Eyes for Peace

As He 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.” (Luke 19.41-42)

There is no after-party following Palm Sunday’s parade. Jesus dismounts the borrowed donkey and goes to the Temple, has a look around at what’s going on, and returns to Bethany. We know what Jesus finds during His brief stop at the Temple upsets Him, since He goes back on Monday to oust moneychangers and merchants who gouge holiday worshippers with inflated prices. He unites two prophetic texts to condemn their criminality, saying, “My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.” And we have a pretty good idea that Jesus returns the next day intent on shaking things up, in part because He’s in a foul mood. On His way into the city, He spots a fig tree that hasn’t yet blossomed. He’s hungry, but the tree has nothing to offer. So He curses the tree and it shrivels up. This is a side of Jesus the disciples haven’t seen—their first indicator that there’s been a shift in the atmosphere. Everybody’s tensed up.

Before all of this happens, however, Luke captures a poignant moment that helps us recognize the sorrow Jesus feels for Jerusalem. He pauses before entering the city and weeps for its decline. Jerusalem, the proverbial city on the hill, whose world-famous Temple sits atop its highest peak, has lost its vision. According to Isaiah 56, God has ordained Jerusalem’s Temple as a site of justice and inclusion. The chapter begins with a divine command: “Maintain justice and do what is right, for soon My salvation will come, and My deliverance be revealed.” (v1) The prophet lays out God’s vision for the Temple, describing a place where eunuchs and foreigners who were previously excluded would be welcomed and given places of honor. This is where we find the “house of prayer for all peoples” declaration. (v7) Gender and ethnic boundaries will be erased. Peace and unity will prevail in the Temple, which shapes Israel’s social and religious agendas. Jesus is entering Jerusalem to offer its people salvation and deliverance. But even before He steps inside the city, He isn’t hopeful. “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 laments.

His reference to blindness invokes God and Isaiah’s displeasure with how the Temple is being run. In verses 10 and 11 we hear, “Israel’s sentinels are blind, they are all without knowledge; they are all silent dogs that cannot bark; dreaming, lying down, loving to slumber. The dogs have a mighty appetite; they never have enough. The shepherds also have no understanding; they have all turned to their own way, to their own gain, one and all.”

Jesus weeps because this is an old, old story. The gulf between the Temple and its people continues to widen. The correctives issued in Isaiah 56 haven’t been obeyed. People are still turned away from worship. The rich get preferential treatment. Preachers and teachers continue to serve up God’s promises, yet they have no vision for what those promises will look like in a “new Jerusalem,”—the place Jesus has spent three years describing as “the kingdom of God.” And here He stands, looking at Jerusalem through tear-swept eyes, the very embodiment of God come to save and deliver Israel from its religious and political oppressors. Their promised Prince of Peace is with them, but they can’t see it.

We can see it, but do we really understand what we’re looking at? The cry from Jesus’s heart mourns the loss of community. God has endowed Jerusalem with power to become a singular place where no one is rejected, where God’s all-inclusive love can reign supreme. Jesus has come to offer this amazing gift to a holy place that has lost touch with what makes it holy. Seeing how many of our own churches reflect Jerusalem’s failure, we too should mourn. But mourning is not enough. We should walk into our places of worship with clear eyes for peace. We should recognize where our leaders and communities have failed and we should decry their resistance to change. God is calling for a house of prayer for all peoples. The redundant embrace—all peoples—stresses the expectation of uncompromised inclusion.

Any church or faith community that compromises God’s expressed vision should be regarded with suspicion. These are blind spots shepherded by people with no understanding. We will not be fed in these pastures. We will not find peace in them, even though they sing and preach in the name of Christ. So why are we there? It behooves every disciple of Christ to seek community among people who have eyes for peace and understand Who Jesus is. The glory of the Temple loses its luster when we realize it’s lost its way. The fancy robes and soaring architecture and showmanship that draw so many inside its walls lose their magic. When churches prefer some above others and deny entry to eunuchs and strangers, the ground they stand on is no longer holy. So weep like Jesus for their blindness. But follow Jesus’s example: declare your displeasure with their error and when they resist you—and they will—walk away. Find a home where people with eyes for peace live out God’s vision in tangibly faithful ways.

"I" and "We"

Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and God’s love is perfected in us. (1 John 4.11-12)

Lent invites us to participate in a global event that replicates two emblematic treks: the New Testament stories of Jesus’s 40-day sojourn in the desert and the Hebrew Bible’s account of Israel’s 40-year wilderness journey. In one, we watch as Jesus’s personal identity as God’s Chosen Son is tested and refined. In the other, we witness the formation of community, as the Israelites’ ordeal becomes a crucible that forges their identity as God’s Chosen people. While being “chosen” is central to both narratives, they play out in remarkably different ways that Lent asks us to reconcile. The great tension in Lent’s discipline urges us to examine our lives in two spheres that often generate conflict: individuality versus community, personal versus public, “I” versus “we.”

As we end our first week in this metaphorical desert, we’re apt to wonder what we’re supposed to be doing out here. Like Jesus and the Israelites, it’s too soon in this process for us to ascertain its real purpose. (And this year is different than all the previous ones, because we are different.) Ostensibly, we enter Lent in search of God—all the while knowing we will never actually see God, because no one ever has. Even so, the question that haunts us is, “How shall we meet God?” Or, put another way, “How will God find us?”

If we undertake Lent purely as a solo quest—cocooning ourselves in private introspection and prayer—we won’t complete the task it assigns to us. On the other hand, if we ignore its personal demands and treat it as a group effort, our work will also go undone. Lent’s ultimate goal is to restore awareness that God has chosen us, as individuals and a community. That is where our true identity, personally and publicly, is discovered and sustained.

Fortunately, we know where our journey culminates. No matter how circuitous this year’s route may be, it stops at the foot of the cross, where God’s love for each of us is lavishly displayed. Then it ultimately lands at the empty tomb, where resurrection empowers Christ’s followers to change the world. And there it is again: individuality and community, personal and public, “I” and “we."

First John 4.11-12 beautifully synthesizes the Lenten dynamic for us. God’s love for each of us transforms us so we can love one another. Although we will never actually see God (not in this lifetime, that is), God’s love enables others to see God in us and us to see God in them, because God lives in all of us. “And God’s love is perfected in us,” John says, which brings the personal aspects of Lent’s refining process into the picture.

We have been chosen, as individuals and a community, to discover and reveal God’s love. In this respect, Lent’s desert is neither a wasteland nor a lonely place. It runs wild with rivers of love that flow over us and through us, individually and collectively. As God’s love is perfected in each of us, God is more clearly seen by all of us. So the answer to both questions—is Lent about “me” or is at about “us”—is an emphatic “Yes!”

On High Alert

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? (Isaiah 58.6)

It’s Ash Wednesday. Once more we find our way to an altar, where we bow in humility and rise from our knees bearing a visible sign of repentance. As always, there will be a lot of thought and conversation today about what we’re “giving up” for Lent. We will leave the Ash Wednesday rite with the best of intentions and spend the next few weeks struggling to honor them.

To be sure, there is merit in self-denial. It teaches us discipline and retrains us so that we can master unhealthy reflexes and habits. Yet what’s supposed to come out of fasting? In Isaiah, we discover that it’s less about what we elect not to do, and more about relearning what we must do. In Isaiah 58, God says our piety and ritual—our subscription to religious obligation—mean nothing if they don't alert us to sacred obligations to those around us.

Sacrificing meat or candy bars or TV is, at best, a start. We do these things to keep us mindful that fasting is, above all, an act of faithfulness to a God Who desires meaningful change in our attitudes and behaviors. Yet if Lent starts and stops with what we’re “giving up,” we’ve not gone far enough. “Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high,” God warns. “Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?” (v4-5)

There’s a break in the text, making room for us ask, “If there’s more to this fasting thing than getting off our high horses and wallowing in our guilt, what can it be?” The answer is remarkably simple and direct: God expects our fast to focus on doing better in the here and now—not feeling sorry that we haven’t done so in the past or pledging improvement in the future. Listen very closely to God’s definition of an acceptable fast (quoted at length, because its emphasis cannot be overstated):

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindication shall go before you, the glory of the LORD shall be your rear guard. Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer; you shall cry for help, and God will say, Here I am.

If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail.

If we enter Lent’s desert intent only on adopting an ascetic mindset—grappling with self-denial and its attendant temptations, distancing ourselves from others to relish the benefits of solitude—we fall short of God’s demands. The Hebrew word for “fast” literally means, “to cover one’s mouth.” Thus, it stands to reason if we refuse to placate our hungers, we have more to give. What are we to do with our excess—this food we don’t eat, this extra time we have on our hands, these comforts we sacrifice? God tells us: we surrender them to others in need.

We enter Lent on high alert, extremely conscious that our wilderness adventure will open opportunities to share. Indeed, if we’re doing the real work of fasting, we seek out the less fortunate, the hungry, the afflicted, and the oppressed. We create the means of practicing Lent’s discipline. We look for distressed families we can feed. We extend ourselves to overworked parents and provide them respite by offering to sit with their children while they recharge their batteries. We seek out solitary coworkers or churchgoers and sit beside them. We find the senior who needs help cleaning up the house or running errands. We make time for the sick and grieving among us, assuring them they’re not alone. We embrace the ridiculed and misunderstood. We speak kindly to ears bruised by insults and cruelty. We touch the untouchable and love the unlovable.

We are surrounded by fasting opportunities.

We leave our comfort zones, because fasting should make us uncomfortable. It thrusts us into a desert of strangeness and uncertainty. It tests our wills and purifies our motives, leading us beyond the desire to be holy so that we become holy. Fasting has very little to do with what or how much we “give up.” It’s all about what or how much we give. And if we center our Lenten experience intent on caring for others, our wilderness will explode with new and abundant life.

Your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your needs in parched places, and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail. (Isaiah 58.10-11)

Safe and Sound

Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at Your altars, O Lord of hosts… Happy are those who live in Your house, ever singing Your praise. Selah (Psalm 84.3-4)

Controversial Figure

In Sunday’s Gospel (Luke 2.22-40), we return to a well-known scene. Forty days have passed since Jesus’s birth—a time period defined in Jewish law as “purification,” after which the Child and His mother are presumably free of disease and officially welcomed into their faith community. Their appearance at the Temple is a common rite, akin to our christening and baptismal ceremonies. But it quickly takes an uncommon turn that invites us to look at it more closely. Two elderly members of the congregation, Simeon and Anna, instantly recognize Jesus as the promised Hope of Israel. Both of them make prophetic declarations that embrace Him as their long-awaited Savior and Redeemer. And their words set off tremors that will resonate throughout Jesus’s life. In an instant, this tiny Baby becomes a controversial Figure Who will ultimately challenge the traditional beliefs and customs of all who claim Jerusalem’s Temple as their spiritual home.

After praising God for honoring the promise to send a Savior, Simeon eerily predicts Jesus’s death in a warning to Mary. “This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel,” he tells her, “and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” (v34-35) Anna turns her attention to listeners who share her longing for a Savior, “to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem,” verse 38 says. These are stridently subversive, and alarming blunt, statements that probably mesmerize average worshipers and cause their hearts to race. But they’re also spoken in the presence of the Temple establishment, which no doubt perceives a major threat has arrived. Simeon and Anna are highly respected heavyweights in the Temple community. Their confidence in Who Jesus is sends a potent signal that something new and radically different is on the horizon. In essence, they announce a changing of the guard that puts the power elite on high alert. What they hear surely troubles them. This moment will be much regaled and remembered. This Child will bear watching and anything He may try to do to overturn the status quo will need to be quickly contained, lest He usurp control of the religious culture they’ve created. The persistent dangers that confront Jesus during His adult ministry have their origins here.

Discovering Safety

It’s interesting, to say the least, that Simeon sees the Infant and immediately identifies tensions within Jesus’s own faith community that will dog Him for the rest of His life—to the point that they will explode in a concerted effort to put an end to Him. The sorrow that hovers above the scene, however, is seen in how the blatant rejection of Jesus baldly contradicts everything God created the Temple to be. We get a vivid picture of God’s vision for the ideal faith community in Psalm 84, a spectacular hymn extolling the Temple as a place of welcome, composed by none other than its founder, David. “How lovely is Your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!” it begins. David says his soul “longs, indeed it faints, for the courts of the Lord.” (v2) This is a man who not only loves his church; he loves going to church. “My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God,” he writes. And David wastes no time explaining why he loves going to church so much: he's totally safe there.

“Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at Your altars, O Lord of hosts,” David sings. (v3) These images strike us as charming. Our Disneyfied imaginations conjure visions of chirping birds flitting around the Temple and newly hatched chicks peering over the rim of their nest. But ancient hearers of David’s song sensed something more than natural wonder in this tableau. As Rabbi Benjamin Segal explains in his marvelous study of Psalm 84, the Old Testament depicts swallows as migratory birds that fly great distances, which adds a unique nuance to the metaphor. David suggests that discovering safety in God’s house requires effort on our part. We must seek it out and travel toward it with compelling resolve. 

What’s more, there’s an added layer of menace that must be dealt with. Sparrows and swallows are commonly used in Temple sacrifices. To alight on the very altars where so many like them have been slain is an audacious act of trust. Priests and congregants who would sacrifice them without thought are nowhere to be found in this scenario. Faith in their Creator emboldens the birds. They have every confidence that God wants them to make their home at the very place where religious tradition would deny them safety. They are, in every way, like the Christ Child in Luke’s story—controversial figures that disrupt the status quo, traveling extraordinary lengths to become living testaments to God’s immeasurable grace. They are totally safe in this sacred place. And their desire to be seen here, to participate in the life of this faith community, is totally sound. “Happy are those who live in Your house, ever singing your praise,” David exclaims. (v4) It’s an arresting image that resonates deeply.

Selah

David caps this stanza with a musical direction—Selah—that calls for a momentary pause in the music to give the audience time to absorb the full depth of the lyric. He wants us to understand that, by divine intention, God’s house is a safe place. Yet, as we see in Luke, this ideal breaks down when religious leaders abuse power to exert control over their communities. Any challenge to their authority is instantly perceived as a threat, a fact that cannot be concealed. Go back to Simeon’s prophecy: simply by showing up, Jesus becomes “a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed.” But the story doesn’t end with opposition. The conspiracy to destroy Jesus is ultimately undone and freedom of worship for all who believe rises out of the ashes of defeat. Safety is restored through the decisive victory of the cross.

These truths should guide every believer, regardless how he or she is pigeonholed by traditions and doctrines. Discovering the safety of God’s house requires tremendous effort on our part. Many of us will travel great distances, soaring above prejudice, suspicion, and hostility. We’ll take great risks, relying solely on our trust in the God Who made and welcomes us. We’ll ignore how many are eager to sacrifice us in pursuit of self-righteousness. But God’s Word promises we have a home, at the very altars where the blood of others has been shed. We weren’t created to be destroyed. We were made to live in God’s house, ever singing God’s praises. If we allow fear and hatred to steer us from sacred worship, there can be no song. Soar. Sing. Witness the beauty of your making. Defy death and destruction. Something radically new is on the horizon. Show up. The good news of the Gospel is borne on our wings. Selah

Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at Your altars, O Lord of hosts.