13 July 2009

Peace at the point of a sword

15th Week OT (Mon): Ex 1.8-14, 22; Matt 10.34-11.1
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Sisters of St Mary of Namur

Peace is not the absence of acrimony and violence. To cease conflict, sheath our swords, and smile at one another is preferable to wholesale war, of course, but the mere lack of strife and bloodshed is not the peace that Jesus instructed his apostles to preach. The peace of Christ is found only when we discover, receive, and live out our divinely created purpose. If the Christ born of the Virgin is one person with two natures—one human, one divine—and we are the adopted children of the Father brought into His family through Christ, then we too are creatures gifted with a human nature and drawn to completion in Christ, seduced by heaven's love to love eternally in heaven. This peace—our reconciliation to God by partaking in His divine nature—cannot be achieved by selling the truth of the gospel to the philosophy or political system most likely to quell the primitive brutality of war. To our surprise, Jesus says to his disciples, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword.” What does Christ's sword cut in two? And which of these two severed parts are we to receive so that peace may be ours?

Jesus ends his class on how to be a faithful apostle with the startling announcement that his purpose on this earth is not to bring about global political harmony. He did not come to end war in our time. Instead, he claims, his purpose is to bring the sword that will cleanly and decisively sever the bonds of all human relationships so that our created purpose might be discovered, received, and lived out—whatever it may cost the family, the nations, or the whole human race. No fewer than eight times in Matthew's gospel reading this morning, Jesus teaches his apostles that he must be received as the one sent to bring us all back to the Father. But in order for us to receive him as our Redeemer, we must discover him as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the final and unique source of all our ties here on earth. Jesus sends out his students and friends so that the world might hear and believe all that he has taught and bear witness to all that he has done: “Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.” By receiving Christ as the one sent to take us back to God, we abandon mother, father, brother, sister, friends; we take up his cross as our own, and everyone and everything we love now becomes a hateful distraction, a rabbit hole that can only lead us to a wonderland of temporary peace.

Surely, you may object, Jesus is not telling us to abandon our families and friends in order to follow him! That is exactly what he is telling us. If we receive him as the Christ promised by God's prophets, then we must eagerly bear our throats to the sword he wields, expose all our loves to the cutting edge of his new creation. All the bonds of creaturely love are sliced clean, and we are free to refashion those loves in the one love who made us. Jesus says, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” If the life we find is a life of love without Love Himself, then our loving lives are lost before they are lived. Only by surrendering our lives and receiving his love as our Life can we be found in Christ. Having discovered Christ, having received Christ, we are truly liberated to live as Christ. And this is the peace he died to give us.

We are deceiving ourselves when we believe that peace is simply the absence of acrimony and violence. Christ's peace is not merely the toleration of and respect for the cultural and political differences we find in the world. It is not enough for us to give a charitable nod to settled conflicts and the cessation of war. The reconciliation we long for, the harmony we were created for is found only when we receive the one whom the Father sent. And as Jesus makes surprisingly clear, to receive him as our Redeemer is to lose our lives on the point of his sword. And in dying we are born again so that we may die in Christ for one another.

7 comments:

  1. Marc Porter1:25 PM

    I heard recently (I cannot remember where) that peace is not the absence of conflict, but the tranquility of order.

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  2. (re-send) There are areas that seem gray. But they're probably not. I'm trying to wrap my mind around this, thinking 'out loud' ...
    PHYSICALLY ...
    I can't morally abandon who is dependent on me. My young children if I'm a mother or guardian; my parishioners if I'm a parish priest; my passengers and crew if a pilot. An issue of duties of state. I can morally if necessary abandon anyone ELSE. The sword action here, physically. cuts away unnecessary distraction and waste of self.
    SPIRITUALLY ...
    I can morally abandon ANYone. That is, my allegiance to Christianity can remain unaffected - no matter who or what I'm dealing with - by intention, expression and action. The sword action here, spiritually, cuts away the binds of affectation, thus freeing me.

    ???

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  3. Father, please revisit this quote;

    "By receiving Christ as the one sent to take us back to God, we abandon mother, father, brother, sister, friends; we take up his cross as our own, and everyone and everything we love now becomes a hateful distraction, a rabbit hole that can only lead us to a wonderland of temporary peace.

    Surely, you may object, Jesus is not telling us to abandon our families and friends in order to follow him! That is exactly what he is telling us".

    In my meager mind, I understand this to be a demand from Christ to prioritize my Love for God above all else, but not a demand to abandon my responsibilities and love of my earthly family. To place my devotion to God first, thus allowing my relationship with my family to be more in line with Gods desire for me to be more Christ like in my everyday life.

    Am I mistaken in this belief?

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  4. Kevin, immediately after the portion you quote, I write: "All the bonds of creaturely love are sliced clean, and we are free to refashion those loves in the one love who made us."

    We have a responsibility to family and friends in virtue of our primary responsibility to God.

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  5. "Surely, you may object, Jesus is not telling us to abandon our families and friends in order to follow him! That is exactly what he is telling us."

    And what of ourselves? We ought to abandon that which is in us which ties us to earthly desires too (as you note in quoting that “Whoever finds his life will lose it...").

    The sword severs not only earthly bonds, but our contentment with things of this earth, and most especially it severs our complacency. We can't have peace with the state of our souls, because there is a constant battle being raged there, too, one which will not end until either the last seed of virtue is lost, or until the last imperfection has been driven away (the latter, obviously, can't happen on this side of eternity).

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  6. JC,

    I wrote: "everyone and everything we love now becomes a hateful distraction..."

    ...this includes one's self.

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  7. Thank you Father, for your time and clarification.

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