In Luke’s gospel, Matthew’s gospel and John’s gospel, there is an incident where the security detail of the High Priest comes to arrest Jesus, but in John’s gospel Peter uses a knife to cut off the ear of one of the officers. John names the officer as Malchus.
Jesus does a strange thing. He first chastises Peter by saying in Luke’s account “Enough of this!” And in Matthew and Luke’s account, Jesus then restored the man’s ear. He healed the man.
This is a strange response on Jesus’ part because the people who came to arrest Jesus were crooked and enemies of Jesus and His disciples.
We must also remember that those who followed Jesus, the men in particular, were men who were not afraid or timid about their feelings concerning the Romans who occupied their region of Northeast Africa (and not the “Middle East;” the term “Middle East” was coined by the British in the 1800s and became popular in the early 1900s). These men who followed Jesus also were suspicious of the religious aristocracy in Jerusalem because the religious leaders were in the pockets of Rome.
It would have been expected that if the High Priest and his security team approached these men, that they would instantly put up a fight. In fact, Jesus had a member of a violent radical group among his disciples named Simon the Zealot. The Zealots were a group that believed in the violent overthrow of Rome and the killing of any who colluded with Rome.
That is why it is a strange response from Jesus to first chastise Peter for doing what most of the African Jews would have either dreamed of doing or would have done should the High Priest try to apprehend any of them. Didn’t Jesus already realize what was going to happen if he were attacked?
I would suggest that Jesus did know his followers and chose them despite their belief that violence and war was an avenue to peace. I suggest that Jesus was teaching a valuable lesson that violence and war to achieve peace is absurd.
We live in a society that has embraced either the “Just War” theory and/or war as a preemptive means of peace, as in President George W. Bush illegally invading Iraq through “shock and awe,” to achieve peace. We live in a society where children who cannot legally buy cigarettes can purchase a gun, and not just a handgun or shotgun, but a weapon of war like the AK-47.
We live in a violent society that has some people believing that violence is not just the only way but the best way to preserve their peace or “their way of life.”
We live in a nation where people who say they have given their lives to Jesus Christ proudly post pictures of their children brandishing high-powered weapons with the cross in the background. As if the cross and the AK-47 are synonymous. This is absurd.
We live in a nation that spends three quarters of its budget on the military and has military bases all over the world in other people’s countries, but argues to the end about providing money for the poor and working class in this nation. This is not peace, but this is paranoia on steroids.
Violence and war has never in the history of this world created peace. The Pax Romana of Rome was a false sense of peace because of the military’s brutal subjugation of other people. And we know how Rome ended up.
By restoring Malchus’ ear, Jesus was demonstrating that violence will never further his ministry or bring about peace. When Jesus chastised Peter, Jesus also said to him and all listening, “For all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you not think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?”
Jesus could have obliterated everything moving with violent power that the world cannot fathom, but he chose the way of peace and community by healing the security officer’s ear, the very man who came to arrest and orchestrate his death. This is not to say one should not defend one’s self against violent attack. What it is suggesting is that the notion that violence is always the answer or that violence and war foster peace is absurd.
I want to close with some questions: Did the British government ever declare war on the IRA? Did the South African apartheid government ever declare war on the ANC? Did the government of the U.S. ever declare war on the Black Panther Party? The answer in all three examples is no. That does not mean they did not act violently in the cases just mentioned against these groups, but war was not declared, and there is a reason for it.
Dr. King received his most hateful responses when he came out against the war in Vietnam. It was President Dwight D. Eisenhower who had already warned about the “Military Industrial Complex,” because war, far from achieving peace, lines and stuffs the pockets of some people and corporations who profit from war and violence.
Jesus had already cautioned that violence should never be the first or only response. Peace is difficult in a violent society but peace must be tried to further that society. Peace means honestly listening to people without the false narratives and negatives that have been inserted to make people despise certain people who happen to be different, or worship different, or look different or who speak different. As my pastor used to say, “Difference does not mean deficient.”
Jesus warned us against the use of violence in His words to Peter: “Enough of this.”
