I come not to bring peace, but the word of God.

Date: 22^nd June 2008

Preacher: Rev. Martin Parrott

Mathew Ch10 v34 “You must not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

There is a story of a South American Bishop doing a lecture tour of Britain some years ago. He noticed that in one church the Bibles that were being used had passages underlined. He made the point that you better understand a Christian by looking at the parts of the Gospel they haven’t underlined!

The implication is that there is a temptation to ignore the difficult or challenging parts of the teaching of Jesus. The Bishop came from a continent which struggles with massive social injustice.

How many of us would have underlined that sentence in today’s Gospel:

You must not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.

How are we to understand this teaching?

Firstly, we will all agree that it is not to taken literally. Jesus is not calling us to be trouble makers, aggressive or violent. There is enough of that already. The gospel is about reconciliation, not violence. This passage is from the Sermon on the Mount:

Love your enemies, pray for your persecutors so you can be children of your heavenly father………..If you greet only your brothers and sisters what is extraordinary in that? Mt 5 43 ff

We must understand Jesus’ words metaphorically. Metaphor is a way of using language to resemble or describe something which is truthful, but not literal.

The question now becomes: how are the words peace and sword being used metaphorically by Jesus?

St Paul is a great help in answering this question.

At the end of the letter to the Ephesians, Chapter 6, he uses the uniform of a Roman soldier to describe the qualities of Christian life needed in life’s battles.

He talks about truth, integrity, the work of reconciliation, faith, and the gift of salvation as values for the Christian journey and links them to different pieces of a soldier’s armour.

And in verse 17 he says:

Accept the sword which the spirit gives you, the word of God.

So the sword can be understood as a metaphor of the word of God.

So Jesus is saying:

I come not to bring peace, but the word of God.

And that is where this scripture impacts on our life.

I once knew a Dominican friar who was chaplain on a walking pilgrimage I took part in. Once in talk he made an astonishing statement which I have never forgotten – most Christians don’t develop any real intimacy with God.

I believe he was right because we are wary of the demand of God. And so we step back from going deeper into God. We settle for peace, our comfort zone, and if anyone tries to move us out of our comfort zone we resist because it is uncomfortable, and they are “wrong”.

Excuse me if I tell you this old story which you will have heard before… the one about the Catholic priest who was making necessary changes to his parish which were causing upset. He overheard two ladies taking as they walked down then nave and one said to the other, “If Jesus Christ knew what this priest was doing in this Parish he would turn in his grave”.

What this morning’s Gospel is about is the love of God for us.

Jesus teaches us that he does not come to bring peace, the peace of the grave, he does not come to give us our comfort zone. He comes to bring us himself, his word, His Spirit. In other words, he wants us to be fully alive.

I recently read some wonderful words by a man called Bob Lax who was a close friend of the monk Thomas Merton who died 40 years ago this year, who expresses this idea of the Christian life as being alive:

Some people are in the light

Some people are in the dark

And some people are in a kind of grey

Keep trying to work towards the light

Don’t try and convert or confront people:

Just shine.

You are anything like me, the first move towards the light is a letting go, a change of attitude, a turning back to Christ, what St Paul calls a renewal of our minds.

And we have to keep doing it. Above all else the Sunday Eucharist is the moment where that renewal takes place at the beginning of another week. This morning’s Eucharist is a moment when God give you and me the grace to live fully, passionately, in the week that lies ahead, for as the gospel says he does not want us to have peace. He loves us far too much for that. He wants us to have something infinitely greater: himself – a sword.

Amen.