From the Pastor: A Season of Peace

There is a moment in Luke's Gospel that we are all familiar with. In Luke Chapter 19 Jesus is entering Jerusalem. The crowd is loud with hallelujahs, waving palms, shouting praise for the King of Kings. The Pharisees, uncomfortable with the noise, ask Jesus to quiet them down. His answer is unforgettable:

"I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out."

But then something shifts. Jesus draws near the city, looks out over it, and weeps. 

"If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes."

It's a strange turn from triumphant praise to tears, but it's honest. Jesus knew that the peace the crowd was celebrating was not the peace the city needed. They wanted a king who would win. He offered a kingdom that would heal.

That tension is exactly where our denomination invites us this September. The PC(USA) has designated this month as a Season of Peace, and our congregation will spend it on a kind of pilgrimage. Not a physical journey, but a spiritual one, asking the same question Jesus wept over: What are the things that make for peace?

This month we'll enter a four-week worship series inspired by the denomination's study, "These Are the Things That Make for Peace." Each week will open a different facet of what peace looks like when it's lived out, not just wished for:

Week One — Peace, Redefined. We'll wrestle with the difference between the peace the world offers, and the peace Christ teaches.  A peace built not on the absence of conflict, but on the presence of God.

Week Two — Peace Within. We'll turn inward, exploring the spiritual practices that root peace in our own hearts, so that we have something real to offer a restless world.

Week Three — Peace That Acts. Peace is not passive. We'll consider what it means to work for justice and freedom, and what Jesus meant when he taught us to turn the other cheek without turning away.

Week Four — Peace That Welcomes and Forgives. We'll close by looking at peace as hospitality by welcoming the stranger; and peace as reconciliation, the hard, holy work of forgiveness and restoration.

My hope is that by the end of these four weeks, we won't just have talked about peace, we'll have practiced it. That we'll leave with, as the series invites, a voice to speak out against injustice and the courage to become peacemakers ourselves.

Jesus wept because Jerusalem couldn't see what made for peace. My prayer this season is that we will see it clearly, and that we won’t let it stay hidden from us.