This Sunday initiates what the church calendar calls: ordinary time! … There is nothing ordinary about this time! Riots, following protests over an unjustified killing, after a series of other unjustified crimes, while in lockdown during a global pandemic!! Any of this sounds ordinary to you? Well here is the news. It is all ordinary for the church.

The first Christians lived through Roman occupation, witnessing mass crucifixions including that of their own master and leader, and then experienced themselves Roman persecution due to their proclamation of the resurrection, not to mention the strifes and divisions in the church itself. So since its beginning, Christianity was born, grew, and flourished in times of crises. So, welcome to the first church’s world. Welcome to the first Sunday of extraordinary ordinary times.

History tells us that the best periods in the life of the church -in terms of being a witness- were those times when it was persecuted or when it had to challenge its prevalent culture. The church’s history wasn’t equally honorable when it started being in power. But that’s beside the point. What I am trying to say here is this: the church was made for times like these!

The battle between peace and violence has always been part of the church’s life. So friends, welcome to these perfectly ordinary times.

We read this morning one of Jesus’s hard sayings: “I have come not to bring peace but a sword, and to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law — a person’s enemies will be the members of their own household.”

This saying is hard as is, coming from the mouth of Jesus. And it doesn’t help that we are living in such state of uproar and instability.  So what is Jesus talking about? What kind of sword and what kind of peace?

Let me just start by saying: Jesus’s sword is not a literal one. When Peter took up a sword to defend Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus rebuked him and told him to put away his sword, “for all who draw the sword, will die by the sword.” (Matt 26:52) So here, Jesus is talking about a hypothetical sword that divides and separates even the most sacred human ties. He is talking about the inevitable conflict that his message is to cause in the society and even within members of the one family.

So then for the purpose of this sermon, I will call this sword: the sword of conflict.

Now the other part of Jesus’s message is “peace.” I did not come to bring peace!

I want to define the peace that Jesus was talking about. And I will call that “peace.”[between quotes].

The Roman Empire was known for the Pax Romana. That was the most precious thing that they were willing to defend at any price. As well they did, and the price was thousands of crosses displayed on hilltops for everyone to see.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the Roman peace.

Jesus was killed to preserve that “peace,” to please the crowds, and to avoid riots, and so were many others. And the Romans defined that state of subjugating any conflict of any kind, as peace… Jesus spent his ministry years, confronting that kind of “peace.”

In his teaching on the kingdom of God, he constructed an empire of justice, over the empire of Rome that ruled by violence and force. He openly preached an alternative empire where the Emperor doesn’t possess anything but it’s all God’s. Where no one has no authority unless it is given from above. Where real peace cannot be won through military victory but only through fair and equal treatment of all people. And if peace was the Roman way, Jesus will say to that: “I did not come to bring peace but a sword.”

The alternative peace Jesus calls to is not a passive peace expressed in absence of resistance, or absence of conflict. Real peace is the absence of injustice. And that is sometimes manifested in conflict.

And so friends we look at our society today, and we see a sword of conflict that is splitting the community in two. What is going on in our nation today is a cry for justice, it is a cry for real peace; and this nation is paying the price; justice never came cheap or easy.

What is happening today is the sword Jesus talked about that is to replace the sense of fake peace certain groups were living in.

Let me make myself clear. Am I justifying violence? No. Do the people whose businesses are being destroyed deserve to be the scapegoat? No. Do all police officers have to suffer due to the fault of few? Is the whole system corrupt because of few individuals? No. Do people holding different views deserve to live in fear? No. All of these things are very unfortunate and sad and wrong.

Conflict and violence are NOT the same thing. Jesus’s call is not and invitation for violence, but for a non-avoidance of conflict, that would be done at the expense of justice. I will say this again, Jesus is not calling for violence but for embracing conflict, when conflict is necessary and that is when it is the only way to achieve justice.

So let us read Jesus’s words again: “I have not come to bring peace but a sword, I have come not to bring any kind of fake peace or seeming peace but a sword of conflict if need be, and to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law — if that was the inevitable price for justice.

Friends, we live in an age where we are defined less by our words than by our silence. Silence is not peace. Real peace is the presence of justice. And as a church today, and in these extraordinary times, it seems that just like that first church, we are learning out of crisis all over again how to be faithful followers of that who called for justice at the expense of “peace,” the one who lived and died calling for justice to all, all the way through self-denial, all the way through conflict, all the way in the face of authorities, all the way to the cross!

Jesus’s message of the sword of justice cutting the ropes of a destructive peace echoes today, and is carried beyond the cross; it was carried on by a few fishermen and other invisible women, to the ends of the earth. It was carried on by many throughout history whose names are remembered with gratitude. And I like to imagine that before the end of the story, we will have joined them, too. Amen.