“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the world; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (v. 34). These words always shock us. They confront us with a great mystery, or rather, with the awesome weight of paradox. In these words, we encounter two great mysteries: the mystery of evil, or sin, and the mystery of God’s infinite love. In these words, the material world we all know, live and move in, comes face to face with the spiritual reality of God in whom we, and all of creation, “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). How can an all-loving God allow evil? It seems to be an apparent contradiction. This mystery feels like a great, complex, and tangled knot to us.
Often, we find ourselves amid huge and challenging problems of one kind or another. The issues involved are often immensely complicated, involving seemingly contradictory elements, and our minds and hearts are tied up in knots trying to solve them. Every solution we try fails. Sometimes, despite our herculean efforts to solve these issues, they are so complicated that we finally just throw up our hands in frustration or anger, and nothing gets resolved. This, of course, is especially true in matters of great moral importance where duties and responsibilities must be undertaken. This is even more true when these duties and responsibilities require us to go beyond, even to leave behind, if only temporarily, our own great needs to serve the greater needs of others. We have a term in the vernacular for this kind of dilemma. It is called a Gordian Knot.
The term derives from a myth or legend around the Greek king, Alexander the Great. In the legend, he encounters an ancient ox-cart tied to a post with an extremely jumbled and complex knot. No one was able to untie this dense and complex knot. It could not be solved through any traditional means. The legendary prophecy around this knot was that whoever could untie it would one day “rule all of Asia.” After trying many things, frustrated by his inability to unravel the knot, he drew his sword and cut right through the middle of the knot, slicing it in half. As we know from history, Alexander did conquer much of Asia in his short life. The phrase ‘untying the Gordian Knot’ is used today to describe the untying of difficult problems in a direct, decisive way, often involving unconventional methods.
The legend of the Gordian Knot is an apt metaphor for the world in which we live. It is a world full of immensely complicated moral problems in every area of our lives. These problems, these Gordian knots, are all the result of our shared human sinfulness. Though we have an innate, natural desire to solve these knotty problems, when our efforts are not rooted in our knowledge of God’s will for us, if they are not undertaken in a humble and willing submission to his will, our efforts, more often than not, fail. Our failure to solve these difficult moral dilemmas, these ‘Gordian knots,’ is not due to our lack of desire to solve them but to our human ineptitude, our often flawed or incomplete knowledge, our prejudices, or our pride. These self-created ‘Gordian knots’ are the mystery of evil that we are caught up in all the time. It is into this material world that Jesus came to reveal the mystery of God’s infinite love and mercy to us. In this sense, Jesus is the ‘sword’ who came into the world and untied, indeed, tore asunder, the Gordian knot of the mystery of evil.
Jesus is the great paradox, the apparent contradiction that is, in fact, true. He is God “in the flesh.” He unites the spiritual world and the material world in his body and his Spirit. Jesus, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God, the very Word of God, is the one “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death–even death on a cross” (Phil. 2: 6-8). Through his death, eternal life was opened for us once again. This is the great mystery of God’s love. The mystery of evil is that we choose to rebel against this infinite, demonstrable love for us all the time. The mystery of evil is that we continually rationalize our sins with worldly arguments, and in doing so, we simply habituate ourselves to the sin of rational lies.
The cross of Jesus is the Spiritual “sword” that came into the material world to cut the Gordian Knot of sin. He tells us in the same passage from Matthew’s Gospel: “Whoever loves [even] father or mother, son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (vs. 37-39). It is this serious, this real. Jesus has untied the knot. He has given us the solution to our sinful habits, our Gordian knots. We will be freed from the “Gordian Knot” of our sins if we keep our eyes on Christ above all else. Though we still live in this material world, if we knowingly and willingly choose to take up our crosses and follow him, we can trust that by the grace of our loving God, we will be strengthened to courageously live his way, even while suffering. By doing so, we will “receive our reward” (vs. 40-42). Thanks be to God!
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