After Pentecost Devotional - Day 50

“But Jesus told him, 'Put your sword away. Anyone who lives by fighting will die by fighting. Don’t you know that I could ask my Father, and right away he would send me more than twelve armies of angels?'” Matthew 26:52-53

Peter had not really understood Jesus. None of the disciples had. They had heard Jesus speak of love, grace, and forgiveness, but the message of turning the other cheek had not really impacted them as it should have. A short time before these words in Matthew 26, Jesus had spoken about buying swords, but this response to Peter pulling one out seems to speak once more of just how little they continued to understand Jesus.

In a sense, it is impossible to understand Jesus the first time around. It is at minimum very hard to grasp either the intent of his words or how he expected them to be applied to the daily processes of living. Some of my friends want to apply the Sermon on the Mount, for example, only to life in the heavenly realm. Others would say that the ideals proposed are hyperbole, and not really to be applied literally to the experience of daily living.

Then we come to these words of Jesus and are called with Peter to reassess both the meaning and application of Jesus' three years of ministry. What do we do with Jesus' words? How do we apply them? Do we even try, or are we too set in our prejudiced views of how we ought to live our lives to bother with Jesus' instructions and values?

Peter was attempting to protect Jesus. He was wanting to use the sword at hand to offer Jesus a way out of the arrest by the crowd. He was hoping to allay the assailants and give Jesus a way out of the clutches of those come to do him harm. Jesus turned the topic to God's action, priorities, values, and potential for intervention. He wanted Peter to focus not on human solutions to circumstances, but on God's solutions. He wanted Peter to learn to trust God, rather than responses of fight or flight.

Our common reaction to physical threats is anything but spiritual. Our more instinctual way of responding is very animalistic or reptilian. It comes from the more autonomic portion of our brains, rather than from the frontal cortex. It is reactionary. It is neither thoughtful, reflective, or considered. It is most definitely not spiritual, and yet it is the spiritual, thoughtful, reflective response which Jesus called Peter.

Jesus wanted Peter to consider life from God's perspective rather than from the perspective of human limitations. Trust in God requires more than naming Christ as Lord, more than following a set of religious prescriptions, more than taking a stand against cultural norms. It requires that we shift from emotional reaction to introspection, from allowing our lives to be directed by fear to trust. It requires that we learn to place our insecurities in second place to confidence in God.

Peter saw a threat and responded viscerally. Jesus called him to respond in faith, out of confidence in God. Jesus called him to consider that God had numerous options from which to respond in redemption. None of that was necessary in this instance, as God's plans were already working for redemption. Peter was simply unprepared to see God at work beyond the boundaries of his fears and anxieties.

Determine to stop to reflect before reacting. Consider what God might want.


"Lord, transform my visceral reactions into thoughtful reflection on your priorities."

—©Copyright 2016, Christopher B. Harbin
http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/ 
My latest books can be found here on amazon

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