weeping for the things that make for peace

Today, my tears are shed for Baltimore.  My tears are shed for all those communities who have known such violence and destruction that accompany that violence.  There are so many of them.

This morning, Baltimore is part of a tragic American pattern:




I weep as Jesus himself wept, and for the same reason:

And when Jesus drew near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, "Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace!  But now they are hidden from your eyes.  For the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up a barricade around you and surround you and hem you in on every side and tear you down to the ground, you and your children within you.  And they will not leave one stone upon another in you, because you did not know the time of your visitation" (Luke 19.41-44).

Why did Jesus weep?  Jerusalem had failed to learn "the things that make for peace".  And because Jerusalem had failed to respond to Jesus's kingdom proclamation -- had failed to learn the things that make for peace, failed to learn that the Kingdom of God was "in their midst" -- Jerusalem had set herself on a path of destruction.


Baltimore -- and as the video so thoroughly documents, all of America -- is on that path of self-destruction.


Not because black men and women are rioting in Baltimore.  But because black men and women have been left without a voice, have been subjected to such violence for so long, that this violence is the only response they know.  There's nothing left for them to say, no voice is loud or respected enough among those of us (among whom I count myself!) with the power, to listen.


Repent, America, and turn back, to learn the things that make for peace.


The Kingdom of God is at hand.


This is the judgment that Jesus weeps over -- the violent deaths of this world.  Jesus wept that those living by the sword in this world would continue dying by the sword.  The "coming judgment" was a personal and communal annihilation because a people had failed to learn "the things that make for peace".

And it seems to me that Jesus' message -- his proclamation of the kingdom and judgment -- is extraordinarily relevant to this day.  Perhaps even more so.  With Jesus we continue to weep over a world that refuses to learn "the things that make for peace".  Interpersonally, socially, economically, politically, and ecologically.

Repent and be saved from the destruction.  The Kingdom of God is in our midst.