Jesus had decided that the time was right to send out his twelve disciples to do ministry on their own.
In giving the Twelve their orders, he said,
"Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law, and one's foes will be members of one's own household. "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. (Matthew 10:34-39)This is a difficult passage to unpack, appearing, as it does, to raise more questions than give answers.
What did Jesus mean when he said he didn’t come to bring peace?
Aren’t there other instances in his ministry when he said the exact opposite thing?
And what about what he says about families? What did Mary and Joseph ever do to him?
And a sword wielding Prince of Peace?
Are Christian Nationalists right when they quote these words to justify violence in Jesus’ name?
I hope it doesn’t surprise you that a faithful reading of this passage will disappoint those who are intent on causing harm and sowing division. This isn’t the loophole that absolves us from having to pay attention to all that stuff Jesus said about peace, love, unity, and forgiveness.
But Matthew 10 does have something to tell us about keeping our wits about us when doing the right thing leads to conflict and turmoil and it definitely reveals the sharp contrast between the holy and holistic way of Jesus and competing claims and authorities that diminish and degrade humanity’s God-given potential.
So, to help us hear what Jesus is saying, I want to begin by telling you a love story.
Freeborn Garrettson was one of the leaders of early American Methodism. Remembered as the movement’s first great American born preacher—“Methodism’s Paul Revere” took the Gospel and Methodist ideas deep into New England’s northern frontier and to Canada. He had an especially influential ministry in Nova Scotia.
However, in 1788, Francis Asbury appointed Rev. Garrettson to New York City and during that season, the prolific preacher took a trip up the Hudson River where he met a woman named Catherine.
Catherine Livingston was a daughter in one of the wealthiest, most prominent, most powerful families in this country.
The Livingston’s owned almost a million acres of land in the Hudson Valley.
Catherine’s brother helped write the Declaration of Independence and, later, administered the oath of office to President Washington, who was a friend of the family.
As a young woman, Catherine attended parties with the likes of the Schuyler sisters and Alexander Hamilton and the family estate, Clermont, still stands in Columbia County as a New York State Historic Site.
Within this context, Catherine’s heart and life underwent a dramatic change when she was in her mid-30s. First, she experienced a spiritual awakening, then became active in a Methodist circle in Rhinebeck, New York.
Catherine met Rev. Garrettson when he visited that group.
In short order, the missionary and the socialite fell in love and were engaged to be married.
And then came the troubles.
Catherine’s mother refused to give the couple her blessing.
It was one thing for a child of privilege to associate with an enthusiastic religious movement, but allowing her daughter to marry a Methodist preacher was a bridge too far for Mother Livingston.
In this way, Catherine’s mother shared a deep concern about the Methodists with many of her peers in our young nation’s aristocracy.
Methodists simply did not respect the social order or the way things were and brought together in their services and meetings a wide diversity of people without regard to their station in life.
Historian Dee Andrews describes Methodism’s counter-cultural ways,
[Methodist preachers] pressed their followers–rich, middling, and poor; white and black; men and women–to listen to Christ first…While the movement was often embraced by the members of one family, it also overturned conventional family discipline and order and led to at times violent family conflict, especially between parents and children, and husbands and wives (Andrews, p. 107)Caught between her class-defying religious commitments and her mother’s intransigence, Catherine chose faith and her engagement to the preacher. Her mother chose to throw her out.
Catherine confessed her grief about this development in a letter to one of her sisters,
“I have continual sorrow from without, and from within…I have been cast from my Mother’s affections, and house, and have now no other home than such I derive from the bounty of a kind sister, upon whom I have been thrown.”
Poked, prodded, and pierced by her family, grieving Catherine, nevertheless, understood that these were but the pangs of her liberation. Cut loose, she had no regrets.
“I declare to you,” she exclaimed to her sister, “I would not be what I once was, if every other thing which the world can bestow or enjoy were at my free choice.” (Andrews, 108-109)
On June 30, 1793, Catherine and Freeborn married.
Soon after their wedding, the groom took the time to reflect on the moment and to memorialize his dreams for his life with Catherine in his journal.
He wrote,
"I am now happy in the society of my dear friend…I hope always to live as God would have me both for time and eternity. I am happy, and hope to be more and more so. Lord, we are thine. Thou hast united our spirits to thyself and to each other. Do with us as seemeth thee good, only let us be wholly thine: let us live to thy glory, and grant that our union may be for the furtherance of each other in the way to the kingdom of heaven." (The Life of Freeborn Garrettson, p. 22)
And so it came to pass that Freeborn Garrettson and Catherine Livington lived out their true romance. They were married for more than thirty years, until his death, and all the while, the home they created–Wildercliff on the Hudson–remained a haven of blessing and peace for all who entered, including a daughter and countless traveling preachers.
This is one of my favorite stories from church history.
It’s a powerful love story in its own right, isn’t it–like Romeo and Juliet, except the couple defies the odds and lives a happy life together.
As a bit of history, it also reminds us that, at our best, the Methodist movement, specifically, and Christian faith, in general, should give us tools and examples that help us overcome the world’s stratified hierarchies and rigid social structures.
Freeborn and Catherine’s story invites us to celebrate the ties that bind us together, not to give into the pressures and strictures that keep us apart.
And that’s what brings us back to those challenging words of Jesus.
When Jesus told his disciples that he brought a sword, not peace, he wasn’t calling for violence.
I don’t even think he was telling his disciples to be unnecessarily provocative.
But he was saying that following him—living a God-centered life like him, loving the unloveable like him, embracing the outcast and forgotten ones among us like him, regarding no one with contempt or as one’s inferior—this would naturally put the faithful in conflict with the people, systems, and institutions invested in holding people down and keeping them in their place.
Saint Paul would later call such things the “principalities and powers,” and the Garrettsons’ story reminds us that high society, the Patriarchy, even one’s own family can at time be counted among them.
That’s why Jesus spoke so pointedly.
"Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth,” said Jesus. In doing so, he tells his disciples to reject a go-along to get-along ethic, to push back against indifference to suffering and its causes, to seek liberty from one’s complicity with one’s own bonadage and the bondage of others.
“I have not come to bring peace but a sword,” said the Lord, the sword of God’s Word to protect your heart and cut you loose from all the things that hold you back.
Living in the light of this truth, Catherine was inspired to declare, “I would not be what I once was, if every other thing which the world can bestow or enjoy were at my free choice.”
Living in the light of this truth, Freeborn placed his future with his beloved in God’s hands.
“Let us live to thy glory,” he prayed, “and grant that our union may be for the furtherance of each other in the way to the kingdom of heaven.”
Living in the light of this truth, you and I catch a glimpse of what our lives and what church can be, too—gathered around Jesus, steadfast, free, filled with love, and committed to the way of grace that brings down divisions and leads us to one another.
When Jesus said, “I have not come to bring peace but a sword,” he was saying something about keeping our wits about us when doing the right thing leads to conflict and turmoil. He was revealing the sharp contrast between his holy and holistic way and competing claims and authorities that diminish and degrade humanity’s God-given potential.
He was giving us the gift of himself and his word, and that will always be enough “for the furtherance of each other in the way to the kingdom of heaven.”
Thanks be to God for this Good News. Amen.
Image: Rev. Freeborn and Mrs. Catherine Linvingston Garrettson
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