And they that were about Him, seeing what would follow, said to Him: "Lord, shall we strike with the sword?" Then one of them that was with Jesus, Simon Peter, stretching forth his hand, drew his sword, and striking the servant of the high priest, cut off his ear. And the name of the servant was Malchus. But Jesus answering said: "Suffer ye thus far." Then he said to Peter: "Put up again thy sword into the scabbard. For all that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot ask My Father, and He will give me presently more than twelve legions of Angels? How, then, shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that so it must be done? The chalice which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?" And when He had touched his ear, He healed him. - Matthew 26:51-54; Mark 14:47-49; Luke 22:50,51; John 18:10,11
1. What strange circumstances are these for the working of Our Lord's last healing miracle. Unlike all the others in the New Testament, the victim is not one whom Our Lord has met in the course of His day's work, a faithful follower, or at least one who believed in Him and appealed by the roadside; but he is an avowed enemy, he has got his wound in an unholy cause, he has received his wound from one of Our Lord's own defenders. One wonders what kind of gratitude He received for such an act of charity. Surely something; surely the conversion of Malchus; the fact that we are given his name, as in the later case of Simon, points to his being known later to the Evangelists, and therefore to his being among the band of the faithful.
2. One wonders, too, what must have been in the mind of Peter. Poor Peter! He had sworn before to stand up for his Master in time of trouble; his Master had expressly seen to it that he brought a sword with him to the Garden. He now does stand up for Him in the best way he knows how; and in return he is rebuked, and the "good" he has done is cancelled by Our Lord Himself. Surely if He could work such a miracle as this, and under circumstances such as these, He could do much more. Evidently, then, not only is the case hopeless, but the Master has decided that it shall be hope less, and there is nothing now to be done but run away. How easily one can so decide in questions of this kind, when for His own reasons Our Lord wills that things shall go hard with us, that our well-intentioned deeds shall turn out mistakes, and that we shall be suffered to say and do nothing in our own defence.
3. Meanwhile, here once again His own commanding presence is most wonderful. From beginning to end it is shown to us that if not a sparrow shall fall without His Father s consent, neither shall He Himself be maltreated without His own permission at each step. He is always Master; the consciousness of it does but make His enemies rage the more. His enemies may seize Him, but they must first fall down before Him. The friend may betray Him, but he must first be shown that the Master has not been deceived. The mob may insult Him, but they shall never be able to say that to the end He has slackened in well-doing. And the deliberateness with which He acts - deliberately refusing to ask His Father, deliberately reversing the prayer He had offered in the Garden, deliberately healing the man, while the mob must pause and look on all this is very beautiful.
Summary
1. The cure of Malchus, the last of His cures, stands alone in its circumstances.
2. The mind of Peter, failing to understand, is tottering to its fall.
3. The mind of Our Lord, always Master, always deliberately free.
- from The Crown of Sorrow, by Archbishop Alban Goodier