Charissa Fryberger

So he asked them again, “Whom do you seek?” And they said, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus answered, “I told you that I am he. So, if you seek me, let these men go.” This was to fulfill the word that he had spoken: “Of those whom you gave me I have lost not one.” Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant and cut off his right ear. (The servant’s name was Malchus.) So Jesus said to Peter, “Put your sword into its sheath; shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?”

                                                                                                                                    John 18:7–11

 

 

We sometimes remember Peter as a coward for his denial, as, I suspect, he did himself until Jesus forgave and reinstated him on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. However, it was the same Peter who was afraid to identify himself with Jesus in the courtyard of the high priest, who, just a few hours before, had faced an armed cadre of soldiers in the garden “with lanterns and torches and weapons.”(1) In that moment, he was not only willing to claim Jesus but pulled out his one little sword and struck in His Lord’s defense. Peter was ready to fight for Jesus in an uneven battle that would likely have ended in his death or arrest. That doesn’t seem so cowardly to me. Yet the story of Peter’s brave, though somewhat reckless defense also leaves me wondering: What about the man he struck?

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The target of Peter’s blow was the high priest’s servant; some translations call him the high priest’s slave. Who was he, and why was he there? Was he ordered to go to bolster the party’s numbers even though he would rather have stayed home to get some much-needed sleep?

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Or did the servant tag along of his own volition? Life as a servant, even for a high official, probably wasn’t all that interesting, and Judas’ offer to turn in Jesus no doubt created an unusual level of excitement and intrigue in the high priest’s household. Maybe he was just following along for macabre entertainment.

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Or did he build his own identity on whom he served and share his master’s disdain for this man who thought He could tell the people about God even though He was outside the official religious hierarchy? Maybe the high priest so trusted this servant that he put his underling in charge of the arrest party to make sure that nothing went sideways in his clandestine operation to get rid of this itinerant thorn in his side. After all, the high priest probably had good reason not to trust Judas very far; a traitor who turns once might just as easily turn twice.

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And why did Peter strike him? Did Peter perceive him as a leader in the group and thus, an obvious first target in a fight? Maybe he just happened to be standing closest to Peter.

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More importantly, what happened to the servant after this eventful night during which he had a front-row seat on the most world-shaking arrest in history? After this crazy weekend was over, and all the buzz about this Jew who was executed (some said as a criminal; others as an innocent; others went so far as to claim they had killed the Messiah) had died down, maybe the high priest’s servant just went back to being a high priest’s servant. He may have lived out the rest of his days doing whatever high priest’s servants were expected to do.

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Maybe. But I don’t think so.

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Luke adds to the story that the man's ear was not only cut off but also healed. Jesus put a quick end to the ensuing fight.(2) Then, in the middle of being arrested and facing all He knew was to come, Jesus paused to touch the man’s head and restore his ear—the ear of the man who, for whatever reason, stood among His enemies.

John pauses here in his telling of the story to note that, “The servant’s name was Malchus.”(3) Why did John care enough to name him? Why should we care what his name was? The story never mentions him again. This was just some inconsequential servant to the evil leader who ordered Jesus' arrest. In modern movie terms, he was an expendable on the wrong side—the side of the "power of darkness"(4) (Jesus’ words in Luke’s account).

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Yet, Malchus is among a handful of the people whom Jesus encountered during His time on Earth whose names we know. We know the disciples, but then, they were major players. We know Mary Magdalene and the other women who went to the tomb on Easter morning. We know Bartimaeus and Zacchaeus and Nicodemus, but we don’t know the names of the woman at the well, Jairus’ daughter, the rich young man who asked Jesus how to gain eternal life, or the leper who returned to say thank you. Their names are forgotten by history (though not by God). Yet we know the name of this servant, and he has been remembered in many languages for two thousand years each time John’s gospel account of Jesus’ arrest is read anywhere in the world.

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Could it be that for John’s contemporary readers, this man was not an incidental aside? Perhaps Malchus was not, as we presume, an expendable who no one remembered or cared about. Maybe, though he stood on the wrong side that night, he was a man about to cross the line.

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Did he remain in the garden long after the soldiers had bound Jesus and marched away, and the disciples had fled? Did he look down at the blood drying on his fingers and remember the lightning bolt of pain as the sword slashed by his face? Did he reach up in amazement to touch the ear- made-whole-again? Did he stand in wonder as the recipient of an unprovoked blow followed by an unrequested and completely unimaginable miracle? Could such an experience fail to change a man?

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Perhaps he didn’t watch the rest of the circus that night. Maybe he slipped home to recount the tale to his wife, who might not have believed him except for the trail of blood that stained his robe from his shoulder to his hem. Did he listen in horror the next day to the scuttlebutt about Jesus' trial and flogging and crucifixion? Was he fascinated and puzzled by the rumors that circulated the following week claiming that this strange Man, whose touch had taken away his pain and left him whole, had healed his own crucifixion wounds and risen from the dead?

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Could he, like Nicodemus, have slipped out in the night a few weeks later after the fuss had faded to find one of Jesus’ disciples and ask the pointed question, “Who was this Jesus—really?” Was Malchus standing in the crowd around Peter on the day of Pentecost? Did he hear his long-forgotten childhood language spoken and join the throng of three thousand who found faith that day?(5) Was he, unbeknownst to his high priestly boss, a part of the fellowship of believers in Jerusalem who prayed and broke bread together?(6) Was the healing of his own ear merely the first of many miracles Malchus witnessed as he hung out with the apostles through whom “many wonders and signs were being done.”(7)

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Did some of those who initially read John’s gospel know him well, not as an enemy who stood on the other side and helped to kill their Lord, but as a brother with whom they served that same living Lord side by side? Perhaps Malchus’ name is written because he was a slave who became a brother, just as we, who satan attempts to enslave and to slay with his sword of evil, are also brothers and sisters with Malchus and with one another in the blessed fellowship of the One who heals. Will we one day stand next to Malchus before the throne singing, “Holy, holy, holy?”

I look forward to shaking his hand…

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. . . and maybe having a look at that ear.

 

 

NOTES:

1 John 18:3.

2 Luke 22:51.

3 John 18:10.

4 Luke 22:53.

5 Acts 2:4.

6 Acts 2:42.

7 Acts 2:43.