On the Road to Peace

There they are, two crestfallen disciples after Jesus' horrific torture and execution. Fearful and grief-stricken, they're clearing out of Jerusalem and drifting toward Emmaus, none of which should bring the reader any measure of surprise. But then the story takes a turn. Jesus (his identity veiled) sidles up to the two and asks, "What are you discussing as you walk along?" They stop and turn. "Are you the only person in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened in these last days?" The risen Jesus then asks one of the most astonishing questions of the Bible: "What things?"

After pondering the arrest, trial, torture and execution of Jesus this past Holy Week, and the ongoing crucifixion of Christ in the world's poor, in the people of Iraq, in our torture chambers, death rows and nuclear silos, I find the Easter texts announcing the resurrection of the nonviolent Jesus full of amazing hope and boundless new energy. In particular, I love that beautiful sentence from John 21, describing one of those first Easter encounters, a kind of Zen scene of perfect mindfulness that opens up new peace and life within us: "There on the shore stood Jesus, and it was morning."

The story of Lazarus, Martha and Mary, a story of death and despair, life and hope, not only climaxes John's Gospel (11:1-45, from last Sunday) before the last supper and death of Jesus, it sums up the work of God in the world -- to liberate humanity from the culture of death and call us forth into the new life of nonviolent love and resurrection peace.

The woman at the well, from this past Sunday's Gospel (John 4:5-42) is the last person on earth you'd expect Jesus to open up and reveal himself to. Not only is she a woman and an outcast, she's a Samaritan -- the hated enemy -- yet Jesus engages her in spiritual conversation, and she surprisingly takes him seriously, draws him out, and lets him teach her. He tells her what he has told no one else: that he is the holy Christ. She, not St. Paul, then becomes the first apostle to the Gentiles She must have been remarkable and no doubt can teach us a thing or two about the peacemaking Christ and the spiritual life.

"If you are the son of God, turn these stones into bread, jump off that building, rule the world, worship the false gods of war and greed." The Lenten journey of Gospel nonviolence begins in the desert where Jesus fasts for 40 days, hears these inner temptations to violence, and renounces them in favor of the God of peace, God's word and God's way of nonviolence (Mt. 4:1-11). In this struggle, the Gospel encourages us to renounce our own inner violence so we can follow Jesus in steadfast nonviolence to our own Jerusalems and the cross of nonviolent resistance to empire.