October 06, 2025

#40 With John Dear on the nonviolent Jesus and the Things that Make for Peace: "America, America, if this day you only knew the things that make for peace!"

30 minutes

I can imagine Jesus lamenting today: "America, America, you who bomb children, execute people, and prepare nuclear warfare, how many times I yearned to gather your children together…but you were unwilling. If this day you only knew the things that make for peace!"

This week on “The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast,” I reflect on Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem (Luke 19) where he breaks down sobbing saying, “If this day you only learned the things that make for peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes.”

Written shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., Luke describes how everyone had been blinded by violence and hatred, and how it led to their complete destruction by the empire.

Had they taken Jesus’ teachings to heart, loved their enemies, turned the other cheek, and joined his grassroots nonviolent revolution, Jerusalem and its inhabitants would have survived.

We too have not learned the things that make for peace: Jerusalem has now become the whole world. We cut funding for schools, jobs, housing, healthcare, poverty relief, and environmental cleanup, but spend billions—trillions!—for permanent warfare and nuclear weapons. We support warfare in Gaza, Ukraine and Africa, but with our 13,000 nuclear weapons and catastrophic climate change upon us, we are closer to total destruction than ever.

The Sermon on the Mount catalogues a long to-do list for peace, love, nonviolence, and justice.

These days, that also means we must unlearn the things that make for war. If the world is to survive, the days of war have to come to an end.

You and I want to do what others were not able to do, to learn from the nonviolent Jesus the things that make for peace. If we learn the things that make for peace and unlearn the things that make for war, then we can be a leading force in the global grassroots movement for the abolition of nuclear weapons, war, and the causes of war.

We want to be people who learn the things that make for peace and teach them far and wide. That means we have to learn how to weep with Jesus over the world and then go forward and take action.

We grieve over our wars, weapons, corporate greed, injustice, and environmental destruction. And with Jesus, we walk into our own modern-day Jerusalems and act and speak for disarmament, justice, and peace.

May we all choose to learn from Jesus the things that make for peace and join his never-ending peace movement.

Weep. Grieve. Mourn. Then go forward! Take action!

Let us follow the nonviolent Jesus as we learn the Things that Make for Peace!

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By Fr. John Dear

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