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Christ and the Pharisees, Anthony Van Dyck, 17th cen.
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“You must not think I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a son’s wife against her mother-in-law, and a man will find his enemies under his own roof.” -Jesus (Matthew 10:34-35)
Brutal events are rocking the nation that I live in. Events that I cannot frame in any way that makes it all come out okay. We have entered an era of violence and disregard for human rights that I never expected to see in my country, an era in which those with power think it’s okay to do anything to another human without due process if you and the powers that be think they deserved it. It’s a time when walking bags of black mold in masks and uniforms or in expensive suits and ties (or high heels) re-write history and spray-paint over the truth to make the walls look clean and white instead of bloody and stinking with death. To think we weren’t ever like this before, of course, is a lie. We’ve always been a nation with plenty of skeletons banging on our closet doors, skulls piling up in the sewers no matter who was in power. But this level? No, I never imagined it.
It is with all of this in mind that I wrote today. My husband kindly made me an Americano with his snazzy new espresso machine to power me up and I took a few hours to sit outside in the unseasonably warm weather and write. The dogs came by and barked a few times but otherwise I had some unusually good focus to think thoughts that have been bubbling below the surface for a long time. I wrote this mostly for myself, but I hope it speaks to you too.
If you have never read the Bible for yourself and you give it a go, you may be surprised by the shocking and unexpected things Jesus says sometimes. He left the mouths of the religious leaders of his time gaping in offended astonishment, that’s for sure. The masses of “regular” people loved him. The rich, powerful, and influential did not.
Of course there were exceptions on both sides, but generally the people who felt powerless, downtrodden, and sick of the endless evil and oppression, sick of a government and a religious leadership who didn’t care a hoot about their troubles and in fact scorned them- they were flocking after Jesus in droves. Jesus preached a message that leveled the playing field. A message that raised up those who were crushed underfoot and brought down those who did the crushing. He spoke truth to power, right to the face. People who felt utterly powerless LOVED seeing him standing up to the brood of vipers, as Jesus called the establishment (one of my kids, encountering this side of Jesus in the Bible for the first time, asked if it was really okay for Jesus to insult people like that!).
But Jesus also had this tendency to turn right around and speak a dose of deeply uncomfortable truth to the masses, too. They wanted him to bring down the oppressive powers right then and there. They wanted more signs and wonders- more healings, more miraculous feasts and weather control. They wanted what we all want-
an end to the horrors-
evil people in control grabbing everything for themselves,
spewing lies and distorting truth,
treating lives as disposable and cursing as they kill anyone in their way
an end to the thugs,
the vicious, the cruel, the shameless
the war-mongers, the shooters, the bombers
the rapists, the traffickers
no more! no more starvation, dirty water to drink and endless disease
no more dead children, dead loved ones, NO MORE DEATH!
Don’t you want it? We want it with all our hearts! but the violence goes on, and on, and on,
as we scream and debate what is true and what is false and AI gets better and better at making lies to fuel the flames.
You would think Jesus wants this too, so why doesn’t he give us what we want if our desires are so good? Why didn’t he give the downtrodden masses the peaceful kingdom they wanted, with all evil vanquished, and the crushing perpetrators burning forever and ever in the white hot rage of a God who finally wreaks vengeance on those that did unspeakable things to innocent children? Why?
No. Jesus turned and said to our longing hearts-
“You must not think I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a son’s wife against her mother-in-law, and a man will find his enemies under his own roof.”
(Matthew 10:34-35)
Jesus came and declared war on a world consumed by evil, and we did not like that idea. No more war! No more suffering! Make it all better NOW!
We think we want a peaceful world cleansed of all evil and injustice, but we ourselves would be barred from it. Have you heard this quote before?
“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart."
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote that, in The Gulag Archipelago. He also wrote this:
“If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them.”
Jesus did not come to earth to bring an end to all evil then and there because to do so would be to kill all of us and bring an end to the human race. Strangely, very strangely (considering all the terrible things we do), he loves us, and doesn’t want any one of us to perish. Not one.
Instead, he came to declare war on the dark forces that have their tentacles wrapped around every single one of our hearts, infiltrating us, rotting us. That tends to offend us, to imply that we are on the same level as our oppressors and abusers. I do think there are categories of evil and you can’t put killer thugs in the same category as the average person walking down the street who has never killed, kidnapped, or robbed a bank, and certainly not in the same category as our beloved children who only have the barest inklings of right and wrong. But who is drawing the lines? I couldn’t do it.
He did not come to bring a peace that appeases evil. You don’t need a sword for that. You only need groveling go-along skills for that kind of peace. The only peace He is satisfied with is a peace where he has removed every single drop of the elixir of evil from our veins and leaves us totally, completely evil-free, and that takes a sword.
People loved it when His words antagonized the strong and powerful oppressors. They did not, however, appreciate it when Jesus told them that the same evil that had completely corrupted the hearts of the power was at work in their hearts too.
I think evil might be something like a fungus (no offense to kingdom fungi which sustains life on planet earth in incredible ways we are only beginning to discover). We are all born with the spores of evil potential on the surface of our hearts. The spores are looking for opportune spots to work their little fingers of moldy mycelium inside and begin eating, decaying. Some of us are in a state of active combat against the fungus, while others of us have let it fully consume us until it has spread over our whole being and is fruiting death-spores everywhere. Most of us are somewhere in between. I think we can all think of examples of people on both ends of the spectrum, from every single culture and historical era- those who have fought hard against the fungal creep of the dark and those who have given in and let it consume them until they no longer have any discernible spark of humanity left.
When Jesus brought this light of truth into the world as God in a fully human body, the fact of his birth was an affront to the evil powers. Everywhere he went, everything he did, resulted in more light and also darkness fighting back even harder to try to overcome it. The local Evil Fungus in Chief King Herod finds out about his birth and orders his soldiers to go to the town where Jesus was born and slaughter every baby boy under two years old in an attempt to stop the light in its tracks. The evil is offended and driven to higher and higher acts of violence against the light until it succeeds in having Jesus brutally executed, tortured and nailed to a cross to hang in agony until he dies, not knowing that this death will result in the rising of a light so bright that it will overcome every last bastion of darkness in the universe.
Like the black mold in our showers, evil hates the light. And Jesus comes with a lamp. He is the light of the world, and no darkness can overcome his light. He brings a lamp to shine into every single dark and secret corner of a willing human heart in a relentless search to remove every last mycillia of evil. It doesn’t matter how far gone, how decayed and eaten the heart is… if there is any last gasp of desire for what is light and good, He will enter in and turn the tide and make that heart whole and sound again.
We are living in the middle of a brutal battlefield where it seems that evil holds the upper hand, but it does not. All evil begins in the heart and works outward to kill and destroy, but Jesus has a brilliant star to plant in our hearts that completely heals and restores- not all at once instantly, but like a medicine that takes time to do its work, yet showing from the first dose that the tide has turned. He promises, promises, that when He brings the Kingdom of Justice, Mercy, Peace, and Love and makes all things new and whole, our hearts will not hold even one tiny strand of evil to bar us from entering into this glorious new morning. And that is a truth that evil will bring its sword of violence against until every last shadow is finally destroyed.
Come, oh Bright Star, rise in our hearts!
