Herald of Empire

Astral Warrior, by Somniodelic Workshop

Propers: The Second Sunday of Advent, AD 2024 C

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.

“All flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

In ancient times, long before the dawn of social media or telecommunications, news travelled by voice, carried by riders along the roads, or by the tromping feet of armies on the march. When a king won a great victory, he sent a herald ahead, a forerunner proclaiming the good news of his conquest and of his imminent royal arrival.

This would have to be someone charismatic, someone who could preach, someone with a good set of lungs, for heralds were the diplomats of their day. Their job was to ensure that their king received his proper reception: that roads were cleared and ways made straight, that lodging and provisions were provided, that local worthies came forth to pay obeisance to their betters. Towns needed guidance for their supplications.

Nowhere was this truer than with Rome. The Romans believed, in all honesty, that the world was theirs for the taking. Jove had promised to them imperium sine fine: empire without end. Rome would grow and expand and subjugate humankind, and all would be the better for it. Rome was the light, after all, a beacon of order and reason in a chaotic, barbaric world. In fairness, many conquered peoples welcomed this worldview. To become a Roman citizen had less to do with race or ethnicity than with power, protection, freedom, and prestige.

Certainly we can relate. Witness the lengths to which the West has gone in order to facilitate democracy, free trade, human rights, education, and the rule of law around the globe. Granted, on occasion one must bomb a particularly stubborn country or two all the way back to the Stone Age, but surely it’s for their own good. They’ll thank us later.

Every time that Rome would expand, every time that they defeated some new and exciting enemy, adding a fresh new province to the Empire, they would send forth heralds to proclaim the good news, the gospel of Rome. Rejoice, for your salvation is at hand! I’ll let the Romans speak for themselves. Here’s an inscription from a government building in Anatolia, modern day Turkey, dating to just a couple of years before Jesus’ birth:

The birthday of [Caesar Augustus] has been for the whole world the beginning of the gospel concerning him … The most divine Caesar … we should consider equal to the Beginning of all things … for when everything was falling into disorder and dissolution, he restored it once more and gave the whole world a new aura; Caesar … the common good Fortune of all … The beginning of life and vitality …

All the cities unanimously adopt the birthday of the divine Caesar as the new beginning of the year … Whereas the Providence which has regulated our whole existence … has brought our life to the climax of perfection in giving to us the Emperor Augustus … who, being sent to us and our descendants as Savior, has put an end to war and has set all things in order; and, having become god manifest, Caesar has fulfilled all the hopes of earlier times.

Well, gosh, doesn’t that all just sound so swell? Sign me up for the Pax Romana. I hope that Caesar conquers us next. We would be ever so grateful. When Christ was born, the world was at peace—but not in a kumbaya way. This was the peace of the Legions, the peace of the sword, the Peace of Rome. And in the spirit of doublethink, it could be difficult to distinguish from a one-sided war.

The Judeans were in the same boat as everybody else. Rome marched in, and never marched out. Of course, this wasn’t the Jews’ first rodeo. They had been conquered by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks—and they’d outlived them all. The Romans were just the latest of their foreign overlords. As had happened before, some embraced the system, used it to their advantage. In addition to being a Pharisee, St Paul was a Roman citizen. Others fought tooth and nail for that day they might be free.

A thousand years ago, they’d had a kingdom. A hundred years ago they had been independent, briefly, between the Greeks and the Romans. They were still Jews. They had the Law and the Prophets. They had the promises of God: promises that He was ever with them, promises that He would send the Christ. Some collaborated. Most coöperated. Others drew their daggers and took off to the hills. But all of them hoped: hoped for the Messiah, hoped for the prophesied Kingdom of God.

And then—a herald! A voice crying in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord!” John the Baptist, son of a priest, wild man of the desert, dressed like Elijah and living like an Essene, emerges at the border of the Jordan to proclaim: “Repent! The Kingdom of God is at hand!” And the people go to see him, do they not? Crowds brave the wasteland in order to hear what he has to say. “You brood of vipers!” he growls. “Who warned you to flee from the wrath that is to come?”

Good Judean believers arrive, but John warns them ancestry alone matters little to God. Then, what’s this? Tax collectors? Collaborators with the regime? Who invited them? And heaven help us, soldiers! Roman soldiers have come to be baptized! Perhaps they were sent to keep the peace, to kill a man who might need killing, yet here they seek his guidance. And though he snarls at their sins, John turns not one away. Not one! “Live justly,” he tells them. “Live generously. Prepare for the Messiah! Prepare for the Kingdom of the Christ!”

John is Jesus’ herald, the Forerunner of the Lord. His is the voice in the wilderness, calling for every valley to be filled and every mountain laid low, for the crooked to be straightened and the rough worn smooth, to prepare, to make haste, for the coming of the King. Yet the Word that John proclaims, the Truth that sets us free, is neither an event nor a proposition but a person, a human being, God made flesh. The Word is Incarnate, God-With-Us.

And so correspondingly the message sent by John is in his flesh, not just his voice. John’s entire life proclaims the Christ. Everything that Jesus does, John does first. He prepares the Way. John lives a life of anonymity, until the proper time. He gathers disciples, some of whom go on to become Jesus’ own Apostles. John cries the Kingdom, baptizes sinners, preaches to Jew and Gentile alike, as though enemies ought to be neighbors.

And John dies, unjustly, violently, at the hands of a so-called legitimate authority, for the crime of speaking truth to power. In all these things, he prepares the Way, even unto the grave. The difference between the two is this: John points to Jesus as the Lord and Lamb of God. John baptizes with water for repentance, for returning, whereas Christ baptizes with fire. John proclaims the Kingdom; Jesus is the Kingdom, the salvation of our God upon this earth.

It is a radical act, to proclaim that Jesus—this ragtag Rabbi off the sea of Galilee—is in fact the true King, the true Savior, the true Son of God, in contradistinction to Caesar. For Jesus has not come to raise the sword! He has not come to burn the world and bathe the righteous in blood. He has not come to force a peace, force us to be good, force us into reason and order and civilization, atop the bones of everyone who’s gotten in our way.

No! Christ has come to live our life and die our death and raise us unto glory. His Kingdom is not of this world. His Kingship comes not by an army, not even an angelic one. His is the peace of God, not the Peace of Rome. He comes to us in humility, charity, boldness, and truth, pouring forth from His wounded side an endless ocean of compassion. The coming of our Lord is not a single moment in time, but His eternal merciful majesty, in the light of which every single moment of history will be revealed, judged, and redeemed.

Imperium sine fine. You want an infinite Kingdom? You want empire without end? Then look to Christ: who loses not one of those entrusted to Him by the Father; who leaves the 99 to seek out the last and the lost; who overcomes hatred and vengeance and death itself through a love that cannot die. Christ is coming! His is the Kingdom! And none shall escape from the fires of His grace! Proclaim abroad His conquest, herald the Gospel of our Lord, that “all flesh shall see the salvation of our God.”

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

Pertinent Links

RDG Stout

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St Peter’s Lutheran

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Nidaros Lutheran

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