Sword or Cross?

Jesus says, “Take up your cross and follow Me,” which is to say, “Be willing to die with me.”  Instead the disciples flee.

But it gets worse.  The word “sword” is used six times in Matthew 26:47-56, three times in verse 52 alone.  (Otherwise, Matthew uses the word only once, in 10:34).  The mob comes out to arrest Jesus with “swords and clubs” (26:47, 55), but right at the center one of the disciples draws a sword.  Even though he intends to defend Jesus, this is in fact another form of denial.  A  disciple with a sword has in effect joined the mob that opposes Jesus.

Jesus warns that those who take up the sword will perish with the sword.  In the immediate scene, it’s the crowd “from the chief priests and elders of the people” who are holding swords (v. 47).  Now they form a mob to kill Jesus, who has presented to Israel a way of righteousness and peace.  Within a generation, though, they will be in danger from swords, Roman swords.  Jesus’ words hint at the alternative.  ”Take up” is what disciples are supposed to do with the cross (10:32), not with the sword.  Those who take up cross rather than sword are the ones who are disciples of Jesus, and true opponents of Roman paganism.  The mob comes against Jesus as if he were a “thief” ( lestes ), and Jesus will die like a “brigand” between two brigands.  But they are the true brigands, the revolutionaries who will be slaughtered by Roman swords.

Verses 47-56 is at the chiastic center of 26:31-75 (see my earlier post on the structure of this passage).  It is surrounded by descriptions of the disciples denying Jesus in one way or another.  But at the center comes the chief denial of Jesus, the reliance on the sword as a means of victory rather than the cross, the confidence in the strength of the arm, the chariot, the horse, rather than confidence in the strength of God, the strength that is perfected in weakness.

Thanks to my colleagues Toby Sumpter and Joshua Appel for pointing to several of these things in the text.