It's certainly true that Jesus Himself generated a good deal of controversy. More than that, He seems sometimes to have deliberately turned His back on courses of action that would have dampened it down.
With the various conflicts going on around the world, I've recently been thinking about some of the very difficult sayings of Jesus - the ones we all like conveniently to gloss over. In some, Jesus appears to say outright that He has come to cause division. For example, the same Jesus who refuses to use violence or force when it is used against Him is reported in two of the gospels as having said, 'Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have come not to bring peace but a sword…' (Matt. 10.34)
What does He mean? Perhaps something along the lines that the result of steadfastly searching out and witnessing to the truth within ourselves may very well set us, at times, against even those we love or those who have shaped us or those we have formerly respected and lived alongside. There is to be 'nothing covered up that will not be uncovered, nothing secret that will not be made known.' (Matt. 10.26) The sword of which Jesus speaks is one that, when wielded, forces us to lay bear and clarify truth in ways that cut right through confusion and dissembling. And we all know that sometimes a spot of confusion and half-truth is much easier.
The Greek word used in the text for 'sword' is not the soldier's weapon but the 'macharia', the knife used by the surgeon, the barber, the butcher, the gardener and the priest offering a sacrifice. In other words, it is the implement necessary to the small but life-giving separations and deaths of everyday life. Without this knife there is no clarity, no healing, no fruitfulness, no nourishment. In the face of the dangerous scheming and plotting going on around Him, Jesus is talking about a truly radical grappling with truth, one that never compromises, never accepts the half truths and sophistries of political or religious leaders, philosophers or social commentators. Jesus Himself named and faced those who opposed Him with a startling clarity of differentiation. This was true even when the opposition came from His closest allies. Another of the difficult sayings of Jesus which sounds very harsh to our ears is directed at Simon Peter. 'But He turned and said to Peter, 'Get behind me, Satan. You are a stumbling block to me for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.' (Matt. 16.25) It seems Jesus didn't scruple to admonish in the strongest terms a favourite disciple who tried to prevent Him from facing up to the truth of His calling which was to 'undergo great suffering, be killed and on the third day to rise again.' In order to remain steadfast and act in a way consonant with His own truth, He needed to put distance between Himself and anyone who would tempt Him away from what He knew to be true.
The 'sword' of which Jesus speaks, then, allows us to depart psychologically from a place of our own dissembling, confusion and self deception and to prepare ourselves to see, hear, speak and act upon truth however unpalatable. It enables us to see the sociologically relative nature of our own 'truth' and the 'truths' of others and to create space where apparently opposed truths can be lived, explored, evolved and understood more clearly. Lytta Basset, in her excellent book Holy Anger, Jacob, Job and Jesus (Continuum, Ottawa, 2007) here, suggests that this radical separation was the function of the sword placed at the entrance to the garden of Eden in Genesis 3.24 'a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the Tree of Life.' What an extraordinary image! This sword will not allow the commingling of that which leads to life with that which leads to death. In its wielding it forces the laying bare of untruths, self-interest, greed and all manner of dysfunction. It stands as a warning and a means of wounding for us all when we follow the path of deceit. Without its separating, defining, wounding power, there can be no growth, no healing, no reconciliation, no way for human and divine to meet, no way for truth to emerge.
A sword cuts to the quick. The sword of which Jesus speaks creates definition, it allows protected space between beliefs and actions that interfere with one another - a necessary space in which greater clarity and more honestly humble self-possession can be realised. This sword may cause the death of a previous state as being the only way for newly revealed truth to emerge. It may cut deep into the heart of relationships. The truth that breaks out when such a sword performs its excision may cause intense pain, especially where that truth has long been denied, denigrated, twisted or falsified. The eruption of truth may destroy apparent familial or social harmony if it is founded on what Bassett calls the 'lie of violent unanimity.' This process hurts and is akin to the taking up of our cross and the laying down of one understanding of one's life and circumstances so that a better, truer way can be born.
There is a Hebrew expression which means to 'cut the covenant'. It's drawn from very ancient tales of sacrifice in Genesis where the severing action creates the possibility of relationship between God and humans. Without the sword separating things that have become harmful to each other due to confusion or deliberately perverted intent, the truth of relationship cannot be properly restored, whether between individuals, societies or God and human. The processes of growth and healing in the natural world are a reflection of this.
It's sobering to realise that God is at work even in our enemies and those who deny us our 'truth'. If it is true that God will always be a companion in the injustices we suffer, He will also be a companion to others in the injustices we cause them to suffer. God alone can weigh and judge. There is, of course, one more thing to be said about Jesus' declaration that He had come to cause the differentiations and separations that allow truth to be revealed and justice to be done. Although He takes the image of a weapon that is used for violence, His own truth leads Him to refuse to respond to violence with violence. The way He lived His life produced diametrically opposed reactions and He left no-one indifferent, but He did not employ violence to counteract these reactions nor did He allow His followers to do so in His defence.The searing pain produced by this sword is the terrible pain of shedding those things which stand between us and truth, between ourselves, others and justice; it is not the vengeful pain of inflicting on others the hurt we have received or worse.
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Lytta Bassett is a Reformed Minister and Professor of Theology at Lausanne. She was named a 'spiritual master' by Le Monde in 2001. She has written a number of books that offer profound insight into how to move beyond the impasses we experience in conflicts at individual, community and global levels. Holy Anger, Jacob, Job, Jesus is a profound and wide-ranging exploration of Biblical and theological sources that show how the potentially devastating energy of anger can be transformed into the energy of rebirth and re-awakening.
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