Here I’m going to quote a scary saying of Jesus that has a lot of people either spooked or offended:
“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
Some folks try to cover the fire and power of these words; to try and tame the force of the Lion of Judah. Now obviously this is neither a contradiction to Jesus as Prince of Peace nor to His refusal to use murder and violence as a means for spreading the Kingdom. Both of these are true without a doubt. Yet, He is the Prince of Peace that destroys peace and His Sword slays with love. Am I speaking double-speak? Is this just nonsense?
Never!
Jesus has come to burn the whole world with His fire and that is complete in His death and resurrection and ascension, in His very coming!
We imagine peace as the absence of conflict, a sentimental wash about everyone holding hands and singing. A sad grey utopianism of our western liberal persuasion. We build our many towers trying to achieve this goal and as bland and untouching as it truly is, it is impossible. What I mean here is that the very root of humanity has fallen, we’re trapped in cycles of violence, corruption and greed. Humanity does not become perfected, it becomes an abomination. The rationalism of the western liberal utopian project is removing mankind’s frontal cortex; it lobotomizes humanity into oblivion. Rationalism tries to turn man into machine, which is to kill itself. The priests of this cult try to tear out our heart and offer it on the alter of Tolerance and Reason; they try and trade our souls for CPUs.
Now don’t get me wrong here, this isn’t where I’m affirming some war-mongering red-blooded conservatism or fascism. These are anathema. However, these at least recognize the futility of the Enlightenment dream and yet use those same tools provided to build a different project. It is why the moderates of the former crumble to the dynamic force of the latter. The French turn to Robespierre, the Italians to Mussolini, the Germans to Hitler.
As I’ve gone on before: mankind is looking for a banner to follow. Whether it’s an Alexander or Caesar or a Napoleon, it’s a yearning to find purpose and these men offer the promise of finding it. Of course they all fail. These heroes die and sometimes are praised as gods; a cult as a milestone for the next hero to draw inspiration to try again. So, as I’ve said, this Hero truly is their Messiah/Christ, their anointed one. As Christians we proclaim this Hero-Messiah is Jesus of Nazareth.
So He is and so He calls us to this banner and like all banners, it is an end of business as usual. I don’t have to say much here besides this: Jesus is different than the others, His Kingdom is not of this world and He is the True King, the True Anointed One, the True Messiah.
Jesus came swinging a sword putting to death our sentimentality, our attempts at patching the world to get along a little further. Jesus came burning the fields of our mundane measures. He shatters the mold and says: “Follow Me!”
He is no meek and mild religious guru. He is not some pious invention to help me have the sanity to survive the days and pass the hours. He doesn’t give me a routine to live a good and successful life where I’m happy or I’m arrived at some nirvana. He didn’t come with a cold and unmoving face with mere teachings before He left for outer space.That is Greek philosophies and Hindu devotions. It is a mere salad bar for living the “good life”.
He is not some get-out-of-hell-free card, an icon we invoke to get by on our way back to McPlato playland. Not some taskmaster of “family values” and bourgeoisie sympathies whose goal is to turn the Earth into Suburbia.
He is not some gloss for American Civic Religion. He does not belong to the middle-class whiteman. He is not of “god-and-country” idolatry and its Martian worship of kleptocratic brutality and democratic, well-intentioned, imperialism. He is not a vending-machine of blessings for the gods’ chosen nation called America.
All of these are false-Christs, all of these ought to be destroyed. May the priests of those religions cast their vestments into the fire of God’s love. May they burn down their altars to false gods in the same. May they beg forgiveness and mercy for the lives they’ve stomped, smothered, dulled or stupified in their poisonous brew of myth-making.
Jesus bears a sword killing these false gods with His radical love, His radical proclamation of justice, in the courts of His Kingdom. He burns away sentimental peace and false gods by His very presence. The dark retreats from the blinding light of His being. What is this blinding light, this radical love? It is the beaten and broken body of the Christ hanging on a cross, scourged and tortured, crowned with a crown of thorns. It is our King entering to the depths and that is what His revolution demands.
Jesus is not giving a new vision for the world or of the world. There are many venerated as philosophers and prophets who have done the same. No, Jesus gives us a New World. His broken body and shed blood, in which we participate in His Supper, is for a New Covenant; it is the fulfillment of the old into the new. He lifts up the broken of body and broken of mind. He steps into the midst of the poor, the ugly, the foolish, the crippled, the retarded, the possessed. He takes, to be blunt, the shit of the world and calls them into His Life. He chooses the weak and foolish things for His revolution.
As the His Body, His Church, we are this knitted together group of raggamuffins and misfits. May we, as we live and speak in this Church, glory in the cross by which we’re healed. There He shed His blood for the destruction of sin, to emancipate and liberate the whole of creation. His blood was/is/will be not only for us but for the whole world! He is now at work calling men and women into the Kingdom, into His Revolution. This very process casts all things into uncertainty. Faith in this King spreads a fire of doubt into all things we treasured and called gods.
May we not forget His Revolution. May we, His Body, despite our sins, stumblings and fallings which we commit, fix our eyes on the Author of our Deliverance. May we go to Him in the very worst and sit at His feet. Christ is not about private spirtualisms that forsake reality; Christ is not about some utopian social engineering that ignores His divinity, His humanity and His blood shed on the cross. Christ is the unquenchable fire and the only hope of New Heavens and New Earth.
Viva la Revolucion!
