Regular readers of my blog will know my enthusiasm for the Bible and for getting to know its contents well. The Archbishop of Canterbury described the bible well as‘this Book, the most valuable thing that this world affords.’ as he presented the Queen with a bible during her coronation ceremony in 1953. She has maintained a firm Christian faith throughout her reign, which started when I was a child and has lasted for the whole of my lifetime since then.
This week our friend Matt Grylls gave an excellent short talk for Lent based on a passage from the Bible in Luke’s gospel. His talk can be found at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjFLHLv2Tnk
In it Matt spoke of the challenge of facing dark times, and of knowing that there will be light at the end of the tunnel. He used an extract from the bible where Jesus, shortly before his arrest, warned his disciples of difficult times ahead:
Then Jesus said, “When I sent you out and told you to travel light, to take only the bare necessities, did you get along all right?”
“Certainly,” they said, “we got along just fine.”
He said, “This is different. Get ready for trouble. Look to what you’ll need; there are difficult times ahead. Pawn your coat and get a sword. What was written in Scripture, ‘He was lumped in with the criminals,’ gets its final meaning in me. Everything written about me is now coming to a conclusion.”
They said, “Look, Master, two swords!”
But he said, “Enough of that; no more sword talk!” Luke 22 35-38 (The Message translation)
The encouragement in this passage to face up to dark times and persevere until they are over is strong and helpful. However, Matt described this as ‘a curious passage’ which indeed it is; not least because Jesus told his disciples each to buy a sword, and yet very shortly afterwards Jesus was arrested and this took place:
The men stepped forward, seized Jesus and arrested him. With that, one of Jesus’ companions reached for his sword, drew it out and struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his ear. “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?” (Matthew 26.51)
At first this seems contradictory, and it got me thinking. What was Jesus’s attitude to the use of arms? In fact I think these events can provide a case-study in right and wrong ways of reading scripture. It is clear that Jesus does not advocate the private use of arms, otherwise he would not have said “Put your sword back in its place”.
Yet the American gun lobby has used Jesus’s phrase “get a sword” as biblical support for the right in the American constitution of citizens to carry arms. Years ago I was faced with a dilemma. I was a teacher in Uganda at a time when lawlessness and household robbery were real dangers. My wife and I had to decide, as some expats did, whether to keep a pistol at the bedside for defensive use if there was a break-in. We made a firm decision not to have one when we heard of another expat who accidentally shot dead a school pupil during a school riot. (School riots were very prevalent at the time, and incidentally many pupils were adults, having had their education delayed by lack of school fees). He wasn’t at fault – he was aiming the gun upwards to frighten the rioters off (they had been hurling stones very noisily at the tin roof of his house) , but someone grabbed his arm and he fired into the crowd by mistake).
Pope Boniface VIII used the phrase “here are two swords” in connection with his bull 'Unam Sanctam' of 1302 to represent the temporal and spiritual authority of the church. i.e. to assert the notion that the church should bear arms in the way that a sovereign nation does.
These examples teach us how easy it is to take single verses or phrases from scripture to defend a mistaken point of view by not looking at the wider teaching of scripture. From this wider view we know that Jesus never advocated violence, even in self-defence. It’s much more likely that when Jesus said ‘buy a sword’ he was using hyperbole (deliberate exaggeration) to emphasize a clear point that they were about to go through a difficult and dangerous time. Jesus often used hyperbole or metaphor. (e.g. “you must be born again” - a phrase which Nicodemus initially took literally (See John’s gospel ch 3) ; “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven” (Mark 10.25) – if he meant this literally then probably many Christians in the developed world today would not qualify for heaven! By world standards most of us in Britain are very rich).
This all reminds me of the importance of reading scripture intelligently and widely, and of not plucking isolated phrases out of context to prove a point. Thank God that he has provided us with the scriptures, and let’s be wise in our reading of them, as Matt was in his talk this week.
