Conflict and trouble were central to the mission of Jesus

Conflict and trouble were central to the mission of Jesus. He disrupted the false peace all around him–in the lives of his disciples, the crowds, the religious leaders, the Romans, those buying and selling in the temple. He taught that true peacemaking disrupts false peace even in families: “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to turn ‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law–a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household’” (Matthew 10:34-36).