I used to have a friend, Jim. He was a kind and big-hearted man with a great sense of humor, but he also knew how to lay down the law. He liked to say, “I prefer peace over justice any day of the week.” Particularly in reference to his three children when they were bickering about something.
Jim was going to get his peace, which for him meant quiet, if those kids knew what was good for them.
We began our study group last Wednesday, talking about Five Risks Presbyterians Must Take for Peace. I asked the group what they thought of when they hear someone say they just want to keep the peace. And they said it means they just want people to be quiet. This is also what the phrase, “Hold your peace” means: Just don’t say anything.
The letter of James has a lot to say about the harm that speaking can cause, such that his message seems like it could be distilled to, “Just hold your peace. Keep your mouth shut.” But could that really be what peace is all about?
Defining peace is so much more complex than the simple notion of holding one’s tongue.
In Mark, as we continue following the story of Jesus and his disciples, we listen in on a fascinating discussion. Last week we left Jesus and his followers at the end of Chapter 7, where they saw Jesus cast a demon from the Gentile woman’s daughter, and then give a man the ability to hear and speak. They bore witness to the power of God working through him, seemingly without limits.
After that, they saw him continue to perform miracles – feeding thousands from a handful of loaves and fishes and giving sight to a blind man. And after all this, he asked the disciples a question: So what are people saying about me? And they told him: They say you are John the Baptist, you are Elijah, or some other prophet. These were all types they had seen before. But then Jesus asks, “But who do you say that I am?” and Peter gave the answer that no one had dared to speak.
Because the Messiah is a dream. The Messiah is the hoped for, but never seen. The Messiah is in a realm beyond anything they know.
For the church, our understanding of the Messiah is specifically as Jesus, as God taking on human flesh and blood, as the fully human, fully divine one. But that is not what it means to Israel.
The word Messiah in Hebrew is the “anointed one.” The Jewish belief in and hope for a Messiah was focused on a human being who would be anointed by God to lead the people of Israel to freedom, to save them from the tyrannical reign of other nations, to reunite the 12 tribes, the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, and usher in an age of peace around the world.
In Judaism, the Messiah would be a man – not God, but a man; the greatest political leader imaginable, descended from King David. And he would be the greatest king Israel and the world had ever known. The Messiah would be the king Israel needed, to fight for them, to bring them justice and peace, the justice and peace they could not realize on their own.
The Messiah was a hope. And now, in Peter’s words, this hope has become real.
Jesus knew what he was hearing Peter say when he called him Messiah. He knew all the baggage this title carried, all the particular hopes attached to it, and so he turned the subject to some considerations that Peter and the others had probably never imagined.
That the Messiah will suffer. That the Messiah will be rejected by the leaders of Israel. That the Messiah will be killed, but after three days he will rise again. Contrary to all they believed about the Messiah as a conquering hero, Jesus is telling them the Messiah will be humiliated and put to death.
Now, for us, the whole gospel of Jesus Christ is the story of why this is good news. Why it is a message of hope that Jesus came bearing love without bounds, bringing wholeness to the broken ones, casting out evil in our midst. Why it is that the way of peace is never through violence, but through humility and love. We know from the gospel that Christ, in his refusal to be a party to evil, would destroy the forces of evil by shaming them. Shaming them.
But Peter, and surely the others too, could not see this yet. And when he hears Jesus’ words about a suffering Messiah, he feels shame for Jesus. Shame for the very notion of a Messiah who would let himself be humiliated and killed. And shame personally to be associated with that. He’s like, Ix-nay on the suffering and dying, Jesus. Not a strong message!
And in this moment Peter shows us a side of ourselves that we might be ashamed to see. When we are asked to confess our own complicity in the sins of the world and we react with anger because we insist that has nothing to do with us. When we are asked to give of our own time and wealth for the sake of those who are in desperate need, and instead we close our fists, we turn away. When we sit with a friend who is suffering in a way that truly frightens us and we can’t suppress our impulse to pat their hand and say, “There, there, it will all be okay,” even though it probably won’t.
In moments such as these we have denied the gospel of Jesus. And while it is undeniable that we will all have moments of weakness – moments when we are unable to live fully into the image of Christ, serving the poor and the weak, loving without conditions, shouldering another’s pain with them – our weakness is not to our shame. But our denial of it is.
Jesus’ harsh words to Peter and all his disciples present this truth to us. The way of Christ is beyond the ways of this world, and if we are not willing to see that, to try and understand that, we are caving to the ways of the world, to evil.
There are moments when we know that the way of peace is to keep silent, to refrain from using hurtful words. and then there are moments when the only way to peace is to break the silence. To speak loudly, even if words offend, as Jesus did. For silence about injustice will never lead to peace.
Take the situation that has found prominence in our politics recently: the accusations that Haitian immigrants are eating pets in Springfield Ohio. I don’t know who started this lie, but that doesn’t even matter. The problem is in how most of us have responded to it.
Many of us have laughed about it because it sounds so ridiculous. And many have mocked it by sharing jokes about it online. Talking about politics can be very uncomfortable, and it is much easier to talk about politics if we treat it as a joke. But this lie is not funny. This lie about the Haitian immigrants in Springfield has threatened violence in that community, creating a situation that endangers people’s lives just because they are immigrants. It’s not funny when people are being terrorized. It isn’t just an online joke when people are in fear for their lives.
The gospel of Jesus Christ insists that we not turn away from this. The gospel of Jesus Christ demands that we speak out against it.
To speak out against lies is a risk we must take for the sake of peace. To acknowledge the injustices in the world, and to speak out about them, this is a risk we must take for peace.
And there are times when it is in our very own neighborhood.
Christians must come together on this. And together we must raise our voices for justice and for peace. Because we cannot have one without the other
