Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth.
I have come to bring not peace but the sword.
We tend to think primarily and first of the Messiah's mission to bring peace. It was said that in his day he would judge nations, decide disputes among many peoples, and that "they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore" (see Isaiah 2:4).
Jesus came, suffered and died to save us, and ascended to the Father. The Spirit was sent to breathe life into the Church. And yet peace, at least between peoples and nations, has remained elusive. Indeed, in spite of the promise from Isaiah Jesus tells us that we are not meant to avoid conflict at all costs, if those costs include being silent about the message of Jesus.
For I have come to set
a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
and one’s enemies will be those of his household.
Because we have free will in how we respond to the message and invitation of Jesus it is necessarily the case that some will decide for him and others against. More to it, he is a polarizing individual precisely because the choice we make when we choose for or against him is such a deep and fundamental choice.
I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live (see Deuteronomy 30:19).
When we choose Jesus we are not merely choosing a subjective expression of spirituality that happens to appeal to us. We are making a choice to be for or or against the source and origin of all things, of whether or not we will align ourselves with the intended purpose and destiny of the creation that exists in the mind of he who made it. It may, stated thus bluntly, sound like an obvious choice. But as the world crowds our field of vision with alternatives it becomes less clear and more obscure. Yet Christians throughout the ages continue to insist that we must not neglect or ignore this invitation. They ask us to imagine just what it would mean if it were true, in which case it could only be as great and important as they claim. And if it were an illusion or lie, then Christians would be the most pitiable of people (see First Corinthians 15:19), and Christianity itself would need to be opposed, for the countenance such a fabrication would not be kindness.
The decision for or against God as revealed in Jesus Christ is precisely the sword that Jesus came to bring. It is the point and the cutting edge of the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (see Ephesians 6:17). In order to reach the promised Messianic age of peace this sword must first cut, separating those who want the true peace that only God can bring from those who demand the false and illusory peace that the world promises, yet cannot provide, a peace which they imagine to be on their own terms.
And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved (see Acts 4:12).
It is not just a choice of whether the world or Jesus is first in our lives, even we ourselves must take a second place to him. It is a choice between what we imagine to be our freedom and autonomy in seeking life on our terms on the one hand, or taking up our crosses in a way that puts the love of God even above our own lives. Surrender is necessary if we are to truly believe that losing our lives for his sake will lead to life in a deeper sense. Only when God is on the throne of our individual hearts can we hope to follow this path, for it will otherwise seem to us as nonsense.
Whoever finds his life will lose it,
and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
The nonsense of the cross is actually the deepest truth of sacrificial love which we are all meant to embrace, in which we can find meaning. It is only in a gift of ourselves that we truly find ourselves (see Gaudium et Spes 24).
At this point many of us will have resigned ourselves to grit our teeth and embrace a hard life now for the promise of a future reward. And there is something valuable in this resolution. Yet Jesus did promise peace only in the life to come. Compared to eternity this life is just a single night in a bad motel, as Teresa of Avila reportedly said. Even so, there is a peace that we can know here and now that surpasses all understanding (see Philippians 4:7). We can face the challenges of a hostile world and even the treachery of our own hearts with a deeper underlying peace by hearing Jesus speak his word of "Shalom" to us (see John 14:27).
It is this peace which comes from God alone that will make us powerful and effective even when the world tries to hold us down and oppress us, just as Egypt oppressed the children of Israel. It is by having this peace in our hearts that we can wield the sword of the Spirit to free others from oppression unto the promised land of peace that God also desires for them.
Our help is in the name of the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.
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