Today is Holy Thursday for us Orthodox, and tonight we think deeply on the betrayal of Christ and HIs arrest in Gethsemane.
Peter, attempting to defend his Friend and Teacher, famously sliced off the ear of Malchus, servant to the High Priest of the Temple.
Peter missed
Think about it. There is no way that the ear was Peter's intended target. It is impossible to aim with such precision as to slice off an ear.
Violent homicide was the aim. The neck maybe, certainly the head. Malchus should not have survived. The severed ear was but an "accident."
"No more of this," Jesus said, and He restored Malchus' ear to its rightful place (Luke 22.51).
"Put your sword back into its place," Jesus told Peter, and turning to the militia that the authorities had sent to arrest Him, He proclaimed a challenge to all who put their trust in mortal princes, wealth, and power (and all these potentialities for violence): "For all who take up the sword will die by the sword,. Do you think that I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?"
"How else," He continued, should the scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?" (Matthew 26.52-54).
How else could Jesus proceed to wage the true and only real struggle against the only real enemy: sin, death, and hell itself. There was only ever one way, and that was for the Son of Man to be lifted up so that He might go down.
The only way for Jesus to lead us free to heaven was for Him to go down and find us where we were, on Holy Saturday. The only way for Jesus to find us there was by His totally kenotic, Self-sacrificial pouring out of His Life on the Cross.
His way. Not the way of Peter's sword.
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