Embracing the Sword

A friend sent me a column this week by Rabbi Marc Gellman* in which he praised Billy Graham as a great preacher. I never gave Billy Graham much of a chance to impress me – I only watched one of his televised sermons and it didn’t do much for me. Reading what Gellman had to say, I realize that that maybe I need to go and give Rev. Graham another chance. But more than that, Gellman presents the best mission statement for preaching I’ve ever heard. He said that “preaching is essentially the presentation of a spiritual argument, which means that a sermon must be filled with ideas, not just feelings. To preach you must be smart, you much have faith and you must be able to simplify words without simplifying ideas. A preacher must then move beyond the logic of debate and into the world of personal peril and fear. A great sermon must be heard as if it were addressed only to you, the listener. It must first describe the storm in your life, and then it must offer you a compelling course to get through the storm and into quiet seas of love and hope. That hope must be simple and childlike but never childish. It must be a daring hope that inspires – not just deductively proves – the postulates of its argument, and that hope must be consonant with an ancient religion and not just a passing snapshot of what you decided to believe today. A sermon must be worldly without being trendy, humorous without being irreverent and certain without being arrogant. Understood this way, almost nobody can give a great sermon…”

Without these words, I’m not sure I felt up the task of a sermon on Jesus’ words claiming that he came to bring not peace but a sword. I usually preach about Jesus as the prince of peace but this passage has Jesus claiming a sword. I will not interpret this passage as justifying violence or warfare in Jesus’ name. Its truth must lie elsewhere. This takes my very best sermon writing cap.

First let’s look at a sword. As a righteous weapon they fill literature and history. I remember hearing that a samurai’s sword, drawn in battle could not be resheathed unless it had drawn blood. – not helpful here! It was not lost on the crusaders that a sword seen blade down takes the shape of a cross. The sword of a knight was a part of his identity. A ceremony of knighting uses a sword, touched to the shoulders and bowed head of the honoree. The three musketeers and d’Artagnan plied their swords in the service of honor and truth, like Zorro, the Scarlet Pimpernel and Robin Hood.

Excalibur is the prototype mythic sword – Excalibur is Arthur’s John the Baptist – it announces who he is. It then becomes a symbol of his hero’s journey. It has its own legend – it waits to be rediscovered from the mists of Avalon until a new time of Camelot comes.

Because swords are not the 21^st century weapon of choice it’s easier to embrace them as a metaphor. At its most basic, a sword is something that cuts whether it is used as attack or defense. It will cut through things. It will cut off things. It will cut things in two. It takes courage to face a sword.

Jesus talks about the sword that will divide families. If you look carefully at the pattern it is setting the younger generation against the parents; a man against his father, daughter against mother and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law. This sword will cut the ties with what has been before. Here the parents’ generation can be heard as that place that was a spiritual and ideological home that one must leave in order to grow up. The sword is a sword that separates you from all that no longer serves you.

Some one who walks into an AA meeting and says, for the first time, “I’m an alcoholic” embraces the sword. The bonds of denial are severed – they are cut free and new life begins. This is true of all personal, physical addictions. It is also true of group addictions.

In his appreciation of Billy Graham, Rabbi Gellman illustrated this point. He said, “I also love that he had the courage to apologize for the poisons he drank as a kid. A few years ago, comments he had made to President Nixon in the Oval Office about the Jewish control of the media were made public and he immediately atoned. “I deeply regret comments I apparently made in an Oval Office conversation with President Nixon…They do not reflect my views, and I sincerely apologize for any offense caused by the remarks.”

The rabbi continues “Billy Graham is not God. He’s an 85-year-old white Southern guy who had to grow out of his past to understand the racism and anti-Semitism (homophobia and sexism, too) that was embedded in the culture of his youth…It takes courage for a master shepherd to tell his flock that he has learned something new about the sheep.”

The sword prunes us for new growth. Billy Graham bared his life to the sword and allowed old ideas and prejudices to be cut away. There’s always something that holds you back from the next step of your journey. As an 8 year old I loved the Disney Sleeping Beauty. The scene with the thorns growing around the castle terrified and thrilled me. The handsome prince had to wade into them with his sword as well as take on the dragon – he couldn’t get to the tower without struggle and cutting the branches that grabbed his clothes, trying to hold his back.

As Christians we embrace, albeit reluctantly, this sword that sets us adrift, no longer moored to the familiar. I think that’s what’s happening to our church right now. In England this week, the American and Canadian churches tried once again to explain that right now, we are cutting ourselves free from interpretations of scripture and structure that do not honor the image of God in each of us. A hundred years from now, when this brouhaha is behind us, something else will show itself as the brambles on the spiritual path. The need for a sword is a reminder that you always have something to cut away.

The good news is that once you allow the sword to do its work – you are free. Bishop Bruno’s embrace of the sword – in his case the surgeon’s scalpel – cut him free from the disease in his foot and he regained his life.

The sword that Jesus brings has many names. The sword of knowledge and learning frees you from ignorance or at the least, being uninteresting. The sword of community and relationship frees you from isolation. The sword of prayer frees you from desolation. The sword of compassion frees you from arrogance and apathy. The sword of forgiveness frees you from past anger and pain. And finally, love is the ultimate sword that frees you to dwell in God’s dream of a world restored to harmony, balance and peace.

* Excerpted from Words of Faith, Marc Gellman, Newsweek (Web-Exclusive Commentary), June 10, 2005.