Conquest

Scripture: Christ the King, A.D. 2015 B

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

We speak today of killers and of kings.

The archenemy of the early Church was a man named Saul. Saul was a devoutly religious young man, an Israelite who persecuted his own people with all the vigorous passions of youth, because he believed that any Jew who declared Jesus to be God’s Messiah and Resurrected Son was a heretic, a teacher of false doctrines. It appears that Saul had a fair amount of wealth and influence, both as a Roman citizen who likely supplied tents for the Legions, and also as a Herodian with some connections to the royal court in Jerusalem. As such he was given official sanction to track down Christians in synagogues throughout the land and drag them back to Jerusalem for trial, which meant almost certain death.

He acted as a sort of boogeyman for the early Christian community. Saul represented both Jewish and Roman authority, the kings of this world, bearing down with an iron fist. There are stories, outside of the Bible, that he beat James the bishop of Jerusalem with a flaming log right on the steps of the Temple. He was half inquisitor and half terrorist. Surely the followers of Jesus must’ve prayed to God to smite down this persecuting religious zealot. And those prayers indeed were answered—though not in any way that suffering Christians expected.

On the infamous road to Damascus, on his way to hunt down more of these trouble-making Christians, Saul was struck off his horse by a divine light and voice from Heaven proclaiming, “Saul! Saul! Why do you persecute Me?” And Saul cried out, “Who are you, Lord?” to which God replied: “I am Jesus.”

You probably know the story from there. Saul, once the arch persecutor of the early Church, now became its greatest missionary and defender, a sort of Thirteenth Apostle. We know him as St. Paul, author of much of the New Testament. The Christians of his day, of course, were flabbergasted—and highly dubious. Their greatest enemy, now their greatest friend? God’s foe now forged into God’s instrument? Yet it was undeniably so. God’s punishment upon Saul for waging war against Christianity was to transform him into a Christian himself. Our Lord appears to be something of an enthusiast for irony.

After a long, arduous, and oddly joyful life, during which he preached God’s love and forgiveness in Jesus Christ with all the zeal he had formerly reserved for violent intolerance, St. Paul was arrested and taken to Rome, where he fell victim to the first great Roman Persecution under the Emperor Nero. Nero was mad, and his madness fell hardest upon Christianity. Faithful followers of Jesus Christ, Greek and Roman and Israelite alike, were publically executed in horrific ways. Crucifixion, burning at the stake, devoured by lions in the Coliseum.

Under Nero and many subsequent Emperors, the great Roman state was the murderer of countless Christians, who again cried out to God for relief. They prayed for Rome to be toppled, for the pagan city to fall—and God answered their prayers. But again, not as they expected. God punished Rome for its war against Christianity by making Rome Christian.

First came the Edict of Milan, in which the Emperor Constantine, in response to a miraculous vision, declared religious freedom throughout the Empire. In later generations, Christianity would go on to become the official state religion. The mighty pagan power that tried so hard to exterminate faith in Jesus Christ now embraced the very Messiah whom they had crucified upon a Roman cross. And they spread His Gospel throughout the entirety of the known world.

We begin now to discern a historical pattern. In subsequent centuries, Irish marauders raided British Roman cities, carrying off Christians as their slaves. Yet a handful of those slaves would go on to convert Ireland to Christianity, liberating their own captors from sin—slaves saving their masters. Germanic tribes thundered at the gates of Rome and invaded Britannia, eventually collapsing the Empire itself. Yet the Germans and the Anglo-Saxons would soon find themselves converting to the faith of their conquered foe. Old barbarians became new Christians.

Then of course there were the Vikings, those Northmen whom even savage Germans denounced as children of the devil. And the Vikings burned Irish monasteries, conquered Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, carved out duchies from Frankish lands, sacrificing men to the blood rites of their mad gods Odin and Thor. But the Christians they conquered ended up conquering them—not by a sword of steel but by the sword of God’s Word. One by one, the great sea kings and jarls requested Christian baptism. One by one, the terrifying longships began to paint crosses on their sails. One by one, the wolves of Odin became the crusading knights of Jesus Christ.

This bizarre pattern continues down to our own day. The greatest persecutors of the Church in the Twentieth Century were the mass-murdering Communist regimes of the East. Yet go and look for them now. Where are they today? The Soviet Union has fallen, and the Russian Church risen from a century of slumber. In Red China, well over 100 million Christians easily outnumber the 80 million members of the Communist party. Vietnam has 26 Catholic bishops.

Of course, the most successful foe of Christianity was for centuries the armies of Islam, and with millions of refugees from the Middle East flooding into Europe today, all manner of alarm has been raised about the Islamification of the West. Yet what few seem to notice is that Muslims in Europe have been converting to Christianity in record numbers. We hear rumors of secret churches all throughout Iran. Who knows what the future may hold? All we can say with confidence is that throughout history the greatest foes of the Church in any given generation have become her greatest champions in the next.

Today we end the liturgical year of the Church by celebrating Christ the King. The language of monarchy may seem strange to us, as citizens of a democracy founded upon violent uprisings against the British Crown. But if our Gospel reading teaches us nothing else this morning, we must keep in mind that Christ is not like other kings. He does not coerce, does not force, does not wield violence to assert His divine will upon others. Such is simply not the nature of our self-giving God, whose greatest punishment has ever been to give us what we demand.

The book of Revelation describes Jesus as Conquest, the first horseman of the apocalypse who lays low the nations of the world with the sword of His mouth—not a weapon of metal or fire but the very Word of God, the Law and the Gospel. Here we have a King who conquers not by killing His foes but by letting them kill Him, thereby incorporating them into His own sacrificial death and life eternal. He rules by drawing His enemies into Himself. That’s how all of us got here.

All of us gathered here today are subjects of the One True King. We are His priests, His soldiers, the members of His Church Militant. And we are here today not because we were His great friends and allies, but because we were, each and every one of us, at one time His mortal foes. We were Saul. We were Rome. We were the Irish pirates and German hordes and Viking raiders. We fought against Him, and He conquered us, claimed us, made us His own. Not by violence. Not by force. Not by the almighty strength of His arm. But through mercy and grace and His Resurrection from the dead.

Our King has bought us with a price, raised us by His Blood. In time, all swords and crowns will fall to rust. Castles and Constitutions alike will burn. Every worldly authority and power that has sought to impose its will upon others shall buckle with age, collapse in the grave, and give up the ghost. Such is the way of kings. But one day every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ, the One True and Conquering King, is Lord and God Almighty. And all His foes shall bow before Him—not to His might or His wrath or His judgment unflinching—but to that unspeakable grace and terrible glory, that transforms even the worst of His foes into His most beloved sons.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.