Put the Sword Away: Love Is Stronger

Led by the betrayer Judas, an almost absurdly large force arrived to arrest Jesus. Peter, who had insisted, “Even if I must die alongside you, I won’t deny you” (Matthew 26:35), bravely drew his sword to defend Jesus. Had he kept fighting while vastly outnumbered, he likely would have died. But Jesus, who never advocated armed rebellion against Rome or the Temple authorities, stopped him. “When someone swung a sword around in among the olive trees in dark Gethsemane, thinking it was his God-given duty to defend Jesus, Jesus told him not to bother. In fact, he told him… people who live by the sword tend to die by the sword.” * Luke recorded that even amid all that turmoil, Jesus paused to heal the ear that Peter’s wild sword stroke had cut off (Luke 22:51).

• On Friday, Jesus would tell the Roman procurator Pilate, “My kingdom doesn’t originate from this world. If it did, my guards would fight…. My kingdom isn’t from here” (John 18:36). Peter tried to fight, but Jesus stopped him. We still live in a world where violence often feels like the only viable response to evil. Is it? To what extent do you believe Jesus was right to say, “Put the sword back into its place”?
• What made the Jerusalem authorities so afraid of Jesus (one rabbi from Galilee) that they sent a large group of armed men to arrest him? Scholar Craig Evans wrote, “The Jewish authorities sought to kill Jesus not because he was a good man but because Jesus was perceived as a very serious political threat…. [he] entered Jerusalem as the anointed son of David, he assumed authority in the temple precincts as though possessed of messianic authority, he appealed to the temple’s purpose… in a way that implied him to be king, and he was in fact anointed by at least one follower.” ** In what ways do Jesus’ teachings still challenge (and sometimes threaten) established human ideas of power and strength?