“Would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”
Beat them into submission. Spread rumors and “facts” about them until they shut up and go away. No, I’m not talking about how we work today in dealing with our “friends” or classmates – or at least I’m not just talking about that. This is how the priests and scribes were hoping to deal with Jesus, and when that didn’t work, they were determined to kill him.
That’s the pattern – someone annoys us, and we try to silence them. That way we’ll have some “peace and quiet” in our lives. And we’ll justify our actions against them – we’ll find some speck that is wrong (or make one up if we have to), and then our campaign against them starts. Most of the time it’s only verbal… but sometimes it gets physical and violent too (maybe more often than we’d like to admit).
Jesus sees all that as He enters Jerusalem, and He laments over Jerusalem. Peace doesn’t come about by silencing all those who disagree with you. Peace doesn’t come by belittling them or grinding them under your heel, and certainly not by the back of you hand. Peace, true peace, only comes by forgiveness. Peace only comes by the forgiveness won when Christ went silently to the cross, bearing our sins as He was belittled, heels and hands nailed to the cross.
So consider your neighbor who is annoying you, or aggravating you? How shall you make for peace – with might of your own? Hardly! No. Instead, by the eyes of faith see He who makes for peace – look at your “enemy” and see one for whom Christ Jesus died! See all the sins that impact you – both your own and those done to you – on Christ Jesus upon the Cross. Because that is reality – that is what Christ Jesus has done. He has won and established peace for you with His death and resurrection.
