.” He embodies the hurt of the marginalized ones and takes them into his heart. This was his authority, his authority that was so threatening. Jesus entered into their pain and gave their story importance.  He didn’t just heal them; he restored them to wholeness or community. By doing so his compassion became a critique of the dominating systems of the Temple-State.

         When I returned from Israel and Palestine after three months serving as a human rights volunteer with the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program, people sometimes asked if I felt “holiness” there.  I have often struggled how to answer since I did not feel for the most part that the holy sites were especially holy. I did feel living under occupation put me in better touch with what Jesus and his disciples experienced but for the most part I did not feel any particular places were “holy” except the church where Jesus was said to have looked out over Jerusalem and wept. The church is even designed to look like a tear.

         When I visited this church during Holy I found myself looking out the window and weeping, actually sobbing, more like a flood of tears for all the things I had seen and experienced; things that made me mad and angry, sad and depressed. I also cried to be standing in the same place as I imagined he did looking out over the same city, occupied now by another imperial force and still not knowing the ways for making peace.

         I wept because standing at a military checkpoint three times a week watching grown men humiliated by 20 year old soldiers was an awful and dehumanizing experience.

         I wept for the way Jerusalem still does not know the way for peace. I wept for the way the US does not know the way for peace either.

And I wept for how they both seem to only know or practice ways for making war.

   “Jerusalem, O Jerusalem.

    America, O America,

    you who bomb children
     or lock them up

     and prepare for and create 
     endless conflicts and war,

     how I long to gather you 
     together in peace

     but you are unwilling. “

     Is it because you really don’t   recognize the things that make for peace? Or that you only really recognize the things that make for war?  I have come to the conclusion that empires, Israel’s and ours do know the ways and have in fact chosen, as empires have always done, to follow the well worn paths of domination, suppression, and repression instead. I also believe that they both know what needs to be done. And not unlike in the time of Jesus and later in the time of Mark, the state and the temple are working hand in glove, each supporting each other’s domination over the people.

         Palestinian peace activist, Omar Baraghouti in his famous “I Wish You Egypt” speech says we must start by decolonizing our minds so that we can envision real liberty, real justice, real equality and real dignity. Towards this end, I would like to offer some reflections from another Palestinian, Quaker Jean Zaru from Ramallah. Zaru’s reflections are informed by her belief that there is something of God in every person and therefore we are all capable of affirming this presence both in ourselves and in others.

         Zaru says that we begin by refusing “to take part in acts of war ourselves and strive to remove the causes of war and to use the way of love to open us to promote peace and heal wounds" (from The Things That Make For Peace)

         I think this trinity provides a useful framework too. “To refuse to take part in acts of war “ would lead us to explore ways that our country supports Israel’s occupation and violation of human rights and international law. This would lead us to seek ways to end military support to Israel until there is compliance with these laws and rights. It would also mean that we explore ways our own (or faith community) spending supports the military or occupation.

         “To remove the causes of war” means we need to work towards calling attention to and ending a whole range of injustices including home demolitions, expropriating land, denying Christians and Muslims access to their holy sites, revoking residency rights for Jerusalemites, allowing settlers to attack Palestinians without reprimand, destroying olive trees and defacing mosques and churches. The list goes on and on.

         One way we can work on removing these causes is to insist that the United Nations, who has recently been banned from Israel, be allowed back in to continue its documentation and the other is to insist that these issues be addressed in the peace process.

         “To use the way of love to open us to promoting peace and healing wounds” might be the most difficult to achieve for it is often very hard to see goodness when there is so much evil and wrongdoing.

         Yet this is where we must go or begin if we are serious about making peace. There must be an inward conversion or transformation for the peacemaking to be sustained says Zaru and others. Furthermore, we must also turn ourselves over to something beyond ourselves and our efforts which she calls God. It is this turning over or resigning that allows us to stay in the struggle, to stay human.

         After Jesus took in the pain and reality of Jerusalem’s imminent destruction, he went about the work of overturning tables in the temple and facing his enemies. This is our work too. Let us follow him.

Dominus Flevit, where Jesus Wept over Jerusalem Dominus flevit. In the middle of the Mount of Olives lies the Franciscan sanctuary that preserves the memory of the place where Jesus wept over Jerusalem. It's also an important place for valuable archaeological evidence about early Christianity.

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