The Vehement Jesus

Grappling with Troubling Gospel Texts

Neville

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781532642722
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

The Vehement Jesus composes a fresh examination and interpretation of several perplexing passages in the Gospels that, at face value, challenge the conviction that the mission and message of Jesus were peaceful. Using narrative analysis and various forms of intratextual critique in the service of a hermeneutic of shalom, the author makes the case that Gospel portrayals of the vehement Jesus are compatible with, perhaps even indispensable to, the composite canonical portrait of Jesus as the Messiah of Peace. As a result, this exploration in New Testament theology and ethics makes an invaluable contribution to the crucial conversation about the role of Jesus' life and teaching in Christian reflection on the morality of violence today.

1

Crossing Swords, I

Not Peace but rather a Sword?

(Matthew 10:34–36)

In view of the mission of Jesus taken as a whole—including his teaching on nonretaliation and his nonretaliatory response to violence directed against himself—two of his sayings featuring swords apparently undermine his commitment to peace as integral to his proclamation of the reign of God. The first of these is the saying found in Matt 10:34 and Luke 12:51, in which Jesus apparently repudiates peace as the purpose of his mission: not peace but rather a sword! The second is Jesus’ instruction to his disciples, found only in Luke’s passion narrative, to purchase swords (Luke 22:35–38). Both of these texts are enigmatic no less than contrary to the general tenor of Jesus’ mission and message. Taken either at face value or symbolically, they have been pressed into the service of dubious contentions.38 Although both sayings presume violence to be in some sense inevitable, it takes things too far to rope them into the service of condoning violence as compatible with the reign of God heralded by Jesus.

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the first of these sword sayings of Jesus with care, in the hope of understanding it better and thereby ascertaining whether or not it endorses violence in some sense or in certain contexts. The uniquely Lukan episode in which Jesus advises his disciples to arm themselves with swords is discussed in chapter 4.

There are three versions of Jesus’ adamant assertion that he came not to sow peace but rather strife: Matt 10:34–36; Luke 12:51–52; and saying 16 in the Gospel of Thomas. However they may be related, these three texts share enough in common to be regarded as variations on a theme. Their respective literary contexts differ widely, however, making it impossible to discern the saying’s original life-setting and hence its original sense. Since our ignorance in this respect is not critical to determining the moral implications of this saying, especially in relation to violence validated in Jesus’ name, this chapter explores the meaning of this saying in its most stark canonical form (Matt 10:34) and hence in its Matthean context. Luke’s use of the term “division” at 12:51 probably interprets the “sword” of his source, whatever that may have been. The Thomasine version is probably secondary to, and possibly dependent on, both synoptic versions of the saying. Without any obvious thematic connection to the sayings that come before and after it, saying 16 in the Gospel of Thomas reads:

Jesus said, “Perhaps people think that I have come to bring peace upon the world. They do not know that I have come to bring divisions on the earth—fire, sword, war. For there will be five in a house, and three will be against two, and two against three; father against son, and son against father. And they will stand as solitary.”39

As with the versions of this saying in Matt 10:34–36 and Luke 12:51–53, the version in Gos. Thom. 16 both pivots on the antithesis between peace and its opposite and also relates this antithesis to familial discord. The contrast between expectation (that Jesus’ purpose was to promote peace) and its overturning in Jesus’ apparent statement of purpose more closely resembles Matt 10:34, as does the specific reference to the sword. But the reference to fire seems to reflect familiarity with the saying’s immediate context in Luke 12:49–50. The final phrase is more than likely a Thomasine addition (cf. Gos. Thom. 49 and 75).

Forceful Expression within an Apocalyptic Matrix

To make sense of Jesus’ “not peace but rather a sword” saying, it is helpful to examine the saying’s rhetorical dynamic and also illuminating to identify its historical ideological matrix. Greater familiarity with both this saying’s rhetorical dynamic and its ideological context contributes to a reconfigured understanding of its probable meaning.

In a study of forceful and imaginative sayings of Jesus, Robert Tannehill devotes considerable attention to this saying, focusing particularly on the way in which literary form and expression contribute to its dynamic force.40 Tannehill first draws attention to the fact that the central saying itself is marked by its antithetical expression, which enhances its rhetorical force considerably: not peace but rather a sword! Although it would have been possible to express this apparent statement of purpose without reference to peace, to refer to peace—and indeed to do so before its antithesis—evokes the expectation for eschatological shalom associated with the messianic era before (apparently) dashing it. As Tannehill observes, “The word ‘sword’ is more forceful because of contrast with its opposite, part of its meaning is clarified by this antithetical setting, and the reader is immediately involved in what is being said because of the sharp rejection of his [or her] hopes for peace.”41

If the reference to peace evokes the hope of the human heart for eschatological shalom, the use of the word “sword” is metonymic imagery. In other words, here “sword” is not only a vivid image associated with warfare, used in this instance to represent such conflict generally, but it is also used metaphorically of familial conflict. The contrast is not between peace and war but between peace and an image of warfare used metaphorically. In the Matthean form of this saying, this is clear from the epexegetical nature of the saying in Matt 10:35. In other words, both the explanatory γάρ (gar, for) of Matt 10:35 and the way in which its opening words parallel the apparent expression of purpose in 10:34 indicate that the second saying explicates the first such that “sword” signifies severance between people—family dissension—not killing. In its Lukan form, the saying makes explanation redundant by simply substituting the word “division” (διαμερισμός, diamerismos) for “sword” (Luke 12:51), a noun reinforced by the use of two cognate verbs in what follows. “The two words [‘peace’ and ‘sword’] do not stand on the same level,” according to Tannehill.42 Here “peace” is primary and associated with eschatological hope, whereas the word “sword” is not only secondary and disruptive of human flourishing but also metonymic and metaphorical. Although Jesus here seems to relate the purpose of his coming to a “sword” rather than to shalom, the saying itself nevertheless reinforces the primacy of peace and the comparative pettiness of “sword,” which merely serves a rhetorical function.

The family severances listed in Matt 10:35–36 to illustrate what Jesus means by his “sword” saying derive from Micah 7:6. For Tannehill, “This reference to Scripture may call to mind a broader prophetic-apocalyptic motif of the breaking of family relationships in the final tribulation . . . stirring the fears and hopes associated with this motif.”43 This suggestion on Tannehill’s part is more than a possibility, however. In all likelihood, the apocalyptic eschatological expectation of messianic woes provides the ideological matrix within which to make best sense of this enigmatic saying.44

Although the saying in its Matthean and Lukan forms makes the same basic point, Matthew’s parallel expressions of family discord seem to envisage the most grievous instances of breakdown within a Jewish household: son against father, daughter against mother, and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law, since married women generally joined the households of their husbands. Such family discord is not simply disconcerting; it is, rather, an expression of flagrant disregard for the fifth commandment to honor father and mother (Exod 20:12; Deut 5:16). Matthew echoes Micah 7:6 most precisely, not only by listing the same three family relationships in the same order but also by including the same startling conclusion: one’s enemies comprise those who share one’s home (10:36).

Luke’s elaboration of family discord is different but no less effective. Whereas Matthew concludes with a summary statement, Luke begins with a description of how a household of five will henceforth be divided, three against two and two against three. Perhaps, as Tannehill suggests, the five referred to in Luke 12:52 correspond to the family members mentioned in 12:53, thereby maximizing the level of family tension to include divisions not only between individual family members but also between coalitions within the family as a whole.45 Perhaps the reference to three versus two and two versus three signals generational breakdown (son, daughter, and daughter-in-law against father and mother). In any case, Luke reinforces the impact of interfamilial conflict by reiterating each instance of family conflict in reverse form, for example, father against son and son against father.

Yet one further aspect of Luke’s presentation of this saying is distinctive. Unlike Matthew’s version of Jesus’ sword saying, Luke prefaces his “not peace but rather division” saying with apparently related sayings in which Jesus seems to associate the purpose of his mission with catastrophe and foreboding. Immediately preceding Jesus’ question, “Do you suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth?” (12:51), Luke has Jesus utter two other stark sayings: “I came to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already alight. I have a drowning by which to be drowned, and how distressed I am until that occurs” (12:49–50).46

Both the juxtaposition of Luke 12:51 alongside 12:49–50 and the shared verbal pattern of 12:49 and 12:51 imply that these sayings belong to the same literary unit and therefore should be understood in light of each other.47 In its Lukan setting, the question regarding peace as the (apparent) purpose of Jesus’ mission is contrasted not only with division in what follows (12:51a–53) but also with the “fire” and “drowning” that precede it. In other words, the possibility that the purpose of Jesus’ mission was to bring peace to the earth is crushed between two jaws of a vice identified as fire and division. Tannehill also surmises that the association of the “fire” and “baptism” sayings with Jesus’ “not peace but rather division” saying implies that Luke 12:49–50 should probably be interpreted in terms of suffering, tribulation, and eschatological judgment.48 In short, the passage as a whole associates Jesus’ mission with eschatological strife, not peace.

As part of his discussion of Matt 10:34–36 and Luke 12:49–53, Tannehill addresses the forceful effect created by this cluster of ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Studies in Peace and Scripture Series Preface
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Crossing Swords, I
• Chapter 2: Perturbing Parables
• Chapter 3: The Judgment of Jerusalem
• Chapter 4: Crossing Swords, II
• Chapter 5: Turbulence in the Temple
• Chapter 6: The Parable of the Vineyard Tenants
• Chapter 7: Provocation at Passover
• Chapter 8: The Rhetoric of Rage
• Chapter 9: Teleological Terror
• Concluding Remarks
• Bibliography