Not a peaceful peace

[video link] [Readings: Genesis 21:8-21; Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17; Romans 6:1b-11; Matthew 10:24-39]

Our human brains like to sort and categorize things, we like to be able to put things in their own box, nice and neat. This helps us to process information more quickly, it’s a shortcut that makes our thinking more efficient. But even more than thinking in categories, we like to think in opposites, comparing and contrasting things helps us to understand them better; we think in terms of good and bad, right and left, light and dark, old and new, and so on. We can understand something better when we know what it is not. This is all a part of how we understand the world around us. So, when we come to something that seems out of place, not in its rightful category, it gives us pause, maybe even makes us uncomfortable. This may be how we feel when we hear Jesus say, “Do not think I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword.” This doesn’t make sense. Jesus, who we call the Prince of Peace, is telling his disciples that he has not come to bring peace, but a sword, and this will cause family members to turn against each other. If we struggle with this passage, we are not alone. It’s often identified as one of the most difficult in the gospels.

Part of what makes this difficult is our habit of thinking in categories and opposites. While this might serve us well in terms of our survival, indeed, it can help us to distinguish quickly between what is a threat and what is not a threat, it does not serve us well and can even become counter-productive when we are trying to understand more complex things, like ourselves, or one another, or God. We cannot, of course, put God in a box, and we probably shouldn’t put one another in a box either. This kind of thinking often gets in our way when we are reading scripture. We might actually tell ourselves that the God of the Old Testament is not the same as the God of the New Testament, that Jesus is love, and the God of the Old Testament is full of wrath. This idea is far too simple, and it is not only inaccurate, it contributes to antisemitism. In truth, the Old Testament is full of stories of God’s love and mercy, and anyone who tells you the New Testament is not violent has never read the book of Revelation, where Jesus does in fact have a sword. We do ourselves, God, and one another, an injustice when we fall into these traps of either/or thinking. Martin Luther reminded us that we cannot fully understand God with human logic and rationality, and Jesus frequently called the disciples out for this kind of thing, for assuming a simple answer, or for assuming that they knew who he was and what his mission was.

That’s what we see him doing in this passage from Matthew, and to understand what he is trying to say, we need to take Jesus out of the Prince of Peace box, and really grapple, like the disciples had to, with his statement about bringing a sword and his prediction of causing strife within families. It can help to remember that this passage comes right after the story we heard last week of Jesus sending out the disciples in pairs, warning them to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves. Notice he doesn’t tell them to be one or the other, but both at the same time. And here, he warns them that if the authorities are willing to come after him and accuse him of being a demon, they will likely do much worse to his disciples, and then he warns them that following him will require the same kind of sacrifice that we hear Abraham make in our reading from Genesis today. Abraham sacrificed his son to follow God. Likewise, Jesus tells his disciples that following him means giving up their families, and ultimately it might mean giving up their lives.

This process doesn’t sound very peaceful and I think that was Jesus’ point. Following Jesus will not be peaceful because Jesus doesn’t bring an easy peace, the kind of peace that glosses over things, that accepts the status quo, that goes along to get along, that collaborates with the powerful. This is never Jesus, and this kind of peace is actually identified as abhorrent to God by the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Jeremiah 8:11 quotes God as criticizing the religious leaders, saying, “They offer healing offhand for the wounds of My poor people, saying, ‘All is well, all is well,’ when nothing is well.” If that’s the kind of peace we expect from following Jesus, we will be disappointed. Jesus brings peace to those who have never had it, he brings the kind of peace that comes from justice, from setting all things right. This is the kind of peace that does not sit on the sidelines waiting for things to be fixed, it stands up and speaks out, as the prophets did. In bringing this kind of peace in this way, Jesus provokes a response from those in power and we know how this ends. This ends at the cross, and crucifixion was not peaceful.

Martyrdom is also not peaceful. We don’t have the written records to be sure, but tradition tells us that except for Judas who died by suicide, of all of the disciples, John is the only one who was not put to death for proclaiming the gospel. Following Jesus did get the rest of them killed. So when Jesus talks about bringing a sword, he may be trying to challenge their expectations of an easy peace, and he may be recognizing the reality that those who bring peace to the ones the state decides are unworthy of it, are not met with peace.

Because they bring disruption, because they call into question many of our assumptions, because they do not settle for an easy peace, they also often find themselves at odds with family members. I think this part of the passage can be so difficult for us because many of us know the reality of family conflict intimately, it is hard to imagine that it comes from God. For all that we hear about conflict within families today, about Thanksgiving dinners that can no longer take place, we might think that this phenomenon is something new. But Jesus recognized it thousands of years ago and he was actually quoting the prophet Micah when he predicted it. In Micah’s case, the prophet described this conflict as a consequence of societal breakdown when rulers were not leading as they should, but his solution to this is the same as the solution offered by Jesus: we should at all times put our trust in God.

And that is the other message of this passage. In addition to containing some of the most difficult words from Jesus, Matthew also includes his words of comfort and reassurance. Three times, Jesus tells the disciples not to be afraid. He reminds them that the same God who watches over even the sparrows watches over them. But in addition to these assurances offered by Jesus, what I find most reassuring about this passage is remembering that the disciples were just as confused by Jesus’ words as I am, but they did what he asked anyway. We don’t have to have it all figured out. The disciples didn’t. It’s early in the book of Matthew when Jesus sent them out to do his work. They didn’t learn everything, resolve every contradiction, and then go out to serve God, they learned by doing. This is ultimately a hopeful message for us, because we can and should do the same. Amen.

Cover image: photo of the Hill of Crosses north of the city of Šiauliai in northern Lithuania. From Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55873