(A sermon preached on Palm Sunday 2026)
Do you listen to or watch the News at the moment? I was brought up by parents who devotedly watched the evening and lunchtime News, with my father reading the Newspaper at breakfast every day (Woe betide anyone who spoke to him at that time!). In addition we would often discuss happenings around the dinner table in the evening. That’s hard to imagine these days. I come across more and more people who tell me they don’t watch the News at all. I do sympathise and try not to watch it late at night. My daughter, 37 years old is one of them. Recently, she gave me a very fierce look when I uttered the word ‘Trump’ when round at their house. ‘We don’t talk about that (she said under her breath) – it frightens him (pointing to her 14 year old son). I can understand that, though I’m not sure if silence is the answer.
Maybe that’s part of the problem. Things are so grim and bleak at the moment that they seem beyond discussing because they threaten to overwhelm us. So they are left to so called experts, and yet many of them are at a loss to know what to say.
Certainly it is rare to hear sermons on war and the conflict in the Middle East in particular. This is a shame, for the situation is desperate and our faith has much to say. There is no more appropriate time to speak of war, violence and its futility than this Holy Week we’re just starting. Let me explain.
Earlier we read the story of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. It’s easy to miss the political significance of this event. Jesus is hailed with victor’s palms and proclaimed Messiah, for that is what ‘The Son of David’ and ‘The One who comes in the name of the Lord’ means, and that is why the crowd went wild. The Messiah was widely believed to be a figure to lead the Jewish people in revolt against their Roman occupiers and restore the Kingdom as it was under David 1000 years earlier. Yet Jesus arrived in the Holy City not on a majestic horse, but ‘humble, and mounted on a donkey.’ Symbolically he is saying ‘violence and conquest is not my way to the Kingdom.’ Yet he was ignored, and by the end of the week the same crowds were baying for his blood.
Then, later on, we read of Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, the guards having been led there by Judas Iscariot. Jesus’ disciples were a politically varied lot, from Matthew the tax collector who was thought a traitor because he collaborated with the occupiers, to Simon the Zealot. Zealots were fully signed up to overthrowing the Roman rulers in the name of God. Some scholars think that Judas might have been a zealot sympathiser, with ‘Iscariot’ incorporating the Latin word-‘sicarius’ or small dagger that was hidden in their clothing and gave the name to the zealot group-sicarii. Judas hoped – so the theory goes- to provoke a confrontation between Jesus and the Roman authorities where Jesus’ full Messianic colours would be shown.
One of Jesus’ disciples, named as Peter in the other accounts, not unnaturally defends Jesus by attacking one of his assailants. Yet Jesus will not have that, in one of the other Gospels even restoring the guardsman’s ear.
‘Put your sword back in its place, for all who take the sword will die by the sword.’ Surely a strong candidate for the most ignored of his words, along with ‘love your enemies.’ Jesus refused to defend himself and continued to do so, right up to his crucifixion.
‘All who take the sword will die by the sword.’ Violence leads to violence. War leads to more war. Surely history and the present moment teach that. The early Christians were mostly pacifist, but when the Emperor Constantine became a Christian in 312 and Christianity became the state religion, things started to change. In 1094 the Pope called for a crusade to take back Jerusalem from the Muslims by force, leading to the deaths of vast numbers of Jews, Muslims and Christians in an ultimately fruitless war, at least from the Christian standpoint. Battles have continued to be fought up to the present day, with many on the Israeli, Iranian and even American side believing they fight in the name of God. For atheists, this is one of the main reasons for their unbelief, and I don’t blame them.
Except that it flies in the face of what our Founder and Saviour taught. Quite the opposite: he taught that ‘if a grain of wheat dies, it bears much fruit’ a teaching he put into practice on Good Friday. Again and again history teaches that war achieves little, often leaving behind a legacy of chaos, ruin and bitterness affecting future generations. Yet still people believe what the poet Wilfred Own called ‘the old lie’. Even most just of wars- the 2nd WW- left the Cold War in its wake, in whose shadow we still live.
‘All who take the sword will die by the sword.’ Not necessarily the same people, mind you, for war is indiscriminate and unpredictable. Why should people seeking a quiet life in Lebanon or Dubai suffer, but they are, for that is war. Two of the 20th C’s great teachers on non-violence knew this. Mahatma Gandhi, founder of modern India and a Hindu, inspired by Jesus’ reinterpretation of an Old Testament saying, said that ‘an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.’ Like Jesus, he was killed.
Finally Martin Luther King, who led the fight for civil rights in the USA in the 1950s and 60s, but always in a non-violent way, and was also murdered, said this in a sermon which is collected in one of my most battered but treasured books:
‘Violence brings only temporary victories; violence by creating more problems than it solves, never brings permanent peace. I am convinced that, if we succumb to the temptation to use violence in our struggle for freedom, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and our chief legacy to them will be a never-ending reign of chaos. A voice echoing through the corridors of time, says to every intemperate Peter, ‘Put up your sword.’ History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations that failed to follow Christ’s command.’
May God help us to follow the steps of the One who laid down his life, not in violence but out of love for all of us. Amen.
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