We hear today our Lord giving us a hard saying, and so I will spend this time reflecting on how to properly understand it. The hard saying comes at the very beginning of our Gospel passage: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” This is a difficult teaching to immediately understand; in fact it falls into the category of verses in Scripture that is called “hard sentences.” I will endeavor to explore and interpret rightly this hard sentence. And to do so, I want to bring to mind something I preached last Sunday, so as to establish the proper context to understand today’s hard sentence.
Last Sunday’s preaching focused on what it means to be a martyr. Martyr as a word is taken up from Greek into the Church vocabulary, and it means to give public witness that Jesus Christ is the only Saviour of the world. Jesus trained the Twelve to be able to give public witness that the only Saviour is Christ, that in so doing, their apostolic preaching would draw souls into deeper relationship with Christ, that they, too, would feel called to be martyrs – called to give public witness that Jesus Christ is the only Saviour. And this is the same invitation people today received from the Christian Church and the Christian proclamation: to become martyrs, to become public witnesses to Christ, and how God is present in our lives, and available to all those who call in faith upon His most Holy Name.
Before it means anything else, martyr means witness. Of course the term has come to also mean “to give one’s lift for the cause of Christ,” and for perhaps the vast majority of Christians at least in the west, that second meaning is the only working meaning they have of “martyr.” It means both, and it means witness before it means dying.
Yet it does mean dying. So much so that the faithful formulated a doctrine early the life of the Church: the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. The faith is built upon martyrs, both in terms of witness and offering of their life. Our faith can only be strengthened by learning of the many martyr stories of the Church, especially those of the early Church, in the first four centuries before Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire under Emperor Constantine.
And we have martyrs even today: numerically, more than ever. The world still reacts strongly to the proclamation of Christ, and public confession of Him. This makes sense when we understand the world to be a fallen world, even a world under the illusory rule of the Prince of Darkness, also known as the Devil and his minions. This is also why the visible Church today, of human beings living and breathing today, is historically called the “Church Militant.” That terms reflects the battle Christians have in overcoming temptations, overcoming ungodly habits (which are called “passions”), overcoming the capital or deadly sins: pride, envy, greed, gluttony, lust, sloth, and anger. It is a battle. This life as a Christian is spiritual warfare. To the Ephesians, Saint Paul wrote that “we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.”
All of that is behind our Lord’s hard sentence, and is the context for understanding it. Again we heard Jesus say: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” The sword Christ brings is a heavenly sword, greater than the swords angels are said to have in Scripture; His sword is to fight the battles and war within the fallen world. He tell us He brings a sword so that we will not be troubled when we see the earth amid spiritual war. Christ has come with His sword that this battle would be won.
And the battle involves those dearest to us, even those extremely dearest to us. Of course it is a sacred duty to render to parents (and to children and siblings and relatives) honor due in terms of their human dignity. But living in a fallen world, when our parents or children or siblings or relatives demand more than what is due, not only are we not to obey, Jesus teaches; but we must hate specifically such a demand in them, because in effect such a demand is to be an idol, that is, demanding to be higher than God.
My dear brothers and sisters, in the Gospel last Sunday, Jesus said, “When they deliver you up, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say; for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.” Knowing this, we are to bear our Cross in public; that is to be public witnesses to Christ in a fallen world which is the battlefield of spiritual warfare. We must put ourselves into the battle, knowing that the ultimate battle has already been won by Jesus on the Cross. Knowing that if our faith in Christ is strong, the Holy Spirit will not only give us the words to say, but the Holy Spirit will give us the strength to stand, and that He will take away our anxiety or worry. So that when we attempt to be public in our Christian belief and profession, we might be truly compelling. And that we might truly be able to affirm, the Lord is the strength of my life. And when the Lord is the strength of our life, we already know the answer to the question, of whom then shall I be afraid? If the Lord is the strength of our life, then to the question, of whom then shall I be afraid? the answer is “no one.” Amen.
On Our Lord Bringing Not Peace but a Sword