Defiant

Atom Bomb Baby: Riders of the Stars

Propers: Gaudete Sunday, AD 2023 A

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

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

“The Gospel of the Lord,” we say. Yet what is a gospel, exactly? It certainly seems a churchy word. We hear it most often in connection to the four canonical accounts of Jesus’ life recorded in our New Testament: the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But like all words it has a history, with layers of meaning entombed in etymology. Gospel, in modern English, derives from the old Anglo-Saxon godspel, or “good story,” which in turn is how English Christians have translated the biblical term εὐαγγέλιον.

Εὐαγγέλιον, in the Greek, means glad tidings, good news. More literally, it translates to a good little messenger, a good little angel. You can hear ἄγγελος right there in the middle. In ancient Greece, a herald would come running over the horizon, bringing report of some military victory, or the accession of a new king. And there would be much rejoicing. The herald himself would usually get some sort of reward or a tip, while the people would offer a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the gods. Not such good news for the oblational beasts.

As the Roman Republic became the Roman Empire, an imperial cult formed around Caesar Augustus, son of the divine Julius. The Emperors were said to descend from the gods, and upon their deaths, following Julius’ lead, they would ascend into the heavens. Augustus was thus a god and the son of a god, both human and divine: the savior of the world, as his coinage proclaimed, who brought order, peace, prosperity, and power, all at the tip of his sword, the infamous Pax Romana.

In the time of Jesus, in the Roman Empire, the gospel was the good news of the birth of the man-god Augustus. To proclaim the gospel was to herald his Empire, the inevitable march of his divinely sanctioned Legions and the bloody peace that they impose. “Gods of Britannia, I am Rome! And where I walk is Rome!” I’d say that it was a political profession before it was religious, but in Rome these are one and the same.

So when Christians speak of Gospel, we are throwing down the gauntlet. Remember how Mark began his narrative just last week: “The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God!” That’s a shot across the bow. Because those terms—εὐαγγέλιον, Son of God—these are only supposed to apply to Augustus. These are only supposed to apply to Rome. Mark is proclaiming a new Emperor, a new Kingdom, an alternate Son of God. And that’s the kind of talk’ll get you killed.

One need look no farther to affirm the radical, scandalous nature of the Gospel than to the Magnificat, Mary’s song from Luke’s account, which we sang as our psalm this morning. She has just learned that she will be the Mother of God, the Mother of the Messiah, and in response she bursts into song: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior”—God my Savior, not Augustus.

He has shown the strength of His arm. He has scattered the proud in their conceit. He has brought down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He has sent away empty. He has come to the help of His servant Israel, for He has remembered His promise of mercy.

This is no Mary meek and mild, no Mary had a little lamb. She knows what this pregnancy means. She knows that she will birth the true Savior, the true King of Kings, the true Son of God, and that He will topple the structures of power that keep her down. He will turn this world upon its head, lifting up the lowly, casting down the mighty, raising up His forgotten people Israel, and putting to scorn the hobnailed heels of the occupying imperium. She’s a rebel, this one is, a Queen giving birth in a cave.

“Mary did you know?” Oh, yes. She understands the implications far better than we ourselves.

Likewise, John the Baptist, John the Forerunner, John the Herald. In Eastern iconography he is often portrayed with wings, to remind us that he is the εὐαγγέλιον, the good little angel. We call him John the Baptist, for that is his primary function in the Gospel According to John Mark. Yet in today’s Gospel, the Gospel According to John the Apostle, we might better term him John the Witness. He crests the horizon to proclaim the coming King.

John is an undeniably powerful figure. He features prominently in all four canonical Gospels. Christ calls him the greatest amongst all men of woman born. There’s even a religion, Mandaeism, that reveres the Baptist as God’s finest and final prophet. Yet the John that we know, the John of the Gospels, forever points beyond himself to Jesus Christ, to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And keep in mind that John does not simply prophesy: his life itself is a prophecy.

Everything that Jesus does, John does first. His miraculous birth heralds Jesus’ holier birth. His ministry prepares the way for Jesus’ own. His disciples become Christ’s Apostles. And when John dies—murdered by a tyrannical and unaccountable sovereign—Jesus clearly understands that His own end is at hand. Every sinew and bone of John’s body proclaims the Gospel, the Good News that Christ is right behind him and here His Kingdom comes.

We wonder why Christ was Crucified, why John was so beheaded, why Mary had to flee from the red and raging dragon. That’s because we’ve watered down the scandal of their news. We think the Gospel anodyne, all warm and fuzzy feelings so we needn’t get worked up. But it’s a war cry, a rebel yell, a defiance spitting acid in the face of worldly power. To look at kings and emperors, to men who would be gods, and say: “No. You are nothing.

“All your soldiers and your silver, all your fearsomeness and fame, cannot bow me, cannot cow me, cannot keep me down. I serve the higher Power. I serve the greater King, He who shatters every fetter you would set upon us. And there is nothing you could ever do to keep us from His grace. All you have is death, your bullets and bombs and blades. Yet He has conquered death and hell and torn out the heart of the grave. Satan cowers before Him, and I am not afraid.”

So you tell me: Is that fanaticism, or is it freedom? Jesus and Mary and John proclaim not simply some greater army with bigger guns, but a Kingdom not of this world, a Kingdom untouchable to death and decay—a love that cannot die, a hope that can’t be quenched. A life that shall outlive the tomb! That is the Gospel. That is Good News.

We live yet in the Empire, beneath this massive edifice of credit and debt, of consumption and production, of haves and have-nots, predatory healthcare and military industrial complex. We are all of us cogs in the machine, sinners within the Invisible Hand of the market, toiling and suffering and dying so that rich men might grow richer. And we wonder, with our houses stuffed full of junk and with endless entertainments on tap, why we all suddenly feel so isolated and lonely and anxious and enslaved.

For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world and to forfeit his soul?

I have Good News: news of another world, news of another King; of a truth beyond our politics, our possessions, our positions, and our pleasures. He is born, we hear, in Bethlehem, and would be born in us. He would set us free, free to love with all we are, love our neighbors as ourselves. Wouldn’t that be novel? His Kingdom has come, and will come, and is coming even now: a Light in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

Some mornings, when I drive to church, and the sun has yet to crest the horizon, I nevertheless see the Cross atop the steeple blazing with that morning light. We cannot see the sun on the ground, yet up there it is already dawn. Such is the nature of Church. Christ has accomplished salvation. In eternity it is fulfilled, it is done! We are proclaiming a reality more real than this world, a truth that sets us free. It’s right there revealed in the love of Jesus Christ, reflected in us while we yet dwell in darkness.

So be the εὐαγγέλιον—the messenger, the herald, the bearer of Good News. Be the little angel, not for duty but for joy. For we have seen His salvation. And all the world must know. Christ is right behind us, and here His Kingdom comes.

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

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