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Week Seven, Day Five

Matthew 10:34-39

So, yesterday, we looked at one of my favorite passages in Matthew. Today we encounter one of my least favorites. Believe me I was tempted to skip it, ignore it or pretend it doesn’t exist. My other temptation was to tell you that this isn’t something Jesus said. That may be true, but I don’t have any textual evidence of that. This is what the passage says:

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. 37Whoever 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.

As the president of a peace and justice organization, I particularly hate the first part of that verse. No wonder, in the next chapter, John the Baptist sends a messenger to ask, “Are you the One or should we look for another?” This seems to contradict the verse in Matthew 5:9 where Jesus said “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and Jesus himself refused every opportunity to take up the sword in his quest to establish his Kingdom. Even at the end, he rebukes Peter for trying to use his sword to defend him. Jesus is the one who said we must learn to love our enemies, so just why would we take up a sword against our sisters and brothers? Maybe Jesus was talking about how the Church he would establish would fight one another.

The truth is that Jesus isn’t talking about what he intended, but acknowledging that his call for us to live life differently would create conflict and division even in families. Living by the guiding principles of Jesus—mercy, forgiveness, compassion, generosity and tolerance—puts us on an inevitable collision course with a culture whose guiding principles are acquisition, dominance, superiority by exclusion, and power. Jesus wasn’t talking about peace as the absence of war, but he was clear that, for those who take their faith seriously, there will be conflicts. We must remember to be as cunning as a serpent in these conflicts, but we must also be as innocent as a dove … the symbol for peace.

Blessings,

Michael Piazza
President, Hope for Peace & Justice

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