Rebel




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.

Rebellions are built on hope. And make no mistake, that’s what we have here in our Gospel reading this morning: the spark of a rebellion, which shall light such a fire as to encompass the entirety of the cosmos.

Jesus’ people knew oppression on a scale the likes of which most of us simply cannot fathom. Their origin story begins with 400 years of slavery in Egypt: set to hard labor, kept from their homes, their children subject to state-mandated infanticide. And it just gets worse from there. Canaanite powers rise up in the time of the Judges. Then the Assyrians, the Neo-Babylonians, the Medo-Persians, various Macedonians and Greeks. Why, there’s nary a power in the Ancient Near East which did not subjugate the Jews.

Century upon century of violence, bleeding into a millennium, with just the barest gasps of freedom—a brief and pugnacious rule by usurpers, lasting about a hundred years—until Pompey the Great showed up, and with him the Legions of Rome. What makes the Jewish people absolutely astonishing is neither their strength nor their wealth nor even their wisdom; but the plain, simple, gobsmacking fact of their survival. “All things are mortal but the Jew,” wrote Twain; “all other forces pass, but he remains.”

Judaism maintained an identity, and a language, and shared collection of stories, across untold generations, whilst other, mightier nations about them fell to dust and oblivion. What did they have that no-one else had? Hope! By God, they had hope, impossible hope. For that hope was based on the promise of God, and God does not break promises.

The most scandalous, revolutionary idea found within the pages of the ancient Hebrew Scriptures is this utterly ludicrous notion that the mightiest god of all—the infinite God, the only true God—does not value, does not care for, power and wealth and violence. The One True God is not now and has never been the God of empire, the God of viciousness, the God of the strong doing what they will while the weak suffer what they must. No, the One True God is the God of the slaves! God of the widow and the orphan! God of the defeated and oppressed! God of the last, the lost, the little, and the least.

All of those whom we ignore, they are whom God values.

Now that’s a dangerous idea, because it puts the lie to the whole of history. It points to the Emperor and says, “He has no clothes! He’s ridiculous. He’s a farce.” Oh, Caesar can march his hobnailed boots all up and down the Mediterranean, but now we know that “every boot of the tramping warrior … and every garment rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire.” I’m a god, cries Caesar, and the Jew says, No.

It’s true that every time when the Jews rose up to break the yoke of Rome, they failed. No matter how strong, how violent, how viciously they fought, the Romans took the art of war and made it into a science. You can’t out-violence Rome. But it’s also true that the invincible Roman Empire fell well over a thousand years ago. Yet here we sit, reading Jewish Scriptures, worshipping a Jewish Christ. Violence is a one-trick pony. Once we lose our fear of death, its power has been broken.

John the Baptist wandered in the wilderness, proclaiming the Kingdom of God. And people flocked to him, people who lived under empire, under the constant threat of violence; people longing for freedom and desperate for salvation. And he pointed them not to a lion, but unto the Lamb of God. And he said, “Repent! Be turned! Transform your souls! Wrap your heads around this, for the Kingdom of God is at hand. And the One whom I have heralded takes away the sin of the world.”

They called Jesus the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One, their term for a priest or a king. They called Him Son of David, scion of an ancient royal line. They called Him Son of God, Savior, King of Kings, all of which were titles claimed by Caesar. Jesus inaugurates the Kingdom of our God, and it isn’t like the kingdoms of this world. It does not rely on wealth or armies or edifices of stone. It needs no propaganda, drops no bombs, cages no children, declares no wars, for such is not the power of the Christ.

We read of His power in our Gospel this morning: how He sends out His swordless soldiers, his simple fishermen, to teach the ignorant, to cure the sick, to feed the hungry, and to proclaim the Good News of His victory unto all who are oppressed. Education, healthcare, justice, freedom, peace—these are the fruits of Jesus’ Spirit. These are the proper works of His Kingdom. These are the glories of Christianity! Not war, not violence, not coercion: such are anti-Christ, the hissings of the serpent unto Caesar.

When John is arrested, and subsequently put to death, Jesus doesn’t respond with insurrection. He never lifts the sword. Instead, He gathers John’s wayward sheep, commissions them as His Apostles, and sends them out now to be fishers of men; drawing, from the depths of a pagan sea of chaos, nets full to bursting with every sort of soul. They don’t assassinate, like the Sicarii. They don’t make war, like the Zealots. They go out to love their neighbor, to set the captive free, to serve all of humankind as they would serve the living God. That’s their rebellion! That’s the Kingdom of the Christ.

And yes, they will suffer for it. Every Apostle but one shall be killed. Yet death has no dominion anymore. Not over us. Not over the children of our Resurrected Lord. Even Crucifixion could not kill His love for us. And we crucified Him for claiming to be a king.

My brothers and my sisters, we live in a time of violence, ruled by violent men. And honestly, it has always been so, even if today we find it harder to ignore. Still we groan beneath the yoke of an empire, an international system designed to enrich the wealthy at the expense of the poor. Still we are confronted, every morning, in every headline, with wars and rumors of wars, with threats of violence and cartoonish bullying.

Thus it is easy to despair, to look to this tumultuous sea of chaos and to feel overwhelmed. What can we do against such hatred, against aggression and rapaciousness at home and overseas? We start to feel as though we ought to dissociate, to step away, lest we drown. Many of you have come to me with this struggle. It’s one which we all must face, to one degree or another.

And so I say to you: rebel. Not in the way in which the world rebels, with anger and division. But rebel in the manner of the Kingdom of the Christ. Help one another, in any way that you can. Feed the hungry and speak out for the oppressed, gently, kindly, yet insistently as possible. Respond to fear with hope. Respond to threats with love.

Read a book. Make art. Give a gift. Fix something. Pray! Tell the ones you love that you do indeed love them. Do not be cowed by the confusion, the misinformation, the lies which everyone knows are lies, and yet they keep on lying. Speak truth to power! Always tell the truth in love, and love in deepest truth.

Rebel, not against one nation or one enemy but against a fallen, broken world, a world which only values false and passing things: glory, gold, guns, and other damnable foolishness. Rebellions are built on hope; our hope rests in the promise of our God, the promise that His Kingdom is already here, if only we transform our minds to see it.

Nothing is preventing you from living as Christ for your neighbor. Nothing ever can! No army, no taxes, no chains, no bars, and certainly not death, could ever stifle the flame of Jesus’ Spirit alive in you. And if you want to feel His Spirit at work, simply share Her.

There is always an empire. There’s always a Caesar. But empires are brittle. And Caesars die. Love alone outlasts them, for Love rises from His grave.

Go forth and give witness to the world that the Kingdom of Heaven is here.

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







Pertinent Links

RDG Stout
Blog: https://rdgstout.blogspot.com/
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St Peter’s Lutheran
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Nidaros Lutheran
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