When Empire Comes to Church

^{Duccio di Buoninsegna, Christ Taken Prisoner (1308-11)}

It is tempting to adopt an “other” reading of Gospel criticisms against religious authorities. The wolves and heretics are always “out there,” never “in here.” We all want to be the heroes of our own story, and we naturally want to identify with the heroes in written stories.

This is an understandable way of reading the Gospels, but it’s a misreading with grave consequences. It takes away the shepherd’s crook of Christ which doesn’t just fend off wolves from without, but also fends off wolves from within. This way of reading also prevents us from seeing how the gospels, John in particular, helps us see when empire¹ comes to church.

I believe John anticipated this problem in his characterization of key figures in his gospel. This is the first of maybe 2 or 3 posts addressing this subject in the Gospel of John. I believe this study is particularly necessary because of how the Fourth Gospel has been misused in grievous ways throughout history.

One of the sources of that misuse is John’s “us versus them” emphasis. “We” identify as followers of Jesus, and naturally align with Jesus’ statement to Nicodemus, “Truly I tell you, we speak what we know and we testify to what we have seen, but you do not accept our testimony” (John 3:11). “We” have heard and believed the testimony of the author of John and so we believe we are included in the “we” of John 21:24, “This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true.”

This simple stylistic emphasis is dangerous, as it can subtly reinforce our fallen tendency to read without repentance. Depending on who wields the scalpel, we can either cut or be cut. This was a problem even for the disciples during Jesus’ life and up to his death. As Galadriel put it in The Fellowship of the Ring,

“Your Quest stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all. Yet hope remains while all the Company is true.”²

But there are some key guardrails against falling off the edge of that knife. One such guardrail comes from a story about a sword, a knife’s edge, in which John shows us that no one is exempt from the spirit of empire, not even those closest to Jesus.

The verse we will be considering in this post is John 18:10 from the scene of Judas’ betrayal and the arrest of Jesus:

Then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it, struck the high priest's servant, and cut off his right ear. (The servant's name was Malchus.)

This is not going to be a detailed exposition of that passage, but rather an examination of how John has used themes and details and intertextual allusions to illuminate Peter’s act of violence.

John has carefully arranged his gospel to help readers see deeper meaning in Peter’s act of chopping off a man’s ear. This arrangement requires reading and re-reading, and so we must examine passages both before and after 18:10. There is a surprising degree of symmetry between John 13 (the feet washing ceremony and prediction of Judas’ betrayal), John 18:10-11 (Peter wielding the sword), and John 21 (disciples catching fish and Peter jumping into the sea, and Jesus’ final conversation with Peter and the beloved disciple). Examining all of these connections in detail would require a lengthy academic paper (maybe someday!), but this post will examine just a few key points of John’s masterful arrangement. We will start with the arrest scene itself, work back through the upper room in John 13, and then forward to John 21.

I’m going to omit including the entire scene from 18:1-11, but I encourage you to pause and read it if you have time.

The first element that jumps out is John’s mention of the Kidron Valley in 18:1. No other Gospel includes this reference, and it is surely not a throw away historical detail. John, master of symbolism, is signifying something. But what? I see two possibilities, only one of which we will get to today. The first is an allusion to 2 Samuel 15 when Ahithophel betrays David to Absalom. The second is from later kings who cleansed idolatry from their kingdoms by burning idols in the Kidron Valley. (As a lover of John’s double entendre and multilayered intertextuality, I reserve the right to accept both).

First, as Bruno Barnhart observes,

John has been careful to tell us (18:1) that Jesus crossed the Kidron with his disciples to enter the garden where he would be arrested. This brook, which runs between the old city of Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives, mentioned nowhere else in the New Testament, was crossed by the aged King David in flight from the forces of Absalom (2 Sam 15)…This strange procession prefigures, in a quasi-ritual manner, the prelude to Jesus’ passion. Ahithophel will play exactly the role of Judas, in betraying David, and then will hang himself.³

What happens when we read John 18 against the backdrop of 2 Samuel 15? It’s so hard to condense story; to really see what’s going on I encourage you to also pause and read 2 Samuel 15. There is so much potential resonance with John’s arrest-passion narrative. I imagine Peter being well familiar with this episode from the early days of the crumbling of David’s kingdom, and imagine and what it may have evoked for him. In particular, there is a would-be king, Absalom, seeking to supplant the true and rightful king, David. The echoes with John sound loudly:

• Pilot’s question, “Are you the king over the Youdaians?” (18:33, repeated in v. 37, 39);

• Pilot’s ironic proclamation, “Look! Your king” (19:14); and

• The religious authorities reply, “We have no king except Kaisar.”⁴

Additionally, Ittai’s proclaimed devotion to David in the face of danger (2 Sam 15:19-21) sounds very similar to Peter’s declaration in John 13:37, “Lord,” Peter asked, ”why can’t I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.” Like Jesus with Peter, David tells Ittai not to follow him. Ittai, like Peter, proclaims allegiance to his king, hell or high water; he will go wherever the king goes, no matter what. And, like Jesus’ “not my will but yours be done” in Gethsemane in the synoptic gospels, David says YHWH “can do with me whatever pleases him” (2 Sam 15:26).

It’s also important to remember God’s judgment pronounced through Nathan—it started with a sword:

“Why then have you despised the LORD’s command by doing what I consider evil? You struck down Uriah the Hethite with the sword and took his wife as your own wife—you murdered him with the Ammonite’s sword. Now therefore, the sword will never leave your house because you despised me and took the wife of Uriah the Hethite to be your own wife.” (2 Samuel 12:9-10).

The word for sword in 2 Sam 12 (hromphaia) is different than John 18:20 (maxaira), but David uses maxaira when he tells Joab not to worry about Uriah’s death:

“David told the messenger, “Say this to Joab: ‘Don’t let this matter upset you because the sword [maxaira] devours all alike” (2 Sam 11:25).

So in this intertextual narrative context of 2 Samuel and John 18, there are rival kings, rival kingdoms, abuse of power, deceit and betrayal, and professions of loyalty in the face of death.

When Peter has the chance to lay down his life for Jesus, he follows through, in a way. Scot McKnight’s translation is powerful:

“Therefore, Simōn Petros [Peter], having a long knife, pulled it and beat the Senior Priest’s slave and chopped off his right ear. (The slave’s name was Malchos.)” (John 18:10)⁵

Is Peter playing the part of a confident soldier? I get the impression that Peter is in fight/flight mode, full of fear. After all, this occurs at night, the only light coming from lanterns and torches in the hands of “a company of soldiers and some officials from the chief priests and the Pharisees and came there with…weapons” (18:3). It’s hard to imagine Peter thinking they had a fighting chance, but it also makes sense that fear would mobilize Peter. As a man of action, his fear response is more fight than flight or freeze.

Fear is a powerful motivator. We already know from earlier in John that fear can lead people to acts of violence. While the religious leaders ruled through control and punishment, they themselves were afraid because of Jesus’ ministry.

[47] So the chief priests and the Pharisees convened the Sanhedrin and were saying, “What are we going to do since this man is doing many signs? [48] If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” (John 11:47-48)

The fear that “everyone will believe in him” sounds like 2 Sam 15:13, “Then an informer came to David and reported, ‘The hearts of the men of Israel are with Absalom.’” The fear of everyone following after Jesus led to a deeper and greater fear: imperial subjugation. It’s not hard to see the oppressive act signified in the clause “take away” in 11:48, but John 19:15 uses the same verb and the violence is transparent: “They shouted, ‘Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!’

Religious authorities used fear to rationalize murder. Reading between the lines, we can see how Pilot was infected with the same fear-based moral judgment:

From that moment Pilate kept trying to release him. But the Jews shouted, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend. Anyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar!” (John 19:12)

This is the spirit of empire which will not tolerate opposition. Those at the top fear those at the bottom only if and when then top is threatened to be toppled. We know from experience, both in past and recent history, that Christian systems are not exempt from that fear. This fear is also clearly present in the religious authorities in the gospels (John especially). But is it right to see the church reflected in the mirror of those leaders opposed to Jesus? I believe so, but I also believe John’s portrayal of Peter wielding the sword helps us see that even disciples of Jesus can and do succumb to the fear-fueled spirit of empire.

The world exists wherever empire rules, whether that’s Rome, Wall Street, or religion.

Imperial violence, whether enacted or threatened, whether physical or spiritual, cuts through all spheres of religious leaders portrayed in John’s Gospel: Pilot, the Jewish religious elite, Judas, and yes, Peter. Empire came to the fledgling, fearful church in that garden on the other side of the Kidron Valley.

In part two we will explore the other reason I think John mentions Kidron. Here’s a sneak peak: I believe Peter, at least as portrayed by John, is imitating Jesus’ temple-cleansing violence of John 2:13-25. The only problem is (and it’s a big problem), Peter confuses Jesus’ example with the example of the imperial spirit of Rome and the Jewish leaders. But there is also good news in this study of how and when empire comes to church. When Peter encounters Jesus in John 21 on the Sea of Tiberias, there is a dramatic reversal where Peter’s violence is washed in the waters of repentance.

Until then, here is a quote from Christian psychologist and counseling educator Eric Johnson from an article fittingly titled One Edge of a Two-Edged Sword: The Subversive Function of Scripture.

Quote from Eric Johnson

If any contemporary application of the Pharisees occurs, we are inclined to “others” we know who resemble them. But could it be the divine author’s soul-opening intention to use that horrific irony primarily to promote self-understanding in his disciples? What if one of the indirect and deepest purposes of the gospel narratives—he who has ears to hear, let him hear—is the seditious agenda of helping believers recognize and resist the tendency of their remaining sin to promote unconsciously their self-righteousness, as they become increasingly more virtuous than their former selves and the world around them?⁶

Question

Are your ears attuned to the “seditious agenda” of Scripture? How do others help you read God’s word with humility? How do you help others do that as well?

1 If the language of “empire” is new for you, as it was for me a few years ago, see this short post with some helpful explanations: What is Empire?

2 J.R.R. Tolkein, The Fellowship of the Ring (Houghton Mifflin Co, 1994), p. 348.

3 Bruno Barnhart, The Good Wine: Reading John from the Center (Paulist Press, 1993), p. 184-185.

4 Scot McKnight, The Second Testament.

5 The Second Testament.

6 Eric Johnson, One Edge of a Two-Edged Sword: The Subversive Function of Scripture (Journal of Spiritual Formation & Soul Care, 2016, 9(1), p. 61-62.