Not Peace but a Sword
21 June 2008 - 19 סיון 5768 by Huw
Take a look at the RCL readings for tomorrow, Proper 7, Year A. They are some of the tough ones.
But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. So she said to Abraham, “Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.”
“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.
As soon as the covenant is struck, the very first action is one of division. Sarah says “they’re not good enough… get them out of my house!” And how loudly her voice shouts down through the history of the Church!
And we might be tempted to read Jesus as insisting on the same thing.
But Abraham, our father, is troubled. And it is exactly this troubling that worries Sarah. She knows the father of us all loves all his children: and she is jealous. And as she picks and nags… God says, finally, “Don’t worry. I’ll make a great nation of him, too.”
And how would Sarah feel now? Watching her (mythological) children war with the (mythological) children of her slave woman - the one she pushed on her own husband? Would she be horrified that God had, in fact, raised up so great a nation as to be larger than her own? Would she be angry? Would she be vexed, still, at God as she was at Abraham, for loving all his children?
And what about the tough sayings, “Not peace, but a sword” not unity but division?
We’re seeing this play out in Anglicanism today, I think. There can be no peace when one group wants to exclude the other. No matter how hard the party of inclusion tries, the party of exclusion always comes off a victim. No matter how hard the party of exclusion tries, the party of inclusion must always seek to include even those who exclude.
And there is enmity.
I’ve been watching HBO’s Rome for a while, enjoying weekly doses of the second season downloaded from iTunes. What strikes me is the divisions in the world in those days: between Rome and Everyone Else. Between the Rich and the Poor. Between the Patricians and the Plebs. Along comes the faith of Christ teaching unity and fellowship and the first thing that happens is it gets excluded.
And so a mother hates her daughter because the child considers as her own siblings, those whom her mother wouldn’t touch. A father hates his son because his son loves those whom the Father hates. A nation slays the church because the church has fellowship even with the enemies of the state. A husband hates his wife because she forgives even those who try to destroy them. A business man hates his employees because they won’t act against the competition.
Peace that breaches social norms and political concerns is un-peace in the eyes of the worldly and powerful.
Sarah wouldn’t see such love as good. She’d cast it out and nag and peck at it.
Too long the Church has been Sarah-like to her spouse.
I agree that they are tough ones. In part, they are tough because our culture has built up an image of a Jesus who loves so much that he could never ever “judge” anything. In some other times and cultures, a different, but equally simplistic, image of Jesus has dominated the culture.
Scripture shows a much more complicated picture of Christ. He accepts the adulterous woman with a simple warning while whipping the moneychangers. He goes to eat with a tax collector while telling the rich young law-abiding ruler to sell everything. He commends St. Peter for his highly spiritual insight then calls him a Satan.
We will have no hope of understanding our Lord unless we lean into the complexity and allow for some mystery in our understanding of him.
And he welcomes Judas - and either knowing (supernaturally) or not-knowing (humanly) what Judas is about creates issues.
It is a complex one - which I was saying. But I think those of us who have answers (right or wrong) need to be willing to hang out/commune/pray with those of us who might have different answers (right or wrong) because I sense you are right: Jesus is a bit more complex than we’re willing to admit.