The drama in Gethsemane as portrayed in the Gospels is both vivid and instructive. “All ye shall be offended because of me this night”, Jesus had warned the twelve. But so convinced were these men of the superiority of their own judgment over that of their Master that they contradicted Him flatly to His face. And Peter especially! “Though all should deny Thee, yet will not I”, he averred stoutly. And again: “With Thee I am willing to go both to prison and to death.” Peter meant it. For when by and by the chief priests and soldiers came to arrest his Lord, he acted promptly and valiantly—albeit foolishly —in His defence. While some of the disciples were hesitating and asking: “Lord, shall we smite with the sword?”, Peter was not waiting for instructions. Like a flash he drew his sword, and with it made a mighty vicious slash at the nearest of the hostile party.
What a scoop this episode would have been to a modern journalist with purple ink in his pen! Instead, the evangelists do their reporting in quiet, matter-of-fact terms: “Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear. The servant’s name was Malchus.”
It may be taken as certain that Peter was not intending to merely slice off the man’s ear. Without doubt he meant to split his skull down the middle, and it was only quick- evasive action or the impeding effect of the hand of Jesus arresting Peter’s flailing arm which saved the victim from immediate death. There followed immediately some of the most severe words ever spoken by Jesus: “Put up again thy sword into its place. For all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” It is strange how little impact these plainest of all plain words have made, even in quarters where they are most needed. If ever there were such a thing as a righteous war, this which Peter was waging in Gethsemane was it. For was he not at great personal risk seeking to defend from unscrupulous, unprincipled enemies the Man who “did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth?”
Put the sword away
Nevertheless Jesus threw all His authority sternly against even this righteous war. “Put up again thy sword into its place”, the proper place, the only place where it is rendered harmless. And the ensuing categorical denunciation against all military violence provides a sad commentary on the unwillingness or inability of the church through many centuries to take seriously the plainest words of its Founder. The only true course to follow is that which the Lord Himself proceeded to exemplify. First, He healed that blood-soaked ear, hanging by a mere ribbon of flesh, and then quietly yielded Himself to His murderers, while at the same time putting in a plea on behalf of the others: “If therefore ye seek me, let these go their way.”
Human nature has shown itself extremely slow to learn the lesson of nonviolence which Jesus sought to inculcate. Always there has been the reaction: “It just won’t work”, or else: “He surely can’t mean precisely what He said.” And always, implicit in the distortion of His precept, has been either the conceited assumption: “We know better than He does”, or else the unspoken refusal: “No, He’s asking too much.”
Yet, still down the ages, His words are as plain as ever: “I say unto you that ye resist not evil.”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One