Hello my friends,

I pray you've been having a wonderful October so far. Thank you for all your kind congratulations for our baby news. They mean a great deal to me.

As I think about our little girl on the way and look into the face of my 18 month old son, Foster, I can't help to but have my heart break when I think of what little ones are going through in Gaza right now. I know moms and dads there love their children just as much as I love mine. I know families who are expecting little ones want what's best for them as I do for my little girl. I just can't imagine how scared they are or how much grief they have over loving loved ones, not knowing where their next meal will come from or where they might find shelter. So much innocence in the face of so much violence and pain.

I think what breaks my heart in how we American Christians often respond to situations like what’s happening in Gaza is we tend to frame them in either/or categories. “There’s a good side and a bad side.”Or worse, we tend to define them through narrow political and religious categories, which ultimately makes it about us. “Which side do you support?”

We do this as if that is how Jesus would define such situations.

Today I want to think with you about peace, especially in the face of what is happening in Gaza.

But before we do, here are some things that have helped me think about this topic.

RESOURCES TO CONSIDER

-The Daily podcast had a really thoughtful conversation about the conflict in Gaza. Helped me to think more deeply about the issues there. It is called Israel’s Plan to Destroy Hamas. I hope you find it helpful as well.

-The Patient Ferment of the Early Church: The Improbable Rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire by Alan Kreider. It is quite thick, but it is so worth the read! It shows the early church's commitment to nonviolence and how it participated with the politics of the Roman empire. It is such a needed reminder of who we are as Christians in our world today as we seek to be peace makers.

-I again want to recommend the book called A Church Called Tov: Forming a Goodness Culture That Resists Abuses of Power and Promotes Healing by Scott McKnight and Laura Barringer. It is such a powerful work on creating a culture of peace through the church.

-Passion for Peace: Reflections on War and Nonviolence by Thomas MertonThis book is such a needed and underrated reflection on war and nonviolence for Christians of our time.

-Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict, by Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan. For more than a century, from 1900 to 2006, campaigns of nonviolent resistance were more than twice as effective as their violent counterparts in achieving their stated goals. By attracting impressive support from citizens, whose activism takes the form of protests, boycotts, civil disobedience, and other forms of nonviolent noncooperation, these efforts help separate regimes from their main sources of power and produce remarkable results.

-War and the American Difference: Theological Reflections on Violence and National Identity, by Stanley Hauerwas. How are American identity and America's presence in the world shaped by war, and what does God have to do with it? Hauerwas helps readers reflect theologically on war, church, justice, and nonviolence in this compelling volume, exploring issues such as how America depends on war for its identity, how war affects the soul of a nation, the sacrifices that war entails, and why war is considered "necessary," especially in America.

Okay, onto today's content.

Let There Be Peace In Gaza

I think what breaks my heart in how we American Christians often respond to situations like what’s happening in Gaza is we tend to frame them in either/or categories. “There’s a good side and a bad side.” Or worse, we tend to define them through our own narrow political and religious categories, which ultimately makes it all about us. “This is where I stand!”

We do this as if that is how Jesus would define such situations.

I think it is so important for us American Christians to first and foremost take this time to listen and learn.

Listen to Jewish voices. Listen to Muslim voices. Listen to the stories of the people whose very lives are impacted most by what's happening there.

Listen not to see if it aligns with our predetermined opinions. Listen instead to grieve with those who are grieving and mourn with those who are mourning.

There is deep trauma and hurt for both Palestinian and Israeli people. Many of whom are caught in between and have become the collateral damage of the conflict of those with political and military powers.

So many people are now having to flee their homes. So many people have lost their loved ones, including their children. Our first priority as followers of Jesus needs to be hearing their pain and then formulating a response influenced by their voices rather than making the conflict about us and our beliefs.

Instead of declaring where we stand, we must follow Jesus to where he is serving. Wherever little ones are being harmed. Wherever the poor, marginalized, and vulnerable are being devalued, abused, and destroyed. Wherever the strong are trampling upon the powerless. That is where you will find Jesus working towards peace, justice, and healing on behalf of the most vulnerable.

Every human in that conflict is created in the image of the God we claim to worship. Our response to this conflict must begin by listening to their lived realities and grieving with those most impacted by these events.

How then are we to think about peace in a time of such violence?

As we work to listen and learn, we also cannot help but reflect on what peace means in the face of the violence we are seeing.

As I think about these things, I have to remind myself of the nature of peace.

Peace is not just the absence of violence.

Peace is the proactive pursuit of opposing and dismantling the ways of violence.

Peace is proactively seeking justice and the flourishing of all people.

Peace is actively resisting the ways of death in the world and insisting on the ways of love.

Peace is what Christ brings into the world and calls us to reproduce ourselves.

As he said, "Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God."

I do not think that these are just lofty ideals or some unthinking pacifism. For don't we see how harmful and unproductive the alternative to this vision of peace is every day? How repaying violence with violence just creates an endless cycle of violence? A cycle where the poor, the powerless, and the most vulnerable suffer the greatest loss and the greatest suffering? If insanity is trying the same thing over and over again while expecting different results, isn't this continual trend towards violence by those in power the most common form of insanity? The only thing it ensures is the constant threat of violence.

Peace is the proactive breaking of this cycle of violence.

This vision of proactive peace in the world is something we are given by the prophets who foretold what God would do through Jesus Christ.

Take Isaiah 11:6-9 for example.

Isaiah says “The wolf will live with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the young goat, the calf and the young lion will feed together, and a little child will lead them. The cow and the bear will graze. Their young will lie down together, and a lion will eat straw like an ox. A nursing child will play over the snake’s hole; toddlers will reach right over the serpent’s den. They won’t harm or destroy anywhere on my holy mountain. The earth will surely be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, just as the water covers the sea.”

Isaiah, Joel, and Micha also all share a powerful prophecy about what God will do through Christ, proclaiming that "He will judge between the nations, and settle disputes of mighty nations. Then they will beat their swords into iron plows and their spears into pruning tools. Nation will not take up sword against nation; they will no longer learn how to make war."

What a beautiful picture of peace these two prophecies paint!

Not only will animals and humans not hurt or kill any longer and lions will feast on plants from the ground like the OX, but nations will hammer their weapons into gardening tools and will not even learn how to make war anymore!

In the midst of terrible theologies being promoted that envision war and loss of innocent life as signs of the “End Times” and an imminent "rapture," these prophecies of the "Day of the Lord" give such a needed and hopeful vision of Christ's way of peace.

It’s hard to even imagine a world of peace like that though, right?

Our minds seem so conditioned by the coercive ways of fear, hostility, and violence of our world that we shape our lives and political perspectives based on either justifying violence or assuming the threat of violence from others.

Violence rather than peace just seems to be as common as the air we breathe in our world.

The ways of fear, hostility, and violence just seems a lot more accessible and much more productive than the ways of peace.

We just don’t think in the ways of peace because our world doesn’t seem to operate in those ways.

How then are we supposed to think in different ways? How then are we to participate with the ways of peace in our world of violence?

I think Matthew 3:1-12 is a helpful passage for us to ponder as we ask these difficult questions. In it, we see John the Baptist is baptizing people from all over, including those from the capital city of Jerusalem.

Let’s read that passage together:

"In those days John the Baptist appeared in the desert of Judea announcing, 2 “Change your hearts and lives! Here comes the kingdom of heaven!” He was the one of whom Isaiah the prophet spoke when he said:

The voice of one shouting in the wilderness, “Prepare the way for the Lord; make his paths straight.”

John wore clothes made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist. He ate locusts and wild honey.

5 People from Jerusalem, throughout Judea, and all around the Jordan River came to him. As they confessed their sins, he baptized them in the Jordan River. Many Pharisees and Sadducees came to be baptized by John. He said to them, “You children of snakes! Who warned you to escape from the angry judgment that is coming soon? Produce fruit that shows you have changed your hearts and lives. And don’t even think about saying to yourselves, Abraham is our father. I tell you that God is able to raise up Abraham’s children from these stones. The ax is already at the root of the trees. Therefore, every tree that doesn’t produce good fruit will be chopped down and tossed into the fire. I baptize with water those of you who have changed your hearts and lives. The one who is coming after me is stronger than I am. I’m not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. The shovel he uses to sift the wheat from the husks is in his hands. He will clean out his threshing area and bring the wheat into his barn. But he will burn the husks with a fire that can’t be put out.”

As we just read, we see that there were Pharisees and Sadducees among the crowd.

After getting pretty fiery with them, we hear John the Baptist call for them to “repent.”

He said to them, “Produce fruit that shows you have changed your hearts and lives,” implying of course that he, a fellow Jew, seems to know that they must not have been doing that already.

We Christians so often think of repentance as applying only to “non believers" rather than believers, and especially not our religious leaders.

So why was John the Baptist calling these religious leaders within his own faith to produce the fruit of repentance?

Well, we get a little hint when he says, “don’t think of saying to yourselves that Abraham is your father for God could raise children of Abraham from these stones.”

Many religious and political elites of John’s day had used their pedigree and status as children of Abraham as a way to deny their own need of repentance and even as a justification for how they were treating others.

The predatory economy that was being perpetrated by the Roman Empire and by extension, the Temple practices in Jerusalem were devouring the poor, the window and the orphan.

And it was all perfectly legal.

You see, in that context, which historians call the “Second Temple Period,” Jerusalem’s population was characterized by extreme social stratification, both economic and religious, which grew incredibly pronounced over the years.

There existed in the city a clear distinction between a rich and powerful elites and the wider, very poor population.

Many of the religious leaders were among the rich and powerful elites, who propagated and benefited from unjust practices against the poor.

This is the very reason Jesus overturned the tables of the money changers, ruining a whole weekend of business. They were politically and religiously exploiting the poor to benefit the rich and the powerful.

Right here is why it is so important to make the distinction between keeping the peace and making peace.

Keeping the peace means maintaining the status quo, even if it means doing so by force and coercive laws. Even if it means exploiting others to do so. Even if it means resorting to violence.

Making peace on the other hand means proactively bringing an end to the practices that harm and hurt the most vulnerable and instituting measures that benefit them instead. Measures that actually “make peace.”

By overturning the tables of the money changers, Jesus is prophetically critiquing the economic, political, and religious practices that lead to such exploitation, demanding a reordering of all three in a way that brings peace and stability for the poor, rather than exploitation.

The Greek word for “repentance” used all over the New Testament is μετανοέω (metanoeó). It literally means “change of mind” or “change of purpose.” In fact, it is the root word from where we get the word "metamorphosis," like the process we use to talk about a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. It is a real shift of mind and of purpose to something radically different.

Like the radical difference between the ways empires of our world operate and the way the kingdom of God operates.

So, this “fruit” of a changed heart and life that John is asking for the religious leaders to produce is living in a way that is radically different from the systems in which they were currently participating.

They can’t just rely on their religious pedigree, social status, or the status quo. No, they must produce fruit that is inline with the peace of the “kingdom of heaven.” The vision of the world we are promised through Christ Jesus.

As we American Christians read this text, it is so important to understand that we are who John would be talking to today. Especially in the United States, we Christians are among the most rich and powerful religious elites. We are the ones who have held privilege and power since the founding of the United States. We, as in mostly white Christian males such as myself, are the ones who have had a say in the direction of the economy, the laws, and the land in our country.

With this long legacy of controlling wealth and power, what ways would John be calling us to collectively “produce fruit that shows we have changed our heart and lives” today?

You see, it is no secret that in the history of the United States, indigenous Americans, people of color, women, people of other religions, and members of the LGBT community have been subject to discrimination and violence at the hands of Christians with a lot of wealth and power.

It is no secret that white supremacy, antisemitism, sexism, greed, patriarchy, and nationalism have all majorly influenced Christianity in periods of our nation’s history and even the world beyond.

It is no secret that even now, as antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia, and sexism swell in our culture along with the sentiments of Christian nationalism, it is hard not to see our lamentable past continue to collide with our present.

How aware are we of how these traits frame how we understand and respond to what is happening in Gaza?

What ways would John be calling us to collectively “produce fruit that shows you have changed your heart and lives?”

Ministering in the Evangelical world, I heard over and over again that I needed to "call out sin" as a pastor. Yet sadly, when so many of us Christians call out the very real sins of antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism, homophobia, sexism, greed, and political idolatry, we get called “woke” pejoratively, rather than being seen as calling out legitimate sins.

But, when we don’t reckon with these sins, when we don’t collectively repent from them, especially those of us in positions of privilege and power, the damaging ways are just allowed to continue on as they did before.

We must follow Jesus away from the ways of fear, hostility, and violence into his ways of peace. Our world is desperate for a people who produce this kind of fruit in our world.

That is the fruit of repentance. It is not only seeing glimpses of the world prophesied about Jesus in the world around us, but through the way we live our very lives.

It is where the work of our lives contribute to the dismantling of violence and the flourishing of our fellow human beings.

I think what John is getting at is that peace needs to start within ourselves. Within our own “hearts and lives.”

When we continue to allow ourselves to be shaped by the fear and hostility that seems so abundant in our world, we can’t help but treat others with fear and hostility as well, especially from our positions of power. If this repentance is not producing the fruit of peace in our own lives, how will we be able to hold world leaders accountable, from those involved in the conflict in Gaza to the United States, for how they mistreat the poor, the powerless, and the vulnerable? We simply wont be able to.

We also must understand that no one deserves to live in constant fear and hostility, including ourselves! Including you!

So please hear me, making peace with the reality that YOU ARE WORTHY OF LOVE is the beginning of having the ability to start making peace in the world around you.

We cannot make peace in the world when we are not at peace within ourselves.

Paul tells us that “the peace that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 4:6).

When we take hold of that peace as our own, that is the beginning of our ability to produce the fruit that shows what governs our hearts and lives: peace.

So as we listen, as we learn, as we grieve over all that is happening in Gaza, remember:

Peace is not just the absence of violence.

Peace is the proactive pursuit of opposing and dismantling the ways of violence.

Peace is proactively seeking justice and flourishing for all people, especially the poor, the powerless, and the vulnerable.

Peace is actively resisting the ways of death in the world and insisting on the ways of love.

Peace is what Christ brings into the world and calls us to reproduce ourselves.

“Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called children of God.” -Jesus

May the Peace of Christ be with those in Gaza. May the Peace of Christ be with you.

Now I'd like to hear from you.

What are your thoughts about what is happening in Gaza? What voices are you listening and learning from as you think about this tragic situation? How are you thinking about peace? I'd like to hear your answers to these questions if you care to share.

If you benefit from this project and would like to support it through a recurring gift, you can do so here: There's a $5/mo, $10/mo, and a $25/mo available.

If you’d like to support it through a one time gift, you can do that here: one-time-gift.​

Thank you all for reading and for all the ways you support me and this project every week.

I truly appreciate you all,

Ben

Remember, you can now view all previous newsletters and invite friends to join through just one link: https://benjamin-cremer.ck.page/profile.