“You’re Not A Pacifist Are You?”

The expectation was for Jesus to be a kind of first century Jewish George Washington. The prevailing sentiment was a yearning for war, not peace. The dominant assumption was that violence was the path that would lead to freedom. When Jesus saw that his vision for the kingdom of God had been conscripted by a violent nationalistic agenda, he wept and lamented the fate of Jerusalem. The patriotic crowd wanted the second coming of Joshua the Canaanite killer, or David the Philistine slayer, or Judas “The Hammer” Maccabeus. But Jesus was not the second coming of any Jewish war hero — he was the first coming of the Prince of Peace!