Not peace, but a sword

I know I've talked about this a thousand times, but I think it's still important.  I think it's important because you can have a game show with these rules, and it still apparently works out.

There was a semi-obscure Canadian game show called 'gutterball alley,' in which you bowled, and got money for knocking pins over.  All good so far.  However, it was on the comedy network, so you know there's going to be a gag somewhere, and there surely was. The deal was that you had to play fun games, and the more answers you got right, the more balls you earned to knock pins down.  And one of the games, which was hil-AR-ious, was the game called 'Jesus, Buddha, or Manson.'  The idea was that the hosts would take a quote from one of those figures, and you would have to guess which of them said it.  I wish I could remember more of it, but what I do remember is the quotation that came out, where it said 'Do not think that I came to bring peace.  I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.'  And of course, the contestant answered that it was Charles Manson.

Of course, that quote is from Jesus.  It's from Jesus even though it seems like the least Jesus thing to be said ever, doesn't it?  He's the Prince of Peace!  And as the Prince of Peace, shouldn't he come to bring peace?  Well, you'd think so, but thinking that way doesn't really do peace justice at all.

Peace is a difficult thing.  It's not as easy as you might think, as most moral issues happen to be as well.  Oh, sure, it seems simple in Stuart Little, where the rules boil down to 'Nix on Swiping anything' and 'Absolutely no being mean,' but the rules in real life are quite a bit more complicated than that.  For you and I, when we read these words from Jesus, and the words that surround them, we get disheartened.  We get disheartened in the same way as the rich young ruler who is told to sell his possessions, give the proceeds to the poor, and go follow Christ.  We get real glum when we hear words ilke this, and we deseprately want to excise them from the scriptures.

But we don't have that option.  The words are there in black and white.  Jesus has not come to bring peace, but a sword.  He has not come to bind families together, but to divide them.  He has not come to bring love and joy, but instead division, and hard lessons.  It's a rough go, and most of us don't want to hear that part.  We want peace! We want peace and love! We want Jesus to politely build us up, to make us comfortable, and to help us feel good.  We not only want him to say some good natured platitudes, we expect them.  We sincerely believe that that is what Jesus says, and what he's all about.

But Jesus isn't all about that.  It surprises us when we find that out.  It surprises us, though it really ought not surprise us.  It surprises us because we honestly don't have that much familiarity with what Jesus is all about.

You may have heard of Jesus as the great physician.  I hope you have, otherwise this next bit won't make a whole lot of sense.  But yes, typically, he's seen as the great physician.  The one who offers healing for body and soul.  And in my line of work, occasionally I speak with Physicians, as I do, and one of the best conversations I ever had with one was when I spoke with one of the many Drs. Vuksic, who said this much to me.

'If I were to get diagnosed with cancer, I'd really only have one question for the surgeon.  Can it be cut out?  If yes, then let's move on that right away.  If not, then just make me comfortable.'

It's a heck of a line, really, and it tells us something about the nature of sin, and what Jesus is for.  He is here to remove sin.  That's what he does.  And if he is going to be removing sin, it is going to be difficult, dangerous, and largely unpleasant.  Just like surgery is.  If you have cancer, you can have the question as to whether you can get surgery or not, and that's a good question.  Because if you want the surgeon to bring you peace, she can do that. She can bring peace, and make you as comfy as possible, putting you into palliative care.  There, you will be so innured against sensation that you will be content to lie there, and be at peace and rest.  You will also be dying.

If you have a good surgeon, a skilled surgeon, someone who knows what they are doing, a dedicated physician, someone who can tackle the problems that arise, then you will not want someone who brings peace.  You will want someone who brings a sword.  A scalpel, a dividing instrument that will refiner's fire and fuller's soap.  Something that divides infection from purity, something that splits health and poison, something that reaches into a situation, and knows that the worst thing to do is to bring peace, to make you comfy while you drift into oblivion.  It's a shocking prospect for us to deal with, isn't it?  The prospect that we, if we are to be made comfortable, will be made comfortable in our sins, but that's what we expect of Jesus.  We expect him to just keep us comfy, and to remove our pain, and help us to feel better in what we're already doing.  But he doesn't, and he won't.  All the hard things that he does and says, they're the words of a surgeon who has a diagnosis for us. And that surgeon doesn't just give a diagnosis and walk away, that surgeon has surgery that he wants to do.
remove the toxins from the healthy tissue.  A dentist's drill,

For you see, there's a choice.  In any surgical situation, you as the patient have the right to refuse care.  If the surgeon comes to you and says 'we have aggressive cancer, but we've gotten to it before it spreads.  We can do surgery tomorrow and then you'll have a long recovery, but you will be completely cured,' you do have the option to refuse.  You can say 'no thanks.  That seems like a lot of work.  I'll just keep my illness, just make me comfy.' You can always choose that approach.  You can choose to just be comfy until you die.  Or you can trust the surgeon and his advice, and know that he has your best interests at heart.  You don't want a surgeon who is going to bring peace.  You want a surgeon who is going to bring a sword, who will carve your sin out of you, and save you from it.  This is a core Christian teaching, and one that is so important that I will say it again.  Knowing you have a problem isn't enough.  And you can't fix the problem you have.  This is what Jesus is for, to use his skill and his grace to remove your sin from you, divide it as far as east is from the west, and to set you up as a redeemed child of God.

That's what you want.  And the only way you would not want Jesus to bring a sword is if you don't know what he's all about in the first place.

PJ.