The most recent edition of the Anabaptist World magazine had the theme “Faithful and Political.” I think many of us have the political world on our minds as we continue to get closer to the midterm elections and consider the many possible ramifications of their outcomes. So I was intrigued to see what kinds of articles a magazine connected to our historical peace church might have to say about what it means to be faithful and political; what it means to be a courageous peace witness in relation to the political world. 

There were actually many interesting articles exploring these topics from many different viewpoints, and I was impressed with the editors’ ability to present articles with so many different nuances. If you don’t get the publication at home, I encourage you to check out the church’s copy once it makes its way out to the racks in the lobby. 

What struck me from the beginning of diving into the magazine, however, was the way the first two main articles presented approaches to this topic that were, on first read, similar, but upon further reflection quite different. In the first article by Nathan Good titled “Citizens of a Different Kingdom,” Good shares about how he, as a preacher and pastor, is not afraid to engage political topics because the good news of Jesus is political. Yet by the end of the article, it became clear that Good wanted to maintain this idea of dual, competing kingdoms. He writes, “if we are to faithfully follow King Jesus, we must not focus on political speech and organizing. We must use our money, time, houses, relationships and possessions to serve those in need.” (p. 9)

If you flip to the very next page of the magazine, you come to an article titled “Actions Speak Louder” by Mennonite Central Committee staffers in Washington DC, Tammy Alexander and Galen Fitzkee. In their article, they very much argue for the need to take up political speech and organizing, listing a number of options including staying informed, holding leaders accountable through calls, letters, or visits, voting, volunteering at the polls, or even considering running for office. At one point they write, “Political problems demand political solutions–and we can respond with political engagement.” (p. 11)

There are parts of both articles that I found myself nodding along with, but the contrast between is what stuck with me. And I think that this shows just how much a courageous peace witness in the public sphere requires deep discernment both on personal and communal levels. What are the situations, contexts, or actions that we must never allow to go unaddressed even if it means taking to the streets? What does it mean to organize while paying attention to how power is being accumulated and used? 

How do our prayers for peace and our actions for peace flow back and forth between one another in a way that keeps us grounded in God’s vision for the world? 

I think these questions are worth sitting with, because I wonder if sometimes we have set up a false choice between helping those in need and engaging in the political work of changing the conditions in which our neighbors live. Between tending to the person who is hungry and asking why they are hungry in the first place. 

Of course, we need people who will show up with food, offer shelter, accompany someone through a difficult time, or care for a neighbor in crisis. These things matter. They are not distractions from the work of peace. They are part of it.

But what if we also ask why the need for that care exists? What if our faith calls us not only to respond to suffering, but to challenge the arrangements that create suffering for some people and comfort for others?

I think this is a question that Jesus invites us to consider in our scripture passage today.

We find Jesus approaching Jerusalem. He is nearing the city just after what we often call the triumphal entry where people celebrated him and shouted praises to God. But as Jesus comes near and sees the city, he begins to weep.

And he says, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace!”

I’m struck by the fact that Jesus weeps here. He doesn’t look at Jerusalem with indifference. He doesn’t simply condemn the people from a safe distance. He grieves for a city that has failed to recognize the way of peace, and he anticipates the violence and destruction that will follow.

“If you had recognized the things that make for peace.”

Sometimes we use the word peace to mean that everything is quiet, that nobody is arguing, that things are proceeding as usual. But quiet is not always peace. Jesus comes from a long line of prophets who decried communities who say “Peace, peace, when there is no peace.” The absence of visible conflict does not necessarily mean the absence of violence. Sometimes it simply means that the people being harmed have been silenced, or that those with power have managed to keep things running as they are.

Jesus looks at Jerusalem and sees a city that does not know the things that make for peace. And his response is grief.

This is important, because I think it tells us something about the spirit in which we are called to do the work of peace. Courageous peace witness is not about picking fights for the sake of picking fights. It is not about enjoying the spectacle of confrontation or delighting in the defeat of our opponents. It begins with a deep concern for what is happening to our neighbors, our communities, and our world. 

But Jesus’ grief does not allow him to settle into passivity.

Immediately after weeping over Jerusalem, Jesus enters the temple and begins driving out those who were selling things there. He declares, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer’; but you have made it a den of robbers.”

It’s a jarring scene. The same Jesus who weeps over the city now disrupts its religious life. He overturns expectations, interrupts business as usual, and challenges the practices of an institution at the heart of the community.

Jesus is not simply concerned with people’s private spiritual lives. He is concerned with the ways religious institutions operate, what they represent, and whether they are living into their purpose. His prophetic action challenges the distance between what the temple is supposed to be and what it has become.

And then comes the other detail that I find especially interesting for our purposes today. Jesus doesn’t disrupt the temple and leave. Luke tells us that Jesus teaches in the temple every day.

Every day.

The authorities are looking for a way to put him to death. The conflict is escalating. Jesus’ actions have made him a threat to those who hold power. And yet he continues to teach. He remains engaged with the people. He keeps offering a different vision of what faithfulness to God looks like and showing the people what it looks like to organize a community in a new way. 

The protest is not disconnected from the teaching. The disruption is not disconnected from the ongoing work of forming people, challenging assumptions, and redirecting a community toward God’s purposes.

Throughout our worship series, the Children’s Times have largely focused on people who are courageous peacemakers, and so today I thought I’d take the chance to talk some about one of my favorite peacemakers: Bayard Rustin. 

Rustin was a Black, gay, Quaker pacifist and one of the most important organizers of the American civil rights movement. He worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and was the chief organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, the historic gathering at which King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. 

A few years ago, the youth group watched the biopic of Rustin’s life, and I encourage anyone to find and watch it because it is a fascinating look at the Civil Rights movement from a different perspective than we normally get. 

Rustin understood the power of nonviolent direct action. He knew what it meant to challenge injustice publicly, to organize people to resist discriminatory systems, and to accept the risks that came with that work. He was arrested multiple times for his activism and spent time in prison for refusing to cooperate with the draft during World War II.

But in 1965, Rustin published an essay titled “From Protest to Politics,” in which he reflected on the future of the civil rights movement.

His argument was not that protest had been a mistake, or that the movement should stop confronting injustice. He understood that protest had been essential. It had exposed the brutality of segregation, shifted public opinion, and helped create the conditions for landmark civil rights legislation.

But Rustin was asking a difficult question: What happens after protest succeeds in making injustice visible? How does a movement turn that visibility into lasting change?

Rustin recognized that dismantling segregation required more than changing individual attitudes or even removing discriminatory laws. It required confronting economic inequality, expanding access to jobs and education, building political power, and organizing coalitions capable of changing public policy. In the essay he quips “What is the value of winning access to public accommodations for those who lack money to use them.” 

In other words, it wasn’t enough to demonstrate against injustice. The movement needed to develop the power to change the conditions that allowed injustice to persist.

It can be easy to read Rustin’s essay as a call to move from protest to politics. But I think it is important not to understand those as two entirely separate stages, as though protest belongs to the past and politics is the more respectable work that comes afterward. Rustin was challenging the movement to build on the achievements of protest, not abandon the courage that made those achievements possible.

He was asking how the movement could translate moral witness into institutional change.

And I think that’s a question worth bringing back to Jesus in the temple.

What does it mean to overturn the tables? And what does it mean to keep showing up the next day? What does it mean to call out injustice, and what does it mean to organize so that the injustice actually changes?

These questions are not easy to answer. And I don’t think there is a single answer that applies to every situation. Sometimes the faithful response is direct protest. Sometimes it is calling an elected official, organizing a coalition, changing an institutional policy, or working for legislation that protects people who have been marginalized. Sometimes it is providing immediate care to someone in need while also working to make that need less likely to arise in the first place.

Often, it is several of these things at once.

And sometimes the work is frustratingly slow. It involves compromise, negotiation, relationships with people we disagree with, and the patient work of building trust. Sometimes we have to figure out how to work with people whose motivations are different from ours, because we recognize that meaningful change requires more than one person or one community acting alone.

That kind of work might not feel as dramatic as overturning tables. It may not give us the immediate satisfaction of knowing that we’ve made our position clear. But it can be essential to making peace real.

Of course, there is a danger here, too. Strategy can become an excuse for silence. Coalition-building can become an excuse for watering down our convictions until they no longer challenge anyone. The desire to be effective can become a reason to leave the most vulnerable people behind.

Rustin’s life reminds us that these questions are not abstract. He was an extraordinary organizer whose skills were indispensable to the civil rights movement, yet his sexuality made him controversial to some of its leaders. Even as he helped organize one of the most significant public demonstrations for racial equality in American history, he had to navigate a world in which many people were uncomfortable with who he was.

His life invites us to ask not only how we build coalitions, but who gets included in them, whose voices are heard, and whose dignity is treated as negotiable.

The goal of political engagement is not simply to gain influence. It is to use whatever influence we have in service of a more just world.

And for those of us who claim the Christian tradition, that work is rooted in the vision of God’s reign that Jesus announces and embodies: a world where the poor receive good news, the oppressed find freedom, the hungry are fed, and the dignity of every person is recognized.

Which brings me back to Jesus’ tears over Jerusalem.

Jesus grieves because the city does not recognize the things that make for peace. And then he acts. He confronts the practices of the temple. He continues teaching. He persists in offering a vision of life that challenges the powers and assumptions of his day.

His path will lead to the cross, and we should not pretend that faithful action always produces immediate success. The work of peace is costly. Systems resist change. People who challenge entrenched power are often punished for doing so. And sometimes we will do everything we know how to do and still not see the outcome we hoped for.

But for followers of Christ, the story does not end with the powers of this world having the final word. I know it’s not Easter yet, but we should never forget that we are Easter people, and every time we gather we retell and reenact the good news that God continues to bring life out of death and make all things new.

So what might this mean for us, as a congregation seeking to be a courageous peace witness?

Perhaps it begins with paying attention to what makes us grieve. Where do we see people being harmed? Where have we grown so accustomed to injustice that we barely notice it anymore? Where do the practices of our institutions fall short of the values we profess?

And then perhaps it means asking what kind of response the moment requires. Where must we speak out? Where must we organize? Where must we build relationships with people who share our hopes, even if we do not agree on everything? Where must we change our own practices? 

Our calling is not to choose between caring for our neighbors and changing the systems that harm them. It is to discern how those commitments belong together.

We are called to pray for peace, but also to recognize the things that make for peace. We are called to serve those in need, but also to ask why the need exists. We are called to boldly and courageously stand against injustice, but also to do the patient, persistent work of building a world where justice can take root.

And we are called to do all of this not out of hatred for those we oppose, but out of love for the world God loves. 

It takes courage to overturn the tables. And it also takes courage, wisdom, persistence, and community to stick around long enough to figure out how to turn those tables back over and set them in a different way. 

May we have the courage to disrupt what is unjust, the discernment to recognize what makes for peace, and the persistence to keep showing up for the work of building it.