When Empire Comes to Church, Part 2
When Shepherds Act Like Kings
How does a Christian pastor justify spiritual abuse? By telling himself he is protecting the Lord’s mission and cleansing the Lord’s temple.
Thank you for joining me for part two of a series examining Peter’s use of the sword in John 18:10 which I’m calling When Empire Comes to Church. Last week I offered one explanation for John specifying that Jesus and his disciples crossed the Kidron Valley before the “arrest” of Jesus.1 We briefly examined 2 Samuel 15 for an allusion of narrative plot to John 18 (and there are additional echoes throughout 2 Sam 14-18). There is another possible—and after about 3,000 words of notes, I think likely—connection between John 18:1-11 and the other repeated references to Kidron in the OT. Some commentators note this connection, but do not explore why John would make this connection. I hope to do that today, because it provides another explanation for why and when empire comes to church.
Here’s the thesis stated last week: 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.
I discovered so many potential intertextual allusions for this study, too many for a newsletter (and this is still too long, but Substack tells me I have a decent email open rate, just over 48%; thank you dear readers for continuing to open my over-long emails!). I’ve kept an uncut version with my notes in a separate simultaneous (very unedited) post for those interested to dig in further, and just keeping a few highlights here.
Temples, Prophets, And House-Cleaning Kings
For starters, after 2 Sam 15 there are eleven additional references to Kidron in the OT, and they all share a common theme: spiritual renewal by temple cleansing. 2 Kings 23 provides the best example, because it overlaps with the prophetic ministry of Zephaniah, which John also alludes to in Jesus’ prophetic temple cleansing in John 2.
Zephaniah prophesied during the reign of Josiah, king of Judah from 640-609 B.C. Here are just some of the potential connections between John, Zephaniah, and 2 Kings 23 (English scripture references taken from the NETS Septuagint translation):
Zephaniah 1:4b, “and I will remove (exairo) from this place (topos) the names of the goddess Baal and the names of the priests.” This echoes John 2:16, “get these things out of here” (airo); John 11:48, “the Romans will come and take away (airo) both our place (topos) and our nation”; and John 18:2 “Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place (topos).” In particular, we can begin to see a subtle (at least to us) thread of temple imagery in John 18: topos in Zephaniah is in the context of temple worship, with priests (hiereon, v. 4) and in v. 5, “those who bow in worship”; topos clearly refers to the temple in John 2:16 and 11:48; and alongside topos in John 18:2, that place was a garden (kepos) which is central to temple typology in Scripture.
Zepheniah 1:5 also includes a possible link to John 18:10 and the name of the high priest’s slave. I admit this will seem like a stretch, but here it is: most English translations follow the Hebrew text of Zeph 1:5 which ends with “loyalty to Milcom”. However, the LXX translated that phrase, “swear by their king” (basileus). This is where we turn to 2 Kings 23 and the reforms of Josiah in Judah, which overlapped Zephaniah’s ministry.
First, there is the pattern noted above with cleansing idolatry from the temple and tossing the refuse into the Kidron Valley [“Wadi Kedron” in LXX], as well as the mention of the Lord’s house (2 Kings 23:12). Then, hiding almost in plain site among a list of idols, there is “Milcom the abomination of the sons of Ammon” (23:13). Milcom, which the LXX transliterated as Molchol, is the same Hebrew name from Zephaniah 1:5. To get us back to John 18, it’s helpful to see Molchol in Greek: Μολχολ. This bears resemblance to the high priest’s servant Malchus, or Μάλχος, which of all the evangelists only John names. And what does his name mean? Many scholars believe it means king. Which, as noted above, is how the LXX translated Milcom in Zephaniah 1:5. So Josiah cleansed the temple and destroyed a place of false worship devoted to Molchol, Zephaniah prophesied the removal of those who swear by the Lord but also swear by Molchol, and Peter removed the ear of Malchus, and all of those names mean king. Whether or not there is significance in the name itself2, I believe John’s mention of the name Malchus is part of his multilayered allusions to these OT texts that give a unique spin on the arrest narrative.
Ok, but what is the point of all of that? Zephaniah provides OT allusions for John’s framing of the temple-cleansing scene in John 2. Zephaniah also provides allusions for John’s framing of the arrest scene in John 18. Ergo, both scenes include temple-cleansing themes.
Judas: The Devil in the Details
I’m walking in uncharted territory, as far as I’ve seen so far, so I won’t be offended if readers take this with more than a few grains of salt. Here is another possible allusion in John 18:5b-6
[5b] Judas, who betrayed him, was also standing with them. [6] When Jesus told them, "I am he," they stepped back and fell to the ground.”
John, more clearly than any other evangelist, peels back the surface of things to see deeper spiritual realities at work. This is true for Judas just as much as it is for Jesus. The very first reference to Judas comes in 6:70-71 where Jesus calls Judas “a devil” (although unknown to the disciples at the time). John wants his readers queued in, in unmistakable terms, to the demonic influence at work in the person of Judas. So while the reality is shocking, the attentive reader is not surprised by 13:27,
“After Judas ate the piece of bread, Satan entered him. So Jesus told him, ‘What you're doing, do quickly.’”
When we get to the arrest scene in 18, the last time we see Judas, we must remember 13:27. What does it mean that “Satan entered” Judas? John helps us understand Satan entering Judas alongside language of entering God’s kingdom (3:4-5) and entering God’s sheepfold (10). Revelation has some very similar instances of entering:
Rev 3:20 “See! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will enter to him and eat with him, and he with me.
Rev 15:8, 21:27, 22:14 all refer to entering the temple and the city of God
So, when Satan enters Judas, he is doing temple action. He is mimicking God himself by mimicking divine indwelling of a human being (Rev 3:20). And this is the context we must remember when Judas returns to the scene in John 18. Here is 18:5b-6 again
Judas, who betrayed him, was also standing with them. When Jesus told them, "I am he," they stepped back and fell to the ground.
Can you guess where I’m going yet? Surely there is a reason John reiterated Judas’ presence with the Jewish and Roman authorities right before they fell to the ground. I believe that Jewish readers, upon hearing that Satan-in-dwelt-Judas fell to the ground, would think of the serpent of Genesis which was cursed to crawl on the ground. (For some exegetical justification, see the post with additional notes).
Temple Typology in the Arrest of Jesus
It’s time to pull these threads together. Here are the relevant OT themes I hear John echoing, starting with the one discussed last week:
Rival kings embattled for the rightful throne, the servants of the one plotting against the servants of the other
The place of God’s dwelling, whether garden, temple, kingdom or sheepfold
The presence of Satan / accuser / betrayer in God’s dwelling place
The cleansing of God’s dwelling place by the removal of idolatry and injustice
We could consider how those echoes might have influenced Peter personally, but I want to focus from the perspective of storytelling, which in John often goes beyond what characters knew in the moment at that time. John is giving us additional context to see Peter’s attack of Malchos a certain way. Namely, as a false immitation of Jesus’ prophetic temple-cleansing act.
Like the righteous kings of Judah3, Peter saw the presence of evil in God’s garden and sought to get rid of it in the Kidron Valley. Like the warnings of the prophet Zephaniah, Peter sought to take away evil priests from God’s place. Perhaps even like the first Adam should have done, Peter attacked the colluded forces of the ruler of this world in the false “priest-kingly” person of Malchus (ie, a “king” who was the slave of a priest).
Only, Malchus wasn’t really a king, and Peter wasn’t really a commissioned cleanser. John makes it abundantly clear to us, just as Jesus made it abundantly clear to Peter, that the act of violence against Malchus was wrong (18:11). But why? In light of all of those OT precedents, didn’t Peter’s action make perfect sense? Why have stories of righteous kings cutting away false worship and false priests if they aren’t to be imitated?
Well, one answer is suggested by Malchus’ name. Peter attacked a “king”, meaning Peter himself was not a king. Such violence is not the right of a common citizen, much less a disciple of Jesus. But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Disciples of Jesus, myself included, so easily forget to imitate Jesus and instead imitate the world around us, which in John’s gospel is the imperial world of Jerusalem and Rome.
There is also a special word here for Christian leaders, pastors and elders especially. While all Christians can learn from Peter, John the evangelist portrays Peter as one who “becomes the good shepherd in Christ’s absence” (21:15-19).4 Peter, called to feed Jesus’ sheep, made a grave misstep by mistaking himself for a righteous crusader with the right to go even farther than his rabbi did, cutting off human appendages instead of driving out injustice. But he made that mistake because he believed he was protecting his Lord’s mission and cleansing his Lord’s temple.
The Sword of Spiritual Abuse
What do you get when a shepherd assumes the duty of a king? At best, a misguided warrior who mistakes the innocent for the idol, and at worst, a self-righteous prophet who wields the sword of empire rather than prayer.
If you think, after all of this, I am still stretching John 18:10 too far, consider this interpretation from Hugh of St. Cher, a 13th century French Dominican:
“For Hugh of St. Cher, however, Peter’s attack on Malchus represents, not the abuse of the church’s temporal authority, but the abuse of its spiritual authority. The moral of the story, according to Hugh, is a warning directed to overzealous prelates, who too swiftly make use of the powers of the spiritual sword, in particular, the power of excommunication. To these prelates “the Lord says,” according to Hugh, “‘put up your sword,’ that is, revoke the sentence of excommunication.”5
Pastors might not be cutting off appendages, but they are cutting off sheep from the fold.6 They imitate the chief priests and Pharisees in their fear of being “taken away” from their “place” of employment, and instead “take away” those who report their abuse. They know the devil is real, but like Peter they don’t pray against him and instead attack servants and slaves, the vulnerable and oppressed.
Fortunately, that’s not the end of Peter’s story, which we will consider in the third and final part of this series. What comes next is so good, I can’t help but give you a condensed preview. Word links between John 18 and John 21 are given in bold:
In John 18:10-11, Peter drew his sword and cut Malchus’ right ear, and Jesus told Peter to throw the sword back into his sheath. In John 21:6-7 Jesus told the disciples to throw the net over the boat’s right side, and they were unable to draw the net because of the mass of fish. Peter, upon realizing the man was Jesus, threw himself into the sea.
Quote from Bruno Barnhart
“The drama of Peter and his transformation [in John 21] opens to…an ecclesial meaning…On the ecclesial level, the words of Jesus to Peter indicate a continual process of conversion which must take place in the church’s life. The cold light of recent centuries has exposed more and more fully the “shadow” of the church: a perennial, collective and institutional self-seeking which obscures the gospel both for Christians and for those outside. At the same time Christians are recognizing in their own experience a collective, historical dark night, a purificatory sea journey or exile. Like Jonah and Peter, Christians learn today in the darkness their never-ending lesson that the church is called to communicate the truth of Christ by serving humankind rather than by dominating it or by complacently preaching the Word to it from outside and above.”
Questions
What should Peter have done instead of drawing his sword? For those concerned about complacency in the church to the presence of wolves, are we sometimes tempted to likewise wield the sword of empire and forcefully cleanse God’s house? Might Psalm 69, the imprecatory psalm which guided Jesus’ cleansing of the temple, also guide us today to plead with God in prayers of imprecation?
In John, Jesus isn’t so much arrested as he turns himself in of his own volition; he remains sovereignly in control throughout John 18-19.
This might be taking it a bit too far, but there is narrative similarity in the divided loyalty of Israel in Zephaniah 1:5 (pledging to both God and Molchol) and the divided loyalty of the Jewish religious leaders who proclaimed “We have no king but Caesar” (John 19:15).
Ironically, Judah and Judas are the same in Greek, Ioudas.
Warren Carter, John: Storyteller, Interpreter, Evangelist, p. 77.
Craig S. Farmer, “Wolfgang Musculus and the Allegory of Malchus’s Ear,” (Westminster Theological Journal 56, no. 2, 1994), p. 293.
While this study has clear relevance for concerns about Christian nationalism, that is outside my scope, and so I am applying this to spiritual abuse more broadly.