postID: 6928; title: The Third Sunday After Pentecost
no collect_text found
groupKey: secondary
groupKey: other
Array
(
[date] => 2017-06-25 11:00:00
[scope] =>
[year] =>
[month] =>
[post_id] => 1371
[series_id] =>
[day_titles_only] =>
[exclusive] => 1
[return] => formatted
[formatted] =>
[show_date] =>
[show_meta] =>
[show_content] => 1
[admin] =>
[debug] => 1
[filter_types] => Array
(
[0] => primary
[1] => secondary
)
[type_labels] => Array
(
[primary] => Primary
[secondary] => Secondary
[other] => Other
)
[the_date] => 2017-06-25 11:00:00
)
1 post(s) found for dateStr : 2017-06-25postID: 6928 (The Third Sunday After Pentecost)
--- getDisplayDates ---
litdate post_id: 6928; date_type: variable; year: 2017
Variable date => check date_calculations.
=> check date_assignments.
=> NO date_assignments found for postID: 6928
displayDates for postID: 6928/year: 2017
Array
(
[0] => 2017-06-25
)
postPriority: 3primaryPost found for date: 2017-06-25 with ID: 6928 (The Third Sunday After Pentecost)
The Third Sunday After Pentecost
Array
(
[date] => 2017-06-25 11:00:00
[scope] =>
[year] =>
[month] =>
[post_id] => 1371
[series_id] =>
[day_titles_only] =>
[exclusive] => 1
[return] => simple
[formatted] =>
[show_date] =>
[show_meta] =>
[show_content] => 1
[admin] =>
[debug] => 1
[filter_types] => Array
(
[0] => primary
[1] => secondary
)
[type_labels] => Array
(
[primary] => Primary
[secondary] => Secondary
[other] => Other
)
[the_date] => 2017-06-25 11:00:00
)
1 post(s) found for dateStr : 2017-06-25postID: 6928 (The Third Sunday After Pentecost)
--- getDisplayDates ---
litdate post_id: 6928; date_type: variable; year: 2017
Variable date => check date_calculations.
=> check date_assignments.
=> NO date_assignments found for postID: 6928
displayDates for postID: 6928/year: 2017
Array
(
[0] => 2017-06-25
)
postPriority: 3primaryPost found for date: 2017-06-25 with ID: 6928 (The Third Sunday After Pentecost)
The reading_id [73655] is already in the array.
No update needed.
Scripture citation(s): Matthew 10:24-39
A Sermon by
Fr. Daniels
on
Matthew 10:24-39
✛
Not Peace, but a Sword
Array
(
[0] => 60755
)
book: [Array
(
[0] => 60755
)
] (reading_id: 73655)bbook_id: 60755
The bbook_id [60755] is already in the array.
No update needed for sermon_bbooks.
I was talking to my father on the phone recently, and he revealed to my brother and me that he has recently started a garden in his backyard. The idea is that he will grow the usual garden vegetables: tomatoes and watermelons, cucumbers and zucchini, that kind of thing.
He has been working hard on it, but he does not have anything to show for it yet, because it was more difficult to get the ground prepared for planting than he had expected. The area in the backyard where the garden was supposed to be is thick with weeds. They have had the run of the place for who knows how long, and their vines run underneath the soil en masse. So all of that has to be pulled up by hand, because if he uses a tiller at this point, that would just chop up the vines and give him more weeds still. So it is slow going. Vines and weeds; stumps and rocks: they all have to be dug up, either by hand or by spade, and that is before he can even really get started with the gardening proper. It is really hard, very physical, work, and he gets up extremely early in the morning to start on it, in order to avoid the scorching South Carolina sun and the punishing Low Country humidity.
As we were on the phone, and he was telling us about the frustrations of this fledging garden, and the myriad frustrations of the soil—a soil which is clearly uninterested in being of any practical use—I could not help thinking: here is the original curse made manifest! In another garden, a bit more developed, the Garden of Eden, after the great unpleasantness with the fruit and the snake and the tree, God says to Adam and Eve, “Cursed is the ground for thy sake … Thorns … and thistles shall [the ground] bring forth … and … in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat” (Genesis 3:17-19). And so it is: those tomatoes and cucumbers, if they ever come, will be the result of the literal sweat of his brow, as he harvests the thorns and thistles instead.
That curse, of course, was issued to our original parents in response to their disobedience, a disobedience made all the worse because it happened in paradise. It is a terrible thing: at a time when all of their wants and needs were supplied, they came up with one more want: the desire for the knowledge of good and evil, which was the desire to be gods themselves. So Genesis makes a point of telling us that, after their disobedience, and the shame that came upon them, and the Lord God calling for them (“[Adam,] where art thou?”), Adam replies, “I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid” (3:10). While in a perfect world, among the trees and plants that gave up their produce abundantly—no thorns or thistles there—where their relationship with God should have been one of peace and concord, Adam hid himself. Because he was afraid.
Adam’s fear was a direct result of Adam’s disobedience; when sin came into the world, so did fear.
In the fullness of time, the God who spoke to Adam and Eve would send his Son, born of a woman, born under the Law. That Law had been given to God’s chosen people to bring them to knowledge of their sin. And that son, Jesus, would speak to his disciples, his chosen people, as he does in our gospel reading today, and tell them to learn Adam’s lesson, as he sent them to do the work of spreading the gospel.
He told them, rightly, that they would face terrible opposition; the powers of darkness that were arraying themselves against him would eventually be marshalled against them, too. But, he says, fear not those who will oppose you in your work. Fear God, instead, because Jesus was not sent by the Father to bring peace with the children of Adam and Eve, not insofar as that means making peace with their disobedience, or making peace with their sin. “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth,” he says. “I came not to send peace, but a sword.”
The more literal-minded among us might ask: what does this sword look like? Is it long, or is it short? A machete or a dagger? But even those more symbolically minded might ask: is this a justification for holy war? Is it permission to engage in violence with the sanction of Christ?
It cannot be any of those things, obviously, because the few times those kinds of swords show up in the gospels they are being used for purposes contrary to Jesus’s purposes, even when they are used by Jesus’s followers. All four gospels record how, at the time of Jesus’s arrest, one of the disciples cut off the ear of one of the soldiers that had been sent to detain him. They were also in a garden; this time, it was the Garden of Gethsemane. And in all four gospels Jesus puts a stop to it. In the gospel of Luke, he even heals the ear of the soldier who had been struck (22:51), one of the very soldiers who would lead him to his death.
So whatever the sword that Jesus brings is, it cannot be one forged of steel with a blade and a sharp point; nor can it be cover to use those swords. Instead, the book of Revelation gives us a sense of what the sword Jesus is speaking about is like. When John the Divine first sees Jesus on the island of Patmos, he describes Jesus by saying that “out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword” (1:16). This has inspired some amusing depictions—pictures of Jesus with a literal sword coming out of his mouth—but the point is more serious: Jesus’s words, spoken by his lips, coming out of his mouth, are his sword. His words are what judge and separate; his words are what contain the promise of reconciliation with God and conflict with the world; his words are truth.
This sword, which Jesus brings, will separate sin from righteousness; separate evil from good; it is a sword that separates truth from lies. Jesus did not come to reconcile evil and good, nor to reconcile sin and righteousness, nor to find a reasonable compromise between lies and truth. He came to separate them, and to be victorious over evil, and to establish his kingdom.
So he says to his disciples to fear not the world, nor the soldiers, nor the persecutors. Their swords of steel cannot be victorious, not ultimately. Fear not, he says, even your own death. He did not. In the gospel of Matthew, inside a boat being rocked by a storm, the wind and the waves were terrifying the disciples, and they cried out, “We are perishing!” (8:23-27). But Jesus was asleep, in the midst of the storm, sleeping the sleep of the just. He was not afraid of the wind and waves, because he was not afraid of his death. He did not seek his death, but he did not resist it either. Fear not the storm, nor the world, nor even death itself.
Adam was afraid in the garden, and Jesus was not afraid in the boat, for the same reason, but opposite: the presence of sin in the one, and the absence of sin in the other. Jesus says, “There is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed … [nothing] hid, that shall not be known.” Adam hid, for he was afraid, for he had sinned. And “there is nothing hid that shall not be known.” And Jesus feared not, for the same reason: “there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed.”
That is, there is nothing, for good or ill, that will not be revealed by the word of truth that comes from the mouth of the Lord like a sharp sword. It is a sword that cleaves and separates. It does not make peace with sin. The peace of Christ, it is no peace. Not for Adam, nor for his descendants. Adam heard—we hear—the voice of the Lord in the garden, and we are afraid, and we should be.
But it is that very fear of the Lord that is the beginning of wisdom (Psalm 111:10; Proverbs 9:10), and when you know wisdom, says the proverb, you can lie down and not be afraid; you can lie down and “thy sleep shall be sweet” (3:24), even when the storm rocks the boat and it seems we are perishing.
Because what is uncovered and revealed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ is that the sharp edge of Christ’s sword also cuts off that same heavy burden of sin that Adam brought into the world. That sharp sword, coming from the mouth of Jesus, cuts off the lock on the door of the house of bondage, and its inhabitants are liberated, separated from their sin, set free by the Word of God, the Word of truth, because in him—in the very Word of the Father—we can know the truth, and the truth will set us free, and if the Son of God sets us free, then we are free indeed (John 8:31, 36).
The sword that the disciple wielded in the Garden of Gethsemane was the sword of death, having been forged in the furnace of Adam’s sin. Outside the Garden of Eden, with our first parents expelled, angels were placed, and a flaming sword, so that no one shall ever return there.
But the sword that comes from the mouth of Jesus are the words of life and truth, forged in the furnace of his death and his resurrection. Cutting off our yoke of sin. And bringing us not to a garden, not even the Garden of Eden, but welcoming us into the very Kingdom of God.
