'When Jesus' followers saw what was going to happen, they said, "Lord, should we strike with our swords?" And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear.
But Jesus answered, "No more of this!" And he touched the man's ear and healed him.'
Luke 22:51
Four powerful words. No more of this. Jesus intervenes before an action turns into a fight. When Jesus is arrested, despite his innocence, he doesn't fight it, and he intervenes when his friends try and fight for him, interrupting a cycle of violence driven by the nature of those around him to pursue what they believe is right.
When we see those we love get hurt - when we see those we love treated unjustly - the obvious response is to fight on their behalf. We fight in the way we know how. The disciples have just been told to take up their swords because something is coming, and now their use of the sword is stopped.
None of it makes sense.
There are many things in the world that might make us cry out 'no more of this!'. 'I can take no more'. 'Stop'. From the personal things when life appears to keep throwing stones - perhaps the first one didn't hurt, but the series of one thing after another is beginning to - through a spectrum of disappointment and frustration - to the big things - the atrocities we see on the news.
So many times in the situations where we cry out 'no more of this' we feel helpless because there seems to be nothing we can do to change the way things are and how things are becoming.
But Jesus' "no more of this" is a declaration of another way. He breaks the seemingly never ending cycle, not by being the most powerful and forceful in human ways, but by declaring a new and different way. His way heals the ear of the one who is arresting him for a crime he didn't commit.
I don't have the answers in all the places and situations where we are crying out "no more of this", but I'm thankful that Jesus not only understands and feels the suffering that is endured, but that he points to a way that is different, a way that is healing and a way that declares restoration. A way where the ways he says no to, will one day be no more.
I try to be a person of "no more of this", who calls out injustice when I see it and who sides with those who are broken, but I don't do it well. Perhaps one of the challenges of the advent pause is to revisit the declaration of "no more of this" and to seek out a more Jesus way to declare it.
A light began to glimmer in the darkness - the darkness could not put it out.
The Word became flesh and moved into the neighbourhood.....and declared "No more of this".
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