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DO NOT SUPPOSE THAT I HAVE COME TO BRING PEACE TO THE EARTH? I DID NOT COME TO BRING PEACE, BUT A SWORD. (Matt. 10:34)

A little confession right here at the beginning may be in order. In over 40 years of preaching, I have never chosen this text on which to make a few observations. Whenever it appeared as the lectionary lesson for the day, as it does today, I avoided it. I chose either the OT lesson or the Epistle lesson, or just went off on some theological insight on which I could not wait to say a few words.

If you ask why, the real honest answer is very simple. I didn’t like it. The two sentences were not appealing to me at all, so how could I get up and preach on them? They sounded antithetical to everything I loved. Like Isaiah 9:6: “for to us a child is born, to us a son is given, [and the government will be on his shoulders,] and he will be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. I could preach on that till the cows come home. Or the words of Jesus himself: “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give unto you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Therefore, let not your hearts be troubled, and never let them be afraid.” That’s like an oratorio waiting to be sung. I had a good friend in the Ph.D. program at The University of Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary whose field was Old Testament, and who wrote his doctoral dissertation on one word: “Shalom.” I can remember sitting up with him long hours into the night discussing his various chapters. Peace is what it’s all about. The peace of Jerusalem. The peace of the world. So what do you do with these two sentences of Jesus? “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Add to that this devastation of a family, which also I hold sacred: “For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, a man's enemies will be the members of his own household,” and no wonder I did an end run around these words.

Given all this reticence, let me this morning give you one reason why now I celebrate the fact that Jesus made these statements.

It all has to do with why Jesus came into this world in the first place. I recently read an article in the June 17 issue of The Christian Century, by N. T. Wright, who is bishop of Durham in the Church of England, Durham, England. I cannot tell you how much his insights meant to me. I almost got up and jumped around the room after reading it. The key phrase Wright uses is, “the public meaning of the Gospels, or “God in public” as opposed, I would suppose, to just the PRIVATE meaning of the Gospels. Here is a sentence: “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are all, in their various ways, about God in public, about the kingdom of God coming on earth as in heaven through the public career of Jesus.” Here is the little paragraph that meant the most to me: The central message of all four canonical Gospels is that the Creator God, Israel’s God, is at last reclaiming the whole world as his own, in and through Jesus of Nazareth. That, to offer a riskily broad generalization, is the message of the kingdom of God, which is Jesus’ answer to the question, what would the world look like if God were running the show.

So Jesus gets up and says, in effect, if God were running the show, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, but they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. In other words, Jesus enters our society saying there are alien and dehumanizing tyrannies in this world, which put people down, and he is announcing a new kingdom coming through him, which is radically different from this present age, and in whose breaking justice aims at rescuing and restoring genuine humanness.

The resurrection of Jesus is the launching within the world of space, time, and matter of that God-in-public reality of a new creation called God’s kingdom, which, within a life of 33 years, would be announced under Caesar’s nose openly and unhindered.

If God in Jesus is acting in public, then this is deeply threatening to the rulers of the world. So, Jesus could say, "Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

The Christian faith has a way of inherently offending, and this is so because Jesus came to personify and announce the reign of God in a world hostile to the ways of God. The COMING AGE, the reign of God and the PRESENT AGE, will always relate to each other in tension. Jesus is the perennial disturber of the status quo when he is rightly understood.

A while ago a pamphlet was circulated in a seminary in Portugal carrying these words, “Relevant information is requested that might lead to the arrest of Jesus Christ accused of seduction, anarchistic tendencies, and conspiring against the State. Special characteristics: scars on hands and feet. Alleged profession: carpenter. Nationality: Jewish. Aliases: Son of Man, Prince of Peace, Light of the world. No fixed address. The wanted man preaches the quality and freedom of all people, represents utopian ideas and must be described as a dangerous agitator. Members of the public are asked to report any relevant information to their nearest police. “Do not suppose that I have come to bring Peace.”

Let me suggest one action on our part that would restore a measure of the tension that ought to exist between the world and ourselves. It has to do with witnessing with less embarrassment and more assurance to the life-changing power of the King on the hearts of individual men and women, boys and girls, like us. It is not popular today to believe Jesus or anyone else can make all that much difference in any human life. We have been so drugged by an over-exposure to claims for the influence of our DNA, or heredity, our parents, or environment, we have stopped believing when the King comes into a human heart, life is always changed.

Back in the post-Nixon years, Chuck Colson claimed God transformed him. One of our columnists, bitter about Colson’s not repudiating the war in Vietnam or the so called “dirty tricks” of the Watergate scandal complained, “If he has been washed in the blood of the lamb, there still are signs of ring around the collar.” We can laugh at that but any man or woman, boy or girl, who wishes to begin again with God deserves the support of our highest expectations!

It’s one thing for the world outside to demean the possibilities of grace, but something else again when within the church; we fail to believe God can make all things new. We haven’t drawn any fire lately, or created much contention because we have given in to the assumptions of a world that does not believe. “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace.”

Here’s the conclusion of it all. Jesus did not say, “Go ye into all the world and blend in with what you find.” He said, “Go ye into all the world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and low, I am with you always, even to the close of the age.” In and through Jesus, God’s will is being done on earth as it is in heaven. What glorious good news!

PRAYER

Dear God, since by nature we prefer the ease that goes with popular positions, we pray your spirit may embolden us to take up the cross, and bear willingly the cost of genuine faith. Help us to listen to him who says, “Take up your cross, if you would my disciple be: take up your cross with willing heart, and humbly follow after me.” Amen.