Not Peace a Sword

The great Quaker historian Arnold Toynbee has pointed out that whenever a great leader has arisen in the world, he creates an almost intolerable tension in society. You can never be neutral to a great creative genius. You either oppose him at great cost, or you commit yourself too him with fanatical dedication.

This is certainly descriptive of Jesus. Men were never neutral to him. He would not be ignored. In his followers, he inspired fanatical zeal and dedication. Ten of his original twelve were martyred for their faith. The eleventh died in sad exile. The twelfth committed suicide. On the other side of the ledger, he inspired those who opposed him to fanatically to dedicate themselves and surrender everything to a life of plotting and intrigue, trying to find some way to rid themselves of him, without destroying themselves in doing so.

Have you ever read carefully the instructions that he gave to his disciples as he sent them out for the first time to minister in his name? I am sure this was the most remarkable commissioning services of all time. Here were these neophytes, who were going out for the first time. They would compare in training and experience to our newly ordained elders and deacons, who were going out calling for the first time. They were wondering just how they would be received.

Listen to what he tells them:

I give you authority to cast out demons and to cure every kind of ailment and disease. Here I am sending you out like sheep with wolves all around you: So be wise as serpents and as harmless as doves. Be on your guard against men. For they will take you to the courts and flog you in their synagogues. You will be brought into the presence of governors and kings because of me —to give your witness to them.

But when they arrest you, never worry about what you are going to say. You will be told at that time what you are going to say. For it will not be really you who are speaking, but the spirit of your father speaking through you.

Brothers are going to betray their brothers to death, and fathers their children. Children are going to betray their parents and have them execute). You yourselves are going to be universally hated because of my name. But the man who endures to the very end will be safe and sound.

But when they persecute you in one town, make your escape to the next. Tie disciple is not greater than his teacher any more than the servant is superior to his master. If they call the master of the household the “prince of evil” what sort of names will they give the servants.

Never be afraid of those who can kill the body, because they are powerless to kill the soul. It is far better to stand in awe of the one who has power to destroy body and soul in the fires of destruction.

Here is the text of the morning:

Do not think that I came to cast peace on the earth! I came not to bring peace but a sword For I came to set a man against his own father, a daughter against her own mother, and a daughter-in-law against her own mother-in-law. A man’s enemies will be those who live in his own house.

Anyone who put his love for father or mother above his love for me does not deserve to be mine, and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, and neither is the man who refuses to take up his cross and follow my way. The man who has found own life will lose it, but the man who has lost it for my sake will find it. (Mathew 10 verse 34.)

Suppose you had been in that commissioning service? How do you think you would have reacted? I am sure with pale and watered-down version of the Christian religion to which most of us have been subjected, we would have dropped our bibles and ran for cover. Not so for the disciples. They went out and tried their wings at witnessing to their new-found faith in Jesus as Messiah. The amazing thing is that none of them chickened out, although they did find that casting out demons took more than a stern human rebuke or command.

But now let us lift out our text of the morning from this context. Do you think that I came the cast peace on earth? I came not to bring peace, but a sword. The disciples never forgot this word. In fact, years later when John was describing how he remembered the lord walking in the midst of the church, he says :  “His eyes blazed like fire, his voice was like the sound of a great waterfall, a share two-edged sword came out of his mouth, and his face was ablaze like the sun at its height.” You talk about unidentified flying objects. Where have you read a description in recent days of these UFOs that matches these descriptive words of John.

Now what Jesus was really saying. Well for one thing, he was not giving them a pallid, milky, Maalox-like tranquilizing Christianity that would serve as an antidote for an upset stomach. He was sending them out as blazing revolutionaries to set fire to the earth. In fact, Luke puts it this way:

I came to cast fire upon tie earth, and I wish it were already kindled.

Now he says:

I came not to cast peace upon the earth but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her own mother-in-law. A man’s enemies will be those of his own household.

First, I have a deep feeling there was a biographical note here. If you read between the lines, I think you can make a case that he had very little support in his own family. When he was twelve years old, he was berated for staying and discussing theology with the teachers in the temple, when he should have been on the road home with the family. Later when his mother and brothers came to see him during his ministry, and someone told him they were there, he answered by stretching out his hands to his disciples and saying:

Here are my mother and brothers. For whoever does the will of my father who is in heaven, the sake is my brother and my sister and my mother.

Have you ever thought about it? You never hear another word about Joseph after the birth of Jesus. There is no indication that any of Jesus’s brothers supported him during his ministry. Mary appears for the first time in the narrative as the sorrowing mother by the cross. It seems apparent that Jesus did not have the support of his family until after the crucifixion. He had brought a sword to his own household.

I know these are some here this morning who know what this verse means. You are looked upon as religious fanatics in your own family, because you participate in the life of the church. You feel the deep tension of family, because you have committed your life to Christ. There are some husbands and wives who feel they stand alone in seeking to bring their child up as a Christian. In fact, they constantly fight the road-blocks of inertia thrown in their way as they try to follow through on their vows when they had their children baptized and they promised to bring these children up in the discipline and instruction of their Christian faith. Later these parents often find their children turning on their faith too, until they feel surrounded and alone. They know of the sword that Christ cast on the earth, that cuts families asunder.

Some years ago, I visited with deeply discouraged family. They had a new baby in their home, and his wife refused to have anything to do with having the baby baptized. For a long time, the man brought the children to church by himself. He had them in choir. Finally, he apparently succumbed in the struggle for the peace of the family.

Jesus was a realist. He knew that the demands he made on his followers could not help but bring opposition. And he knew that this opposition would come from every direction. He antagonized the religious leaders of his day, because he preached the kind of a gospel that undermined the whole power structure that gave them their prestige and position. It is very evident that he even antagonized his own supporter who wanted to make him Messiah and set him on his throne. 

That is the real meaning of the Palm Sunday story. There were those who shouted hosannah on the road that day that thought they were cheering the great king, who would be enthroned on the throne of David and free them from Rome. Even James and John believed so much that just before his crucifixion they were arguing who was going to sit on his right hand who and who would sit on the left, when he came to power. When he would not give in to them, because his kingdom was not that kind of kingdom, there were those where ready to shout, “Crucify him, crucify him.”

In fact, it was strange how he could not really please them. When he did miracles, they said he did them in the power of the devil. When he refused to perform a miracle and come down from the cross, they mocked him and said now who has miracle power? When he talked intimately of his relationship with God, the called him a blasphemer. When he ate with publicans and sinners, they called him a winebibber and a profligate.

The central fact was that out of his mouth there came a two-edged sword, and when he spoke, he cut through to the vested interests of all men. Some retreated and cowered in anger and hatred because he touched the very center of their festering sores. Others felt the pain, as of a physician’s knife, and they felt that through his words they were made whole.

When Zacchaeus the thief and the cheat felt him put the finger on his sin and he said “Master, I am going to take my goods and restore to those whom I have defrauded sevenfold… and come follow you.” When he spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well and told her of her sordid marital tangle, she ran to the city and said, “Come see a man who told me everything I did. Is he not the Messiah?”

Now what does this text say to us today? To the young people who are contemplating confirming your faith next Sunday, Christian commitment is not just a nice thing you do when you become a Seventh grader. You are responding to the call of the same Christ who said to others: “I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves.” But when they persecute you in one town, escape to the next. Because you accept Christ, it does not mean that life will be just a bowl of cherries. 

There was a boy who sat in those same church school chairs where you have sat, whose name was Charles Klunder. A few years ago, his faith made him throw himself in front of a bulldozer that was digging a hole in the heart of Philadelphia, which he believed was to be a building that would be another monument to segregation, and which would relegate so many of his Christian friends to being second class citizens, just because their faces were black. That tractor backed off him that day —accidentally it is true —but it meant giving his life. Most of the world thought he was a fool for doing it.

This winter we heard an attorney from Portland who felt that his commitment meant that he must go to the heart of the South and defend those whose civil rights were being violated —and in the course of this, he was spit upon and stoned, and at all times his life was in actual danger of being destroyed.

There is one of your friends who said to me just the other day: “If I join the church, I will have to do it without my parents’ consent. “They are against me doing it, and they said they will have nothing to do with it or have any part in it.” What would you do in a case like that?

This is a great age of revolution. It is a day when you must stand up and be counted. You will be asked to join a fraternity where your negro Christian brother cannot join. You will be tempted to join and thus crucify your own brother on a cross of discrimination. But, because you are a disciple of Christ, you will bear witness to your faith by refusing the invitation and telling the reason for it. Thus, your faith will divide you from some of your friend

Some day you will be asked to take a position of authority in a business, where so many things you will have to do will cut right across the grain of your Christian commitment. Each day you work, you will find that step-by-step and inch-by-inch you are destroying your very soul. And you will be called upon to witness by sacrificing your job because you must render unto god the thing that are God’s. This is the kind of Christian commitment Christ required of his disciples. This is the kind of commitment he lived himself. The servant is not greater than his lord. This is the kind of commitment to which he calls you.

For he says:

I came not to cast peace on the earth. I came not to bring peace but a sword. This is the rigorous discipline I demand. If you are not willing to accept this, you cannot be my disciple.

But if you accept these demands: when you get into court, I will give you words to say. When they seek to destroy you, they may hurt your body, but I will see to it they will never destroy your soul. If you confess me before men in this daring way, I will confess you before my father who is in heaven. I will tell him all about you. When you think you are losing your life, you will really find it.