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.
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I see you're still keeping it up. The blogging I mean, not the ministry.
ReplyDeleteDid you see the story about European refugees converting to Christianity in order to classify as persecuted should they be repatriated (to Syria, etc.)? A dilemma so perfectly Medieval, no?
"Blogging" might be a bit generous. I pretty much post sermons and whatnot.
ReplyDeleteThe Stout family was converted by the sword of King Olav Tryggvason, who famously told our progenitor that if he didn't, Olav would "scourge every island with fire and steel." A millennium or so later, the baptism seems to have stuck. So I can't cast aspersions on folks' baptismal motivations. :)