Luke 19:41-44, Matthew 26:51-54 Stephen “Tig” Intagliata
Summary: The early church and the Anabaptists of the 16th century were committed to Jesus’ call to renounce violence in all forms. One was that we can promote peace is through becoming better listeners to those whose perspectives are different from our own. May we live out the vision articulated by Mennonite World Conference: The Spirit of Jesus empowers us to trust God in all areas of life so we become peacemakers who renounce violence, love our enemies, seek justice, and share our possessions with those in need.
I’m old enough to remember the mood of the country when the Vietnam War was going on in the late 1960’s- early 1970’s. I can remember the unrest, the protests, and the antiwar songs that many artists came up with during that time.
Musicians and other artists are poets who can use their talents to speak out about what’s going on in society. Sometimes they call out the injustices and the violence in the world and call us to a better way to live. In a way, they act like prophets.
I think of that song, The Sound of Silence, by one of my favorite artists of that era, Simon and Garfunkel. I also know there is a cover of the song done more recently by a band named Disturbed. The Sounds of Silence ends with the words:
“The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls” And whispered in the sound of silence.
In our call to worship today, we recited the words of the prophet and poet Isaiah, who envisioned the world as God desires it to be, a world where weapons of war will be transformed into garden tools, a world where nations will “study war no more” as one version puts it. (“I’m gonna lay down my sword and shield…”)
In Brian Zahnd’s book, The Wood Between the Worlds, he talks about one of the poets of the Vietnam era, John Lennon of the Beatles.
Zahnd mentions that in 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono paid big bucks to have billboards put up and full page newspaper ads in 12 major cities both in the United States as well as in global cities like London, Paris, and Tokyo.
The sign said “War is Over! If you want it. Happy Christmas from John and Yoko”.
Does anybody remember seeing any of those billboards? I don’t know if there were any here in the DC area. You know the song, played constantly at Christmas!
Brian Zahnd goes on to say that a vision like John and Yoko’s could be “easily dismissed by cynical people as the naïve poetry of a fanciful dreamer.” (“you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one…”)
But Zahnd says that the poet has done something that “too many believers living under the long shadow of Christendom have been unable to do: connect the coming of Christ with the abolition of war.”
And he says that long before a Beatle made this connection, the church fathers of the early church had seen Jesus as the Prince of Peace who had come to show a better way than the way of war.
Zahnd mentions people like Justin Martyr, of the early 2nd century, who said
We ourselves were well conversant with war, murder, and everything evil, but all of us throughout the whole wide earth have traded in our weapons of war. We have exchanged our swords for plowshares, our spears for farm tools…
And then a little later there was Iranaeus, who said: Christians have changed their swords and lances into instruments of peace, and they know not how to fight.
And a little later Origen of Alexandria—oh, a local Virginia boy!—not really, that was the Alexandria in Egypt! Origen said about serving in the military:
You cannot demand military service of Christians any more than you can of priests. We do not go forth as soldiers with the Emperor even if he demands this. We have become sons of peace for the sake of Jesus, who is our leader.
So the Anabaptists of the 16th century weren’t the first Christians to see pacifism as a primary aspect of Jesus’ identity, and thus as a core component of what it means to imitate him as his disciple.
Up until the time of emperor Constantine in the early 4th century, most Christians were pacifists and refused to serve in the military. Of course, that all changed with Constantine making Christianity the official religion of the empire.
Then soon after that Augustine of Hippo came up with the just war theory to further justify Christians going to war.
Brian Zahnd points out that:
For the early Christians baptism demanded peacemaking and forbid the waging of war… The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ inaugurated a new age of peace that the baptized are called to inhabit now. The baptistry is a time machine that transports the baptized into the fully inaugurated kingdom of Christ.
Now if we’re honest, we can find some passages of scripture that seem to justify taking up arms, stories that would fit into the “just war theory” and justify the use of violence by followers of Jesus.
Our story from Matthew today in the Garden of Getsemane is one such passage. Jesus is being hunted down by the authorities because he is seen as an anti-government radical who might be planning to instigate a revolution.
If we picked up the events of Holy Week earlier, in Luke’s gospel we see that Jesus asked his disciples to sell their cloak and buy a sword. Why would he do that if he renounced violence?
Jason Porterfield in his book “Fight Like Jesus” addresses this question. He says
Why did Jesus want his disciples to buy swords? It was so that Isaiah’s messianic prophecy might be fulfilled in him. (Isaiah 53:12) …so that Jesus might be counted among the lawless. Because of the swords, Jesus would be labeled as an outlaw. (or as a transgressor, as some versions say)
In a way, the swords were like an object lesson for the disciples—they gave Jesus the opportunity to tell them to lay them down, that in his kingdom there is no place for weapons of violence.
“Put that sword away Peter. If you live by the sword, you will die by the sword.”
Brian Zahnd sums it up by saying this:
Jesus did not arm his disciples so they could fight; Jesus armed his disciples so that prophecy would be fulfilled and so that he could disarm them.
Now I know there are other ways that scholars and pastors have interpreted this passage, but I find this way to make good sense, in light of Jesus’ overall message of peacemaking, and how it aligns with the prophets’ articulating God’s vision of people and nations learning to live in peace with one another.
Now a couple more thoughts from people that reinforce this view of the peaceful way of Jesus being the way we are called to embrace as Jesus’ followers:
First from Shane Claiborne, who wrote the book Beating Guns, and who came here a couple of years ago with a blacksmith crew to turn guns into garden tools like this one.
Shane says, “the early church father Tertullian said that in disarming Peter, Christ disarmed every soldier. If ever there was a case for justifiable violence, Peter had it. In light of Jesus, there is no such thing as redemptive violence, even to protect the Messiah himself. Jesus shows us another way—a way that we can interact with evil without becoming evil.”
I love that—interacting with evil without becoming evil—it’s so important in our work and witness in the world today!
And now a quote in the Anabaptist Community Bible from Menno Simons, the early Anabaptist leader who said this about the incident with Jesus and Peter in the garden:
Just as Peter was commanded to put his sword away, “all Christians are commanded to love their enemies, to do good unto those who abuse and persecute them, to give the mantle when the cloak is taken, the other cheek when one is struck. Tell me, how can a Christian defend scripturally retaliation, rebellion, war, striking, slaying, torturing, stealing, robbing and plundering and burning cities, and conquering countries?”
While you have the Bible, let’s move to the other scripture for today, where Jesus weeps over Jerusalem in Luke 19:41-44:
41 As Jesus came to the city and observed it, he wept over it. 42 He said, “If only you knew on this of all days the things that lead to peace. But now they are hidden from your eyes. 43 The time will come when your enemies will build fortifications around you, encircle you, and attack you from all sides. 44 They will crush you completely, you and the people within you. They won’t leave one stone on top of another within you, because you didn’t recognize the time of your gracious visit from God.”
Just as Jesus wept over the violence of his day, and the desperate need for peace, it’s not hard to imagine that now 2000 years later, he is still weeping over the violence in our world and in our American society today, and still pleading for us to know his way of peace.
Let’s think a minute: what situations of violence does Jesus weep over in our world today? I’ll mention a few, and open it up to you all.
First I think of the ongoing wars in Israel-Palestine and Russa-Ukraine.
As of 10 September 2025, over 66,700 people (65,643 Palestinians[4][9] and 1,983 Israelis[c]) have been reported killed in the Gaza war according to the Gaza Health Ministry (GHM) and Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as 217 journalists and media workers,[46][d] 120 academics,[49] and over 224 humanitarian aid workers, Scholars have estimated 80% of Palestinians killed are civilians.
In Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, estimates are that are over 150,000 deaths on each side, and over 1 million casualties, if you include the wounded.
Now closer to home, as I think of American society today, I think of the proliferation of gun violence. Every day there seems to be news of shootings somewhere in our country.
Of course, still on our mind is the shooting of Charlie Kirk, and on the same day the shootings at the high school in Colorado. Nowhere seems to be safe anymore from the possibility of gun violence.
I found this chart put out by the Center for Disease Control in 2023 and published in the New England Journal of Medicine. It shows how just in the past 5 years or so, firearm-related injuries have become the leading cause of death among children and adolescents, overtaking motor vehicle accidents.
Overall, there are now about 50,000 deaths per year in the US as a result of gun violence. That’s tragic, and so much more than any other country in the world.
What other situations of violence do you think Jesus is weeping over today?
I think of things like ICE raids and deportations without due process, domestic violence and sexual abuse-downplayed by our president recently; the name change to the “Department of War” and its emphasis on aggression.
Something else I want to mention gets even closer to home—our own hearts and souls. In C.S. Lewis’ classic book “The Screwtape Letters”, a senior devil, Screwtape, writes letters to his nephew, Wormwood, a junior tempter, to mentor him in getting a man known as “the Patient” to fall away from his Christian faith. In one letter, Screwtape writes this to Wormwood:
“Be sure that the patient remains completely fixated on politics. Arguments, political gossip, and obsessing on the faults of people they have never met serves as an excellent distraction from advancing personal virtue, character, and the things that patient can control. Make sure to keep the patient in a constant state of angst, frustration, and general disdain towards the rest of the human race in order to avoid any kind of charity or inner peace from further developing. Ensure the patient continues to believe that problem is “out there” in the “broken systems” rather than recognizing there is a problem within himself.”
This was written in 1942 but it could have easily been written today, right? The extreme of course is political violence which we are seeing increasing, but in this age of polarization and amplification of everything political by the media,
I think a lot of us can relate to the temptation of being sucked into all the political drama, and we can demonize people on the other side, and act in very un-Christlike ways toward them.
And in the process, we neglect doing honest self-reflection about the toll it can take on us personally, and how it can stunt our development of good character, and our growth in becoming more like Jesus.
OK now finally, let’s think about Jesus’ words “Oh if you only knew the things that lead to peace”.
Again, let’s think together, what are some things we can do that can lead toward peace—in our hearts, in our personal relationships, and in our world?
I’ll start by recalling something Dave Bone and Emmanuel Mbualungu said last week, about becoming better listeners, especially with those with who we disagree on some things.
And when we respond after we listen, I think of the words in Colossians 4:6 where the apostle Paul says “ Your speech should always be gracious and sprinkled with insight (salt) so that you may know how to respond to every person.
What other ideas do you have?
I want to share two more thoughts on the call to be peacemakers before I close.
One of the shared convictions that our global Mennonite body has articulated is this: The Spirit of Jesus empowers us to trust God in all areas of life so we become peacemakers who renounce violence, love our enemies, seek justice, and share our possessions with those in need.
And now one more quote from Brian Zahnd, this one reminding us of the cost of following in Jesus’ way of peace in a violent world:
The world waits for a people who will dare embody the promise of peace—and the church is called to be that peculiar people. How are Christians to be armed? Not with the weapons of this world, but with a willingness to suffer in imitation of Christ. It is the way of co-suffering love that undoes war.
Amen.
