“Cuts Like a Knife”
Matthew 10:24-39
Amos 5:24
This text from Matthew's gospel is another one of those texts that I choose, far in advance of when I actually write the sermon when I look over what the lectionary for a particular Sunday. I look at it and think, “Yes, I should preach on that. It will be a challenge. It will be a good exercise, good for us to reflect on.” But then we get closer to the Sunday when I have to preach it, my thinking changes: “Lord! Could I switch texts? We aren't ready for the sword text, Lord!” “You haven't been ready for the sword text for 2000 years, Paul,” comes the divine reply. “Still, Lord, can I switch, please? With a cherry on top?” “It's too late for me to change it for you. You already told the worship committee, and I don't like to cross them.” (Just as an aside, I want you to know that I don't literally hear God's voice like that. ;)
We could use a little of God's voice right about now. When we look at our world, we know that we could use a little of God's wisdom, and our faith teaches that the first place we are to look is to Scripture. Scripture includes these words of Jesus, spoken to his followers as he sends them out to do his ministry. With these words, he sends them out to do the very same things that he has beeBroon doing: preaching, healing, embracing those the world says to stay away from, confronting demons-the powers of evil, and even raising the dead. He sends them out, he says just before our text, “like sheep into the midst of wolves
(10:16).” You know what happens to sheep in the midst of wolves, right? As he draws this discourse to a close, he says to them these challenging words,
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a
daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one's foes will be members of one's own household.
Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it (vs.34-9).”
Them's fightin' words-troubling words for us who seek comfort, peace, and tranquility. In our culture, which values family so highly, how can Jesus say that he is coming pit family members against one another? We are taught that Jesus is about peace. We preach peace. We seek peace, and here Jesus says that he is not coming to bring peace, but a sword, an instrument of violence. What is Jesus saying here?
Is Jesus talking about the necessity of sometimes using violence? Is he laying some groundwork, providing a proof-text for a theory of “just war” for his disciples because he knew that one day they would no longer be humble fishermen? Because he knew that one day they would sit in the seats of power-that they would one day be president, prime minister, senator? Did he utter this verse about the sword because he knew what, of course, all of us certainly know (at least if you look at the way the world does things): that violence is necessary sometimes. Is this why he says he comes not to bring peace but a sword?
When faced with questions such as these, we can turn to the time honored practice and principle of having Scripture interpret Scripture, i.e., we locate this verse in the larger context of Matthew's gospel and Scripture as a whole.
When we do that, the first thing that we can realize about this text is that Jesus was not speaking literally. In the Sermon on the Mount, when he introduces the upside-down values of the kingdom of heaven, Jesus says, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” In the story that follows, when push comes to shove, when Jesus comes to the part in the movie where the reluctant Rambo type character realizes that violence is the only way, Jesus chooses emphatically not to pick up the sword. In the garden, when the powers that be (the one's all too happy to use violence when necessary) come to arrest Jesus, and one of his followers uses a sword to lop off the ear of an enemy, Jesus says to put it away. “Don't you think my Father could send angel armies? In the future they're going to spend billions upon billions of dollars to come up with stuff much better than swords. Don't you think my Father could send angels with rpg's and F-35 Raptors if that was the way we are to go? Put your sword away, for all who live by the sword will perish by the sword (26:51-53).”
When we compare Matthew's telling of that story to versions in the other gospels, it is written almost as if he is saying, “Remember back in chapter 10 when I said that I come to bring a sword? Hello, I was not speaking literally!” When push comes to shove, and the only worldly alternative is to use violence (properly justified by the evidence of course), Jesus does indeed die by the sword, but not because he picks one up. Even when faced with a painful, humiliating death, like a lamb he emphatically refuses to pick up that sword. When Jesus in chapter 10 says, “I come to bring a sword.” he is not speaking literally.
Instead, I believe, Jesus uses the graphic image of the sword much like Spielberg used the first 30 minutes of Saving Private Ryan: to cut to the nitty gritty, to emphasize the import of what he was sending the disciples out to do. You are not going out to play church. You are not going out to preach eloquent sermons, to be holy and righteous on the outside and receive the congratulations and adulation of those around you. You are not going out to prosper financially and feel warm and fuzzy. You are going out preach the kingdom, to transform lives. In the words of Amos, repeated again and again and again in Scripture, God spells out what God wants: I want justice--oceans of it. You might recognize this verse from it's more traditional translation: “let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.”
This is what Jesus is sending out his disciples to do: to open up the flood gates of God's love and justice for all of God's children. This is what I believe lies behind Jesus cutting words. The stakes are high because the lives of God's children are at stake. This ministry is so important that there will be no relationship, not even family, that will not be effected, and sometimes even torn.2 The stakes are that high for them and for us.
Perhaps you have seen the movie Supersize Me. It is a documentary that follows a man who for thirty days eats nothing but McDonalds food. The film makes a telling point about the powers of the world that seek to mold and shape our attitudes and desires, our values and beliefs. Make no mistake, these forces are at war, and we are the targets.
These stats are probably out of date by now, but the point remains. The average child sees ten thousand food advertisements a year on television. Ninety five percent of those are for sugared cereal, fast food, soft drinks, & candy. If a well intentioned parent eats every meal every day for a year with that child, and with every meal gives a compelling nutritional message, and if that parent can bring in cartoon characters and toy giveaways, and introduce Hannah Montana for breakfast, the Jonas Brothers for lunch, and Dora the Explorer for dinner, and if instead of Big Macs they promotes oranges, that parent will have one thousand cracks at delivering the right message, compared to the ten thousand received on TV alone.
Billions of dollars are spent in shaping us to be what? As it is with food, it is also with so much more. We receive counseling from Dr. Phil. We receive financial counsel on Mad Money, and on and on and on. Jesus brings a different message, a life affirming, profoundly simple, loving message that is yet hard edged because it asks us to change, to give, and to give up being the center of our own universe.
It cuts like a sword. When Jesus sends his disciples, it is to lift up the very ones the world brings down: the poor, the sick, the wounded, the oppressed, those marginalized by the powers that be. And it also cuts down to size the proud, the powerful, and the arrogant. And if their wealth comes between them and loving God and neighbor (which 99.999% of the time it does), it cuts the rich too. (Ouch that hurts! I may not be Warren Buffet, but on the global scale, I am rich. We all are rich.)
It hurts. It cuts. It leaves no one untouched or unmarked. But what the prophets and what Jesus are
trying to open our eyes to is this: yes, the cut hurts, but it heals too. Perhaps if we want to understand this verse from Jesus, we might substitute a scalpel for the sword.3 The scalpel is sharp. It cuts. It hurts. But many of us have discovered in the tough medical decisions that we have had to make, that it is often
necessary to undergo the knife, to feel the cut, on the way to healing. Friends, there is a world to heal, and
God now sends us.
There is a commercial where a man rummages through garbage and finds a lamp. He rubs it and a genie pops up. The genie says, "You have three wishes." And the man said, "OK, I want all the money in the world." And BOOM, all the money appears. The man is just covered with money. The genie says, "OK, you have two more wishes." The man replies "OK, now I want all the women in the world," and BOOM! all of the women in the world are there around the man. So now he has all of the money and all of the women. Finally, the genie says, "You have one more wish. What do you want?" The man said, "I want to live forever." And, BOOM! he turns into the Energizer bunny!
There is truth in this commercial. We often approach life as if rubbing that lamp, looking for a genie, asking and rubbing, rubbing and asking for the all the things we think we want. If the genie gives us all of these things, we end up not human, something much less than God intended us to be.
Do we have a counter message? According to our savior we do. And from the marks on our own lives, and from all the lives it heals, we discover that it cuts like a knife.
2 Matthew's own community was discovering this as they left the synagogue and all of the relationships that were
connected to it, all for the sake of Jesus.
3 I didn't come up with this. I give credit to the now forgotten preacher or writer who long ago placed this image of the scalpel in my head.
June 29, 2008
Rev. Paul Heins
First Presbyterian Church
Logan, Utah