Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Jesus calls us to be peacemakers, an invitation that is both attractive and troubling. How can human beings be peacemakers when our long history of violence, systemic injustice, institutional failure, and moral cowardice testify to our continued inability to guarantee anything but destruction? Looking at Palm Sunday, we will see that Christ is doing something cosmic and strange by entering Jerusalem as a king who is preparing to die, and revealing to us something radically new—a peace that originates from outside of us, given to us as an inheritance from his future kingdom.