Arabic original here.
The Sword
We do not know God as a killer. God is love. No
killing is from Him. Killing is from the one that Jesus said was a murderer,
that is Satan. Satan the murderer is also the liar and the father or lies. So
he pushes people to kill and falsely attributes killing to God in order to distort the image of God
and confuse them.
The God worshiped by those who
attribute killing to God for any reason is the god of war. This is something
that does not exist. This is an idol and an idol is something made by people's
passions. When they worship the god of war, they are only making a god of their
passions and sanctifying their selfishness, individually and collectively. The
worship of idols, stone and intellectual alike, is, according to the Book of
Wisdom "The worship of idols not to be named is the beginning and cause
and end of every evil" (Wisdom 14:27).
In the Old Testament, the sword was a human projection
onto God, because people's hearts were hard. They only understand the language
of the sword. How do you take a people out of their darkness and bring them
into the light of life? God providentially emptied Himself and dwelt in people's darkness, even
though the darkness did not comprehend Him (John 1:5). There, in their
darkness, He spread His light among them. They thought that He was an ally for
them, and a God for their darkness. If not for this, they would not have
accepted Him. They attributed killing and their wars to Him. In their eyes He
became a God for them, who would give them victory over their enemies. He
emptied Himself in the sense that He let them treat Him in this way. Why was He
pleased to do this? Because, in His heavenly wisdom, to the goals that would be achieved in them, to the fullness of time, to the completion of the plan of
salvation in Jesus Christ. His plan was nothing other than to train them to keep
the law. "Thou shalt not kill," He said to them absolutely in His Ten
Commandments, so how can He be a killer? In His prophets, on account of their
hardness He spoke His word to them, "I have stretched out My hands all day long to a rebellious
people, who walk in a way that is not good, according to their own
thoughts" (Isaiah 65:2). However, at once He reveals His purposes to them
and presses them to joy. Thus He says, "behold, I create new heavens and a
new earth and the former shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad
and rejoice forever in what I create ... The wolf and the lamb shall feed
together ... They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, says the
Lord" (Isaiah 65:17-18, 25).
"When the fullness of the time had
come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law to redeem
those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons"
(Galatians 4:4-5). Some of them accepted Him. "As many as received Him, to
them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His
name" (John 1:12). Some of them did not accept Him. Those are the ones who
clung to the worship of the god of war. They crucified Him after He showed Himself
to be meek and humble. He disappointed them. As they saw it, it was not possible for Him to
be the Lord's awaited Messiah who would
give them victory over the peoples of the earth, even though the Prophet Isaiah
had already described Him to them, "He has no form or comeliness and when
we see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. He is despised and
rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief ... He was
despised, and we did not esteem Him" (Isaiah 53:2-3). Their god of war, their
idol, he is the one who killed Him.
Jesus' words about the sword are clear
and explicit: "All those who take up the sword die by the sword."
There is no end to the language of the sword other than the cessation of being.
Violence is not remedied with violence. Evil is not resisted with evil, but
rather with good. Perhaps one might object that when He was about to be handed
over to crucifixion He commanded his disciples, "He who has a money bag,
let him take it, and likewise a knapsack; and he who has no sword, let him sell
his garment and buy one. For I say to you that this which is written must still
be accomplished in Me: ‘And He was numbered with the transgressors’" (Luke
22:36-37). These words have another meaning. "And He was numbered with the
transgressors" is from Chapter 53 of the Prophet Isaiah, in his words
about the servant of Yahweh. So the prophecy is realized, but not formally. What
Jesus wants is to appear with His disciples as though He was the leader of a
gang. Why? Because He wanted to confirm the Jews in their error on account of
the hardness of their hearts after they rejected Him. The Lord God will strike
those who insist on sin with blindness, as He is the one who says through the Prophet Isaiah, “He
has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, lest they should see with
their eyes, lest they should understand with their hearts and turn, so that I
should heal them” (John 12:40). So here Jesus gives them over to error, so that
their conviction will become entrenched that He is not the Messiah but rather a
gang member. But to those who want to hear and so that we will understand the
truth of His attitude toward the sword, He said to Peter after he unsheathed it
and struck the chief priest’s servant and cut off his right ear, “Put your
sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword”
(Matthew 26:52).
However, those who bear the name of Christ have a complete weapon with
which they can withstand in the evil day (Ephesians 6). First of all, our enemy
is Satan. The people who imitate Satan’s character are his instruments. They
are swords and the one wielding them is Satan. For this reason we do not resist
the sword with the sword, but rather we resist the one wielding the sword with
the complete armor of God. Our strength is from the Lord, the maker of heaven
and earth. This is why it is said, “Be strong in the Lord and in the power of
His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against
the wiles of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but
against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of
this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness” (Ephesians 6:10-12). God’s
complete weapon is not the weapon of humans. First, we gird our waist with
truth. Second, we put on the armor of righteousness. Third, we shod our feet
with the preparation of the Gospel of peace. Fourth, and above all, we carry
the shield of faith with which we are able to quench all the flaming arrows of
the evil one. Fifth, we take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit,
which is the word of God. We arm ourselves with all this and we keep watch,
praying with each prayer at each time in the Spirit and we persevere in the
request for the sake of all the saints.
We say these words as violence grows fiercer, killing multiplies and the
abuse of believers in the name of the truth and in the name of God grows in
every place. People are falling like autumn leaves. Do you think that there are
sheep and wolves in the world and that the battle is a battle with swords for
the sake of truth? This is not the case. The struggle is between wolves and
wolves. The battle is between falsehood and falsehood. The devil toys with
people, annihilating them. And people, because of their hate and the violence
of their passions, offer themselves and each other as firewood for Satan. Each
one has gods and instruments of war and the one result is destruction. Tears
fill the earth and so we look for the time when God wipes away every year and
death is no more and there is no more sorrow, crying and pain (Revelation 21).
“Come, Lord Jesus.”
Archimandrite Touma Bitar
Abbot of the Monastery of St Silouan- Douma
March 9, 2008
Posts
1 comment:
I am troubled by the OT exegesis involved in this argument. I've seen a similar approach in a talk by Metr. George Khodr. The idea that OT violence was simply a projection of the Israelite's hard-heartedness onto God doesn't work theologically. God is the one who kills and brings to life, who casts into Hades and raises up. Granted, his approval of (even command to) violence in the OT was definitely an accommodation to the spiritual level of the ancient Israelites. But he himself has absolute authority and discretion over life and death, and he often delegated this authority to his saints. Furthermore, the approach of Fr. Bitar and Metr. Khodr ignores the many centuries of theological debate about the concept of "just war" and the actual practice of the Church for many centuries, of blessing the righteous use of arms for defense of faith and fatherland, as a kind of necessary evil. I understand the climate in which sermons such as this one are given, but we can't simply shape theology to our political context.
Post a Comment