A volunteer, a Daughter of the Confederacy, receives my admission and points the way, writes Jane Kenyon in her poem “At the Public Market Museum: Charleston, South Carolina.”

Here are gray jackets with holes in them,
red sashes with individual flourishes,
things soft as flesh.
Someone sewed the gold silk cord onto the gray sleeve as if embellishments could keep a man alive.

I have been reading War and Peace,
and so the particulars of combat are on my mind—the shouts and groans of men and boys,
and the horses’ cries as they fall,
astonished at what has happened to them.
Blood on the leaves, blood on grass, on snow;
extravagant beauty of red.
Smoke, dust of disturbed earth; parch and burn.

Who would choose this for himself?
And yet the terrible machinery waited in place.
With psalters in their breast pockets,
and gloves knitted by their sisters and sweethearts,
the men in gray hurled themselves out of the trenches, and rushed against blue.

It was what both sides agreed to do.

I love war movies. We’ve been on a kick as of late, seeing Hacksaw Ridge and Dunkirk most recently. They are different types of movies though than I remember watching when I was younger.

Before, war movies have been about the glory of war. The heroism. The valiant and unflinching way our boys faced certain death yet came out victorious. They were wise and cunning, those Americans who won the day. I love those kinds of war movies. Hacksaw Ridge and Dunkirk aren’t those kinds of movies.

There are shell-shocked troops. Blood and gore. There’s a fog of war, sides aren’t neatly lined up. This is the reality of war. Of trying to survive. It’s visceral and real.

I’ve never seen combat. This isn’t a rare thing in my generation. In older generations, they say 10% of the population saw combat in WWII. That’s a lot of combat veterans. My grandpa was one of them. I don’t remember him ever watching war movies. He would speak of the war, he would tell me about combat, but he would talk about how he was scared and how he trusted his men and how they trusted him. How he tried to do whatever was best to keep them alive and advocate for what he thought would keep them rested and alive.

In the years since WWII, those who have seen active combat have dwindled to about 1% of the population.[1] More of us have seen war through a movie than by living through one.

We spend more than the next 8 countries combined on our defense budget. It’s $611 billion, according to the Peterson Foundation.[2] We spend a lot of money about thinking about war. We make movies about it. We spend most of our tax dollars on it. Our culture is saturated with it. Some of the best minds are dedicated to the wisdom of war. It’s what we have decided that we would do.

Yet it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” Christ crucified is a stumbling block.

Before the cross was jewelry and wall art, it was a weapon. A weapon used by the greatest military might in its day and age to command and conquer entire nations of people. We can miss this. The cross today could be an electric chair. Imagine having that on your wall or hanging from your neck. People would stop in their tracks. I’m uncomfortable with that image. How many of are you, show of hands?

The cross is uncomfortable. It’s a weapon used against disturbers of the peace, enemies of the state. New Testament Scholar Paula Frederickson says that “Crucifixion was a Roman form of public service announcement: Do not engage in sedition as this person has, or your fate will be similar. The point of the exercise was not the death of the offender as such, but getting the attention of those watching. Crucifixion first and foremost is addressed to an audience.”[3]

Yet Paul is writing today that here is the wisdom of God. God’s foolishness to use such a symbol is wiser than our wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than all of our strength. God comes to us in Jesus and says, “Love your neighbor as yourself. And love something greater than yourself, namely the God you claim to follow. On this rests all your preachers and holy scriptures.” And we kill him for it. And God comes back and says, “As I was saying, love your neighbor as yourself, and love something greater than yourself…”

And this changed the whole world. It sparked a movement that’s still going on. We tell time differently because of this event! There’s Before Christ and The Year of Our Lord. We have built cathedrals, we have opened orphanages and hospitals, we have started schools and universities because of this man. Everything has changed, and yet… We’re still tempted by that old way of thinking. That violence is our solution and our wisdom.

The terrible machinery still waits in place. We still send our military men and women off with psalters and reminders of home… sometimes not in the interest of our people, but in the interest of the military industrial complex. And there’s a big difference between the military, those brave, service-minded men and women who serve, and the military industrial complex, faceless corporations that may or may not have the best interest of our military, but through policy and lobbyists and amazing amounts of money, they get their way.

This is foolishness. We think it’s wise, but it’s not. We think it is making us safer, but it’s doing the opposite.

Once someone saw a neighbor with a stick. So they went out and got a bigger stick. That neighbor saw the stick and they got one and put a spike on it. Then someone invented the knife. And then someone invented the sword. And so on. And we think we’re wise, but are we? Are we any safer?

We live in a culture soaked in violence.  Blood on the leaves, blood on grass, on snow; extravagant beauty of red. Blood in our schools, blood on our military bases, blood at the VA. Blood in the streets of our cities. Blood in our homes.

This is what we have decided to do. Yet there is another way. We don’t have to live like this, someone has come before and taught us what God desires for us. For those of us who stand under the political symbol of the cross, we see the folly of violence. We see how it’s a never-ending cycle. We confess that violence doesn’t solve our problems, it creates new problems.

There is a way out! There is hope! There is Good News! But it will require us giving up our ways of thinking. It will require us thinking and seeking peace as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves. And I know it sounds completely foolish.

I spent a lot of time training for the military. I read up on military tactics. I loved our family vacation to Gettysburg. I spent a lot of time at the gun range. I love war movies. Yet I have never seen war. Nor have I served. Yet I have seen the effects of war on family, especially my grandfather. I have seen my childhood friend who fought in Iraq changed because of his time there. I have prayed with veterans at their hospital beds as they confessed things they have never told their families.

In all this, the cross stands as a reminder of our foolishness and how it only amounts to more death and not the abundant life God has promised in Christ.

Maybe if we spent as much time or more on training for peace than we do in training for war… writing poems about it, watching movies about it, studying the tactics of peace and how it can be achieved and maintained… we might be closer to the kingdom of God. Peace is WAY harder than violence. I can punch you or say an unkind word way easier than letting something slide. I can load violence into a gun and shoot it at you. You can’t do that with peace.

I read of so many inspiring stories of peace. Like Father Greg Boyle goes into the gang warfare capital of the world, armed only with his conviction that God loves everybody and establishes Homeboy Industries. I watch a video on social media how a mom reconciles with the young man who killed her son. While she mourns her son, she states she has gained another son. I watch the Amish forgive the man who walked into their school in Nickel Mine, PA and the world can’t believe it. Peace looks like foolishness to us who aren’t trained in the ways of peace. It looks weak. It looks fragile. It looks unsustainable. And yet… and yet… My heart yearns for it. With all my conflicts, conflicts of conscious, conflict within my family, conflict in the world, I yearn for peace.

Peace looks like a clumsy bird. It flutters in and we wonder where it came from. It looks too dazed to really do anything. And yet when it takes flight in our hearts, we can only stare slack-jawed at it’s plumage. Indeed the foolishness of God is wiser than our wisdom.

When you look upon the cross, know you look upon a paradox. A violent weapon that now stands for peace. The cross is the end of our human wisdom and all we think we know. And the foolishness of God is wiser than we can ever hope to be. May we listen to Paul. May we seek this foolishness of God, for it’s wiser than anything we’ve currently got or we have ever tried. While many of us wear crosses on our neck, or hang them from our wall… Christ wore it on his back and hung from a cross and it has made all the difference. To use such a symbol, and point it to peace… well that’s just divine.

May peace flutter to your window. Peace sing outside to the widow who feels that God’s favor has passed her by. Peace to the one waiting to die. May peace knock on the door of the man ashamed of his divorce. Peace to the pain of the fifteen-year old who doesn’t fit into any group at school. May peace perch on the cubicle of the person who depends on their job for a sense of worth and never feels satisfied that they’ve done enough. May peace flutter clumsily into our midst throughout our week and litter it’s beautiful feathers upon the floors of our hearts.

[1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-percentage-of-americans-have-served-in-the-military/

[2] https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison

[3] Cone, James. The Cross and the Lynching Tree. Page 31.