Jesus names our failures: “. . . for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink.”
When we fail to make peace and do justice, we need to repent. We repent, remembering that often the people who really understood God’s peace were not in the immediate family: a centurion at the foot of the cross (Mark 15:39), the blind Bartimaeus (Mark 10:47), another centurion with a sick slave (Luke 7:2–10), a Syrophoenician or Canaanite woman (Mark 7:25–30; Matthew 15:21–28). Even a Moabite woman named Ruth.
This excerpt is from the Bible Study, “Making Peace and Being Peace” by Martha E. Stortz, in the April 2008 Lutheran Woman Today, now Gather magazine. Today we remember Barnabas, apostle.