Did Jesus Come To Bring Peace or Discord?

July 2, 2023

The teaching in the first part of the Gospel reading of today troubles many.  In fact, if we read the three verses immediately preceding today’s Gospel reading, we would be even more troubled, for we find this: “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.” It is as a continuation of these verses that we read in today’s Gospel that “whoever loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me….” and so on and so forth.

These words of Jesus naturally trouble many Christians, as generally Jesus has been projected as a prince of peace, whereas in these passages, he is saying quite the opposite.

How then can we understand Jesus’ teaching?  What is this peace that Jesus comes to shatter?  

I would suggest that there are many kinds of peace which are really not peace. There is, for instance, the peace experienced by those who refuse to stand up for what is right as long as it doesn’t affect their individual lives. Then there is the peace of remaining quiet out of fear.  And most importantly, there is the insidious peace of an absence of external conflict that allows rank injustice to carry on, because the system itself is one that allows/fosters injustice.    Pope Francis (like the Liberation Theologians and many others) has brought this systemic injustice to our attention, when he spoke of the ‘economy of waste’ that is rampant in our world and which is one of the root causes of the poor being poor in a world that has so much wealth and resources” (Homily on Nov. 4, 2021). In India, we, of course, have the entire caste system in which such injustice was and is institutionalized - and though it has been legally abolished, the fact is that it is socially and powerfully enforced in numerous places and situations around the country.  In all these systemic forms of injustice, the ‘peace’ that is experienced is a piece that exists as long as one doesn’t challenge it.

And so there are many such examples of a false kind of peace.

Challenges to such kinds of ‘peace’ were also experienced in the early Church.  Thus, we have Peter being publicly rebuked and called a hypocrite by Paul (Galatians 2:11-13) for his attempt to ‘keep the peace’ by behaving differently with the Jewish Christians (as compared to how he behaved when he was with Gentile Christians), in order to appease those among them who insisted on applying all Jewish restrictions to the newly converted Gentile Christians. Similarly, the early Christians had to radically re-think their own earlier lives which meant that they had to ‘destroy’ their own peace. For example, the Roman converts had to stop seeing the Emperor as God, they had to learn to value loving more than conquering, they had to learn to treat all (not just Roman citizens but even their servants and slaves) as equally children of God and so on and so forth.  The Jewish converts were told that their dietary restrictions and their practice of circumcision, which played such a hugely important role in their lives, was unnecessary, and that the burdensome Mosaic law had to be replaced by the challenge of Jesus’ teachings, and so on and so forth. Imagine the upheaval that all this would cause within families and within communities. To get a sense of the upheaval and polarization this would cause, think of the polarizing nature of Pope Francis’ approach on many issues (divorced Catholics, Gay Catholics, married priests, women’s roles in Church decision making bodies, etc).

Such kinds of radical changes when brought into our own ‘peaceful’ lives, certainly destroy the peace we perhaps enjoy.

It would thus seem that the radical challenge of Jesus’ teaching would naturally create polarization within communities and families, where many would see such teaching as unnecessarily creating conflict.  In fact, that was exactly the criticism of pastor Martin Luther King, the civil rights activist in the 1960s black movement in the USA, that was made by many good white clergymen who agreed with his basic stance that racial injustice was wrong, but felt that his activities to change the situation were “unwise and untimely”. In his reply, found in his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, King points out that he has come to believe that it is the white moderate, not the Klu Klux Klan and others, who are the greatest stumbling blocks to justice, for they are always “more devoted to order, than to justice, (and) prefer a negative peace which is the absence of tension, to a positive peace”. He goes on to point out the sin not only of the hateful words and actions of people who enforce racial injustice, but the sin of the appalling silence of the good people. And then, in a strong indictment of the Church which prefers a shallow peace to justice, he writes:  “So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an arch-defender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent – and often even vocal – sanction of things as they are.” And then King laments: “Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world?”  

It would seem, then, that following Jesus, especially in times of grave injustice, is a radical and polarizing vocation. And not all of us have the courage to really answer that call – I know that I don’t always have that courage. And I often feel that this same difficulty in standing up to follow Jesus is also found in the institutional Church in India (and elsewhere, I presume). Perhaps because of its large financial and other investments, the Church is not free to speak truth to power – for then there would be much to lose. And unfortunately, most Christians too prefer “peace” (or what seems outwardly like peace) to justice – a natural desire, of course, for those of us who do not suffer from too much injustice.  So, Jesus’ teaching is definitely polarizing in the world, both then and now.  

Christians in India are generally known as peaceful people, despite the anger against some of us in the rural areas where some are deeply upset at ‘conversions’ that they feel Christians encourage. However, wherever we are seen as peaceful people, we also need to ask ourselves whether we are peaceful in situations where peace is actually harmful.

In short, we need to ask ourselves: Have we experienced the upsetting nature of Jesus’ teachings vis a vis our life in society today? If not, are we hearing Jesus’ real teachings?

First Reading: Second Kings 4: 8-11, 14-16a

One day Elisha was passing through Shunem, where a wealthy woman lived, who urged him to have a meal. So whenever he passed that way, he would stop there for a meal. She said to her husband, “Look, I am sure that this man who regularly passes our way is a holy man of God. Let us make a small roof chamber with walls, and put there for him a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp, so that he can stay there whenever he comes to us.”

 

One day when he came there, he went up to the chamber and lay down there.  He said to his disciple: “What then may be done for her?” Gehazi answered, “Well, she has no son, and her husband is old.” He said, “Call her.” When he had called her, she stood at the door. He said, “At this season, in due time, you shall embrace a son.”

 

Second Reading: Romans 6: 3-4, 8-11

Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.

But if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God.  So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

 

Gospel: Matthew 10: 37-42

Whoever 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.  

“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”